The Rights Track

In Episode 6 we talk modern slavery statistics and the challenges that face those trying to get to the hard facts about the issue. Our guest is  Sir Bernard Silverman, a mathematician and statistician who produced the first scientific estimate of the number of modern slaves in the United Kingdom.  00.00 - 04.10  Todd begins asking Sir Bernard about the difficulties in researching "hard to find populations” such as the victims of modern slavery, and in particular the issues of sampling and bias when drawing inferences from such difficult to obtain data. Sir Bernard agrees and suggests that the only way to avoid errors is to construct mathematical models and construct a sampling methodology to describe the data. He explains that classical sampling methods are not applicable to the victims of modern slavery Todd points out that the only way to identify victims is if they come forward to the National Crime Agency and/or other referral mechanisms, to create different " convenience samples"  04.10 - 08.20  Sir