Bernard Silverman

What is Modern Slavery?

Modern slavery takes many forms, from trafficking and coercing victims into prostitution to forced labour in many different sectors (farms, fisheries, nail bars, car washes, construction) to forced domestic labour to forced and child marriage to forced begging and benefit fraud.  

The UK was the first jurisdiction to bring together all these into a single offence through the Modern Slavery Act 2015. 

Statistics and the fight against Modern Slavery

As part of the strategy leading to the Modern Slavery Act, I used Multiple Systems Estimation to estimate the number of victims in the UK, arriving at a confidence interval, under certain assumptions, of 10,000 to 13,000 victims.  My original Home Office research report is available here. 

You can also learn more from my TEDx talk (Modern slavery: the size of the problem) and my podcast (Crunching numbers: modern slavery and statistics) available from my media page.

My research

A summary of my research into topics relevant to modern slavery is available here. From 2018 to 2022 my research was under the auspices of the post of Professor of Modern Slavery Statistics in the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham.  

Media

My media page gives some things you can watch, read or listen to.

Advisory work

Some examples of my national and international advisory roles in this area are given here. 

Maintained by Bernard Silverman.  Site last edited 23 October 2023 (though not every page may be up to date).