PaCCS Student Placement with the National Crime Agency

PaCCS is delighted to announce that Francesca Costi has begun a PaCCS-funded placement with the National Crime Agency to help NCA understand the extent to which criminals are involved in multiple SOC crime types. This work will involve discussions with stakeholders, document review, and data analysis, with the goal of developing an assessment designed for policy audiences. This placement is part of the PaCCS programme Transnational Organised Crime (TNOC): Deepening & Broadening Our Understanding.

Ms Costi has a background in Forensic Psychology and Political Science, with a focus on policy analysis and (qualitative) research methods. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Dawes Centre for Future Crime at UCL, where she is analysing the impact of technology and the global pandemic on sexual exploitation and human trafficking in the UK. As part of this work, she is collaborating with local and national law enforcement agencies to better understand organised crime adaptability and develop crime-disruptive strategies. She has previously worked in a range of areas, including consultancy jobs in the private sector, NGOs, with Sophie Hayes Foundation, and government bodies.  In January 2021, she was awarded the Best Dissertation Award from the Political Science department at UCL for her work on evaluating the Modern Slavery Act. Her work was conducted using only open-sources data and showed the changes in reporting and investigating domestic human trafficking in the UK over a 10-year period. This research has been used in the 2021 Re-Trafficking report by the University of Nottingham (Rights Lab) and the Anti-Slavery Commissioner project.