“I Went from Being Held Captive to Captivity Again”: How the Criminal Legal System Fails Black Women and Girl Survivors of Sex Trafficking

Abstract

Black women and girls are disproportionately arrested and incarcerated for prostitution and prostitution-related crimes while being sex trafficked. Despite laws and policies meant to discourage criminalization, Black women and girls are profiled and subjected to both interpersonal and state violence due to their victimization. This paper uses one-on-one interviews with thirteen survivors of sex trafficking and exploitation across the United States and their encounters with the criminal legal system and incarceration. Grounded in Black feminist criminology, this research analyzes the experiences of survivors as victims and as criminals. Narratives demonstrate that courts and social services were unprepared, and often unwilling, to understand or acknowledge the intertwining trauma of racial and sexual abuse, inhibiting survivor’s healing and pursuits of justice. Learning from narrator’s insights, this article discuss what “justice” means for Black women survivors and how it may be achieved with and without institutional responses.