Demeaned, Deprived, Disempowered: How the Abolitionist Anti-Trafficking Movement Punishes Women Who Do Not Behave.

• In Event: Crime and Justice Among Female Victims

Abstract

Over fifteen years ago the the anti-trafficking movement has launched a moral crusade successfully shaping the general public’s perception around prostitution, human trafficking and migration for labor, to align with a distinctly prohibitionist agenda of social control. This paper analyses some of the intended and unintended consequences of over a decade of anti-trafficking activism, particularly focusing on the radical feminist ideology informed prostitution reforms. Taking the New York State Human Trafficking Intervention Courts as a case study, this article highlights the net widening effect of problem solving courts, while examining abolitionist interest groups at the nexus of carceral policies, victim rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration programs and the conflation of sex trafficking, domestic violence, mental illness and adult voluntary prostitution.  Grounded in observation and secondary data analysis, this article aims to critically assess the effects the court mandated rehabilitation and reintegration programs have on sex workers and sex trafficking survivors while evaluating the incentives these approaches offer NGOs and other professionals invested in New York Human Trafficking Intervention Courts sanctioned programs.

Authors

• Claudia Cojocaru, Rutgers University

• Naomi Haber, John Jay College of Criminal Justice