Cohort 2023

Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking

Documenting Forced Criminality among Survivors of Human Trafficking

Los Angeles, CA

Survivors of human trafficking are often forced to commit crimes (PDF) by their traffickers. Despite being victims, they are often misidentified as perpetrators in the criminal legal system and spend their lives living with the consequences. This chronic failure to identify and support survivors is a race equity issue because Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color are disproportionately affected by human trafficking and disproportionately targeted by the criminal legal system.

With Catalyst Grant funding, the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (Cast) will improve its methods of collecting, analyzing, and disseminating data on forced criminality. Cast works to bridge practice and policy, providing survivors of human trafficking comprehensive services and a space where they can inform a survivor-centered policy agenda. Cast will develop a brief screening tool to collect data on clients’ experiences with forced criminality and the broader criminal legal system. Research staff will analyze deidentified data and share findings publicly through a workshop for practitioners and an interactive dashboard. To center survivors throughout the project, Cast will recruit and engage a survivor advisory board to guide its data-collection practices. Cast will use the results of this project to improve its own services, but also to help other service providers understand the criminalization of survivors of color and the related perpetuation of human trafficking.