Re-Conceptualizing Success: Investigating Specialized Units Responses to the Sexual Trafficking of Female Victim-Survivors
Author | Dale Ballucci,Felicia Stathakis |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/15570851221114396 |
Published date | 01 December 2022 |
Date | 01 December 2022 |
Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Feminist Criminology
2022, Vol. 17(5) 661–683
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/15570851221114396
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Re-Conceptualizing Success:
Investigating Specialized Units
Responses to the Sexual
Trafficking of Female
Victim-Survivors
Dale Ballucci
1
and Felicia Stathakis, MA
1
Abstract
This paper explores police officers’experiences working in a specialized human
trafficking unit in Canada to identify challenges, strategies, and responses to working
with victim-survivors. Analyzing data from semi-structured interviews, we find that
officers deploy victim-centered responses reflecting procedural justice outcomes due
to their awareness that the criminal justice process often re-victimizes. Officers’
deployment of procedural justice acknowledges the victim-survivor trauma, but also
allows them to build a stronger case through evidence gathering, increasing the po-
tential for charges and convictions, also known as distributive justice. We argue that
this illustrates that these two approaches to justice are interdependent.
Keywords
sex trafficking, police response, procedural justice, distributive justice ‘victim-survivor
trauma
1
Department of Sociology, Social Science Centre, Western University, London, ON, Canada
Corresponding Author:
Dale Ballucci, Department of Sociology, Social Science Centre, Western University, Room 5403, 1151
Richmond St, London, ON N6A 5C2, Canada.
Email: dballucc@uwo.ca
Introduction
Police responses to human trafficking cases impact not only the investigation process
and the likelihood of justice, but also the recovery and experiences of victim-survivors
1
(Farrell et al., 2019;Regehr et al., 2008). That said, traditional police responses center
on convictions, characterized as distributive justice, which fails to take into account the
trauma victim-survivors’experience and the complex relationships they form with their
abuser (Doychak & Raghavan, 2020;Farrell & Pfeffer, 2014;Hoyle et al., 2011;
Nichols & Heil, 2015). In contrast to distributive justice, procedural justice involves
victim-survivor-centered responses to crime, accounting for their trauma, improving
their experiences with the criminal justice system, and assisting with their recovery
(Farrell, 2014;Jurek & King, 2020). However, despite the evidence indicating the
important role that police officers can play in these cases, there remains a dearth of
research that explicitly documents officers’practices and strategies in responding to
victim-survivors of sex trafficking (see Farrell et al., 2014).
Recent studies indicate that officers working in specialized trafficking units are
likely to have a greater awareness of the complexity of these cases, which can positively
impact their perceptions, understandings, and responses to victim-survivors (Ballucci
& Drakes, 2020;Farrell et al., 2019;Jurek & King, 2020). Thus, to improve the
responses of both patrol and specialized unit officers, it is essential to examine how
police perceive, understand, and justify their responses to sex trafficking to enable the
development of strategies and policies to better support and benefit victim-survivors.
As such, our paper specifically analyzes the responses of police officers working
with victim-survivors of female sex trafficking through the analysis of semi-structured
interviews from one specialized human trafficking unit in a Canadian jurisdiction. We
find that, due to their awareness of the limitations of the criminal justice system in
supporting victim-survivors of sex crimes, police deploy several strategies that support
procedural justice practices. Specifically, officers discuss how the legal system does not
account for victim-survivors’trauma, nor the complex relationship between victim-
survivors and offenders, which results in re-victimization. To address these short-
comings, police officers work to develop a rapport with the victim-survivors in order to
deploy tailored and individualized responses. These include providing victim-survivors
with the opportunity to choose if and how they want to participate in the criminal
investigation, which can significantly improve the pathway to personal recovery.
This commitment to procedural justice, however, also serves distributive justice
goals and increases police legitimacy (Posick & Policastro, 2013). In other words,
although procedural and distributive justice differ in terms of their objectives, they are
not mutually exclusive. For instance, a victim-centered response can positively impact
the probability that an officer will be able to charge and/or convict a suspect. Further,
providing support for victim-survivors of sex crimes increases the likelihood for
cooperation, strengthening officer ability to identify victim-survivors, build a strong
case, and press charges; each of which are distributive outcomes.
662 Feminist Criminology 17(5)
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