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)