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It is important when discussing human trafficking that we are aware of and understand an often-hidden but more-common-than-imagined reality: sex trafficking and its disparate impact on Black women and girls.
The federal government defines sex trafficking as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or induced in one under 18. The Black's Law Dictionary definition does not fully illustrate the human cost. In 2019, 14,597 victims of sex trafficking sought relief from the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline. The numbers grew in 2020; the hotline estimates crisis trafficking situations have worsened by about 40 percent since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Understanding the problem requires starting with our juvenile justice system. Many of the children ultimately trafficked have had contact with the system, including through foster care, when labeled as truant or delinquent because of difficulties in school, or when held as a child in need of assistance due to abuse or neglect. Girls and women of color are especially vulnerable to and disproportionately victimized by sex trafficking. As a society, there is a tendency to perceive Black girls as more adult and less innocent than white girls in school and other environments. This bias may help to explain an increased use of discipline against Black girls by teachers, law enforcement, and other authority figures. Black females represent 40 percent of those victimized by sex trafficking, disproportionate to their representation of 13.4 percent in the general population. Victims are often young, and one Chicago study found that 61.7 percent of victims were first trafficked as children. Nearly 60 percent of all juvenile prostitution arrests are of Black girls. Yet, our criminal justice system often lacks the capacity to respond appropriately. Black victims of sex trafficking often get longer sentences and pay more restitution than their white counterparts. Law enforcement is less likely to see Black sex trafficking victims as victims and more as co-conspirators or sex workers. Too often, symptoms of trauma and exploitation are criminalized instead of treated. Truancy, vandalism, or petty theft could all be symptoms of a larger illness, but the current system treats them as purely criminal acts instead.
Human trafficking is a...