Rescuing women from the brinks of whiteness: Carceral restoration in a human trafficking court

Research on gender-specific penal reform programs critique their failure to prioritize the socio-economic recovery of criminalized women. This paper draws on these insights to examine the Women’s Refuge Court (WRC), a human trafficking court for adult women criminalized for prostitution and drug off...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Singh, Rashmee (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2024
In: The British journal of criminology
Year: 2024, Volume: 64, Issue: 2, Pages: 275-291
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Keywords:
Criminalized women
gender-specific justice/penal reform programs
human trafficking and prostitution courts
sex trafficking/white slavery panics
Description
Summary:Research on gender-specific penal reform programs critique their failure to prioritize the socio-economic recovery of criminalized women. This paper draws on these insights to examine the Women’s Refuge Court (WRC), a human trafficking court for adult women criminalized for prostitution and drug offences in Ohio. Using ethnographic research, I illustrate the WRC’s rejection of bootstrapping and emphasis on material resourcing as a penal reform strategy. I argue that the WRC’s prioritization of socio-economic recovery derives from fears over the status decline of the impoverished white women who predominate as defendants. Court officials rely on evangelical Christian imaginings of prostitution as ‘modern day slavery’ to frame participants as ‘trafficking victims’. I identify the WRC’s response as a racially specific form of gender responsive programming called carceral restoration.
ISSN:1464-3529
DOI:10.1093/bjc/azad030