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Policing Victimhood analyzes semi-structured interviews with 54 service providers in the Midwestern US, a region that, though colloquially understood as “flyover country,” regularly positions itself as a leader in state-level anti-trafficking policies and collaborative networks. These frontline workers’ perceptions and narratives are informed by their interpersonal, day-to-day encounters with exploited or trafficked persons. Their insights underscore how anti-trafficking policies are put into practice and influenced by specific ideologies and stereotypes. Extending the reach of street-level bureaucracy theory to anti-trafficking initiatives, Corinne Schwarz demonstrates how frontline workers are uniquely positioned to perpetuate or radically counter punitive anti-trafficking efforts.
List of contents
Introduction: “Oh, Trafficking? That Happens Here?” Perceptions and Paradigms of Anti-trafficking Efforts and the Carceral State
1 Carceral Protectionism: Resource Constraints and Rescue Narratives
2 The Punishment Mindset: The Inevitability of Carcerality
3 Therapeutic Governance and the Regulation of the Post-trafficking Self
4 Limits to Justice: The Complications of the Carceral State
5 Beyond Carceral Logics: Shifting from the “Punishing” State to the “Helping” State
Conclusion: Anti-trafficking Futures: Justice without Policing and Prisons
Acknowledgments
Appendix A: Research Methodologies
Appendix B: Interviewee Pseudonyms
Notes
References
Index
About the author
CORINNE SCHWARZ is an assistant professor of gender, women’s, and sexuality studies at Oklahoma State University. She received her PhD in women, gender, and sexuality studies from the University of Kansas in 2018. Her research uses socio-legal approaches to understand narratives of gender, sexuality, and violence within frontline work.
Summary
Explores how frontline workers in direct contact with vulnerable, exploited, and trafficked persons - however those groups are defined at personal, organisational, or legal levels - defer to the tools of the carceral state and ideologies of punishment when navigating their clients’ needs.
