In nearly fifty years since incarceration rates started their remarkable rise in the United States, there have been numerous discussions of racially selective arrest, prosecution, and sentencing of blacks who constitute 37% of drug arrests, 42% of death row prisoners, and 40% of the incarcerated. However, there has been little concern about the recent finding by researchers at the National Institute of Justice that 62% of national sex trafficking prosecutions are black. This essay begins such a discussion by drawing on three publicly funded studies of legally defined sex traffickers and victims, several in-depth case studies of federal sex trafficking trials against black pimps, and preliminary quantitative research on national and regional disparities in sex trafficking prosecution and sentencing. Our findings suggest that black men are probably far more than 62% of those prosecuted for sex trafficking and sentencing disparities are extreme and may constitute a systematic and serious human rights violation. Finally, we question whether it is possible for a black pimp to receive a fair trial in a socio-legal regime that grants overzealous prosecutors near-complete impunity through broad and vague statutes built on empirically unsupported presuppositions about gender and sex work and ubiquitous substandard expert witness testimony that conflates popular racist stereotypes, hip hop, and black pulp fiction mythology, and human trafficking propaganda to demonize black pimps.
No comments:
Post a Comment