Understanding the criminalisation of race and gender in modern slavery and human trafficking: Towards a national strategy for probation

In 2023, HM Inspectorate of Probation acknowledged the absence of a national strategy for delivering probation services to minority ethnic people and stated that race equality in the probation service remains a ‘work in progress’. In 2018, the Ministry of Justice's Female Offender Strategy identified foreign national women as vulnerable and disadvantaged and made a commitment to improve outcomes. Even so, inspection data on probation performance and outcomes reveal racial and gender disparities. Race, gender and social marginalisation remain strong risk factors for trafficking and much remains to be done by the probation service to support victim-survivors of modern slavery and human trafficking. This paper is co-authored with an organisation that champions the rights of Black and minoritised migrant women in contact with the immigration and criminal justice systems. Not much is known about how women experience the intersecting dimensions of criminal justice, immigration and modern slavery as victim-survivors. Gaps of communication, trust and confidence characterise the relationship between minoritised groups in contact with the immigration and justice systems. Women experience structural and institutional harms produced through wider systems of punishment, criminalisation and exclusion. This paper will argue that HMPPS can mitigate these harms by engaging the support of specialist organisations when formulating and implementing policy for MSHT.