ABSTRACT
People are trafficked for a variety of exploitative purposes, ranging from sexual and labour exploitation to forced criminality, forced begging, and many other lucrative activities. Traffickers increasingly involve their victims in illicit activities, such as holding false documents, theft, pickpocketing, drug smuggling, drug dealing, cannabis cultivation and fraud. This is a specific criminal strategy, which enables traffickers to achieve further subjugation and control of their victims, who become even more afraid of seeking help. Indeed, trafficked persons face a real and substantial risk of being arrested or otherwise punished. The criminalisation of trafficked persons is an all too common practice across the globe. It is not only a manifest injustice, which further traumatises victims of a serious crime, but also detrimental to the very prosecution of the crime of trafficking.
