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.

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.