The U.S. enacted the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act (TSRA) on 23 January 2026, providing human trafficking survivors with a special affirmative defense and criminal records relief for certain federal crimes. This represents a meaningful step towards implementing the non-punishment principle at the federal level. The non-punishment principle is a legal norm that opposes the punishment of trafficking victims for unlawful conduct they engage in as a consequence of being trafficked. Initially developed during the negotiations of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, the principle has been increasingly incorporated into international, regional, and domestic law over the past quarter-century and is considered an essential component of a human rights-based approach to human trafficking. In the U.S., most states have statutes establishing an affirmative defense (or immunity) and criminal records relief specifically based upon trafficking victimization, but these statutes only assist survivors facing prosecutions or convictions for state crimes. Now, for the first time, trafficking survivors have access to these protective mechanisms in federal prosecutions and for federal criminal records.  

Due to the nature of human trafficking dynamics, it is not uncommon for victims to commit offenses as a result of their victimization. These are not always minor crimes such as prostitution and forged identification documents. For example, traffickers often coerce their victims into participating in the trafficking of other victims. There are also victims who have been prosecuted for other serious offenses such as robbery, carjacking, and even murder. But many non-punishment statutes and judicial initiatives limit eligibility to less serious offenses, thereby excluding a subset of trafficking victims from their reach.

It is a positive development that the TSRA does not limit its defense based on trafficking victimization to nonviolent crimes. However, the statute does prohibit survivor-defendants from raising the defense in a prosecution for a violent crime committed against a juvenile. Thus, if a trafficking victim used force or threats of force to traffic a juvenile for sex because she knew that her trafficker would seriously harm her or her family if she refused his demands, she would be ineligible for the TSRA’s human trafficking defense.

The TSRA places even greater limits on eligibility for criminal records relief—which makes little sense given that a criminalized survivor is likely to have already served her sentence and more time has passed since the alleged criminal conduct as compared with the point at which an affirmative defense would be raised. Only convictions for nonviolent offenses qualify for trafficking victimization-based vacatur. Regarding the expungement of arrests, survivors’ arrests for violent crimes against juveniles are never expungable under the TSRA. Arrests for other violent offenses are only eligible for expungement if the survivor was acquitted, the government dropped the charges, or the charges were reduced to nonviolent offense(s) for which there was no conviction or any resulting conviction had been vacated. Arrests that meet these criteria and arrests for nonviolent offenses qualify for expungement if the survivor proves by a preponderance of the evidence that the alleged conduct leading to the arrest was “directly related to” the survivor’s trafficking victimization. Similarly, a survivor must prove that the offense was “a direct result of” trafficking victimization to qualify for vacatur of a nonviolent conviction. Although this type of nexus is easier to satisfy than a duress-based nexus—which would require the survivor to prove that her trafficker had coerced her into committing the specific offense underlying her arrest or conviction—the inclusion of “directly” in the statutory language renders it more demanding than it otherwise would be.

Despite these limitations, the TSRA is a significant step toward improved implementation of the non-punishment principle at the federal level. It protects survivor-defendants from criminal liability for many types of federal crimes and from the collateral consequences associated with having a federal criminal record, primarily for nonviolent offenses. As global recognition of the non-punishment principle continues to grow, the U.S. will hopefully build upon the TSRA to broaden the principle’s reach and improve its realization for survivors who commit federal offenses as a consequence of being trafficked. As I argue in my recent article, these efforts should include the development of non-punitive, restorative responses to crime committed by trafficking victim-defendants, with the aim of repairing harm and facilitating healing and reintegration for all involved.