Chrystul Kizer Should Remind Us All of the Importance of Preventing Human Trafficking

Chrystul Kizer was tired of being abused and exploited. In 2018, the then-seventeen-year-old shot thirty-four-year-old Randall Volar, who she said had been trafficking her since she was sixteen, in self defense. In August, Kizer was sentenced in a Kenosha County, Wisconsin, courthouse to eleven years in prison on the charge of reckless homicide, to which she pleaded guilty. 

Why would she resort to such serious measures to get away from her trafficker? The sad reality is that there are not many resources to which trafficking victims can turn. Social programs are underfunded, and law enforcement and the criminal penal system are known to arrest trafficking victims and charge them with prostitution rather than helping them. 

The system fails some people more than others, and Kizer was one of those people. As a sex trafficking victim and especially as a young Black woman, she had no recourse, no help until she took matters into her own hands. Then the system punished her for it. It seems that for women, especially Black women, the definition of justice differs—white men such as Kyle Rittenhouse and others are often let off the hook for killing much more callously.

Our society gives women no help or hope for escaping the abuse and exploitation of men, and then when they do fight back, the system makes sure to put them right back in line. The energy we as a society put into fighting abuse is at the back end: building more prisons, putting more people away, and pouring more and more money into law enforcement. None of this helps abuse victims. 

The truth is, we allow women to drown before attempting to save them. By the time we throw out the life preserver, it is too late. The very definition of equity is not merely giving everyone the same thing, but giving in resources, access, and support as much as each unique individual needs to succeed and thrive so that we can all stand together. The legal system is flawed precisely because it treats everyone as if they are starting from the same place, though in reality everyone starts at various places because of racial, economic, social, and other factors.

We should be investing more heavily in prevention at the front end, as opposed to only dealing with social and legal issues when they come to a head and it’s too late to turn the ship around. Kizer was originally charged with first degree homicide, but this was reduced to reckless homicide and she was sentenced to eleven years in prison. While this is certainly better than a trafficking victim spending life in prison, the fact that this situation happens at all is indicative of a much larger problem in the way we as a society approach the trafficking epidemic. 

Had there been more preventative services available to Kizer, like nonprofit organizations that aren’t woefully underfunded or better state and federal social service programs, she might have felt like she had another option. If we didn’t simply ignore abuse and exploitation against women until that woman feels she has no other escape than to commit a crime, maybe there would be fewer incarcerated women. 

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 92 percent of all women incarcerated in California prisons have self-identified as being “battered and abused” during their lifetimes. Black women represent 30 percent of all incarcerated women in the United States, though they represent only 13 percent of the general population. 

The other issue is the prevalence of racial bias in how laws are enforced in communities of color. According to a new report by the Sentencing Project on racial justice in the criminal legal system, racial bias means that communities of color are more excessively policed. In addition, penalties are often given out much more harshly by judges, parole officers, corrections officers, juries, prosecutors, public defenders, and law enforcement. As the Sentencing Project details in its report, life sentences are overwhelmingly given to Black and Latinx people; among people serving life without parole, 55 percent are Black.

Black girls and women are more vulnerable to being trafficked at a young age (like Kizer) than their white counterparts. This is due to the intersecting issues of generational poverty, racism, and sexism that disproportionately impact girls and women of color. Black girls and women are also incarcerated at disproportionate rates for a wide variety of reasons, including those detailed above.

The law acts as if everyone is the same, and some argue that this is necessary in order to keep us all on an equal footing. This may sound like a nice idea, but it is far from realistic with the extreme social inequities that exist and contribute to young girls and women being funneled into the criminal judicial system.

Chrystul Kizer and other women were pushed to the edge by a society that never cared if they lived or died until they broke one of its rules. Laws are designed to be equitable, but they are rarely applied equitably. We fail women in trafficking situations, especially Black women and girls. We allow them to fall off the edge of the cliff, because our system is based on punishment, not prevention, and because society believes abuse and exploitation are private matters. 

Chrystul Kizer may have committed a crime, but it is the United States that behaves criminally against vulnerable young girls.