Restorative Justice in Cases of Seafood Slavery

Author: Yea, Sallie; Stringer, Christina & Rao, Sunil

Abstract: Advocates of restorative justice have argued that conventional approaches to criminal justice primarily through state-provisioned punishment neither meet the needs of victims nor significantly deter offenders. To date, limited academic research has been conducted on restorative justice in human trafficking cases. Therefore, in this study, we examine the extent to which restorative justice is being applied to victims in cases of seafood slavery, drawing from two registers of restorative justice for the analysis: participation and amends. We used data from an ongoing human trafficking study in the Asia–Pacific’s distant waters fisheries sector, and we discussed the Giant Ocean case and the Trinidad and Tobago case that were prosecuted in Cambodia and Indonesia, respectively. We found limited evidence that victims participated meaningfully in any way in their respective legal cases, and we observed several deficiencies in delivering amends, especially regarding compensation for victims in both cases. This paper concludes with recommendations for government and non-government anti-trafficking stakeholders to better facilitate opportunities that enable victims to pursue restorative justice processes.

Keywords: restorative justice, rights-based approach, human trafficking, Asia pacific fisheries