On the incarceration of people who have been trafficked In the long-term clinical experience of HBF, supported by research studies,129 detention and imprisonment have an enduring negative impact upon people who have suffered trauma from interpersonal violence. Being detained or imprisoned further to a trafficking experience can result in cumulative trauma, self-harming behaviours, suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. In some cases detention or imprisonment heightens the vulnerability of people who have been trafficked, increasing the risk that they will be subject to “disappearance” or being re-trafficked after their release. HBF recommends that people who have been trafficked should not be held in administrative detention or punished for any offence that they have committed while under the influence of traffickers.130 In addition the courts should recognize through, for example probation service reports, that a victim’s need to survive after escaping from traffickers may be a significant mitigating factor in considering appropriate sentences. Foreigners who commit crimes are often subject to automatic custodial sentences because reports into their background are presumed to be too limited to be helpful to the courts. However, recognition by the courts of a trafficking victim’s ordeal may go some way to providing an understanding of their behaviour. Victims are unlikely in many cases to feel able to come forward to the authorities after having been trafficked, and should not be a factor in any decision to detain them. The British Journal of Psychiatry, British Journal of Clinical Psychology, Traumatic Stress service Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, “Each Party shall, in accordance with the basic principles of its legal system, provide for the possibility of not imposing penalties on victims for their involvement in unlawful activities, to the extent that they have been compelled to do so”; Policy and legislative recommendations towards the effective implementation of the non-punishment provision with regard to victims of trafficking 117