Children who experience commercial sexual exploitation are victims of trafficking under federal law, yet many are still arrested, detained, and prosecuted. This issue brief, authored by attorneys at the National Center for Youth Law and published as part of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Strategies and Insights to End Girls’ Incarceration toolkit, examines why that gap between law and practice persists. It covers who is most at risk, the pathways through which trafficked youth end up criminalized, the lasting harms those encounters cause, and the policy interventions that have shown real results.