Abstract

The "ideal victim" is a category of persons who, when affected by a crime, are straightforwardly granted the status of victim. In particular, it must be a weak person, who performs a respectable activity at the time of being victimized, and who cannot be blamed for being in the wrong place when the crime occurred. This article explores the practices and narratives developed in the Chilean penal system that give relevance to the construction of the "ideal victim" in the field of human trafficking. For this purpose, a qualitative methodology was applied, which considered as main data collection techniques the documentary review, semi-structured interviews with operators of the penal system and content analysis of sentences issued from 2011 to 2020. On this basis, the article concludes that, for the affected person to be considered a victim of trafficking, it is necessary that they meet a socially constructed standard based on stereotypes and prejudices associated with prostitution and irregular immigration.