The Missouri Survivors’ Act represents a critical step toward a more just and trauma-informed legal system for survivors of abuse, trafficking, and exploitation. This legislation recognizes a reality long understood by advocates and service providers: survivors are too often criminalized for actions that are directly tied to their victimization.

Under current law, individuals—particularly survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence, and human trafficking—can face harsh criminal penalties without meaningful consideration of the coercion, trauma, and abuse that shaped their circumstances. This bill seeks to correct that injustice.

The Missouri Survivors’ Act would allow courts to consider a person’s history of victimization during sentencing and provide a pathway for survivors currently serving sentences to seek resentencing when their abuse was a contributing factor. 

This campaign calls on lawmakers to support the Missouri Survivors’ Act as a commonsense, compassionate reform that advances public safety, reduces incarceration costs, and ensures that justice systems respond appropriately to survivors—not as offenders, but as individuals in need of protection, healing, and support.