According to the Non-Punishment Principle (NPP), which is based on international guidelines, victims of human trafficking should not be punished for crimes committed in connection with human trafficking under certain conditions. This principle has been explicitly incorporated into German criminal law in Section 154c (2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Using a legal-dogmatic and empirical-criminological analysis, this paper examines the NPP in detail, focusing in particular on whether and to what extent the NPP is a legally binding principle, whether it is sufficiently reflected in German law, and how this principle is applied in practice.
