Improving Justice for Women Through Diversion Forum on December 20th
On December 20th, Illinois Supreme Court Justice Ann M. Burke, along with the Cook County Justice Advisory Council, the Community Renewal Society, and others, are presenting a forum on a proposed law enforcement-led initiative to divert women, who would otherwise be arrested for prostitution, into safe, community-based services. The invitation to the event is copied below.
16,000-25,000 women are engaged in prostitution in the Chicago metropolitan area on any given day (Raphael & Shapiro, 2002). Most of these women are coping with homelessness, trauma, ongoing violence, mental health and/or substance abuse issues, physical disabilities like traumatic brain injury, and health conditions such as HIV/AIDS.
This past spring the prostitution felony offense was eliminated by the state legislature. This marks the opportunity for our county to finally transition from the costly court and jail-based system of dealing with prostitution to a less destructive and evidence-based form of diversion.
The proposed diversion program is modeled after Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) Program, in operation since 2011, which has proved to be a groundbreaking effort to combat human trafficking and help women escape prostitution. The proposed program would be a street level, pre-charge, pre-booking, law enforcement-led initiative to divert women and female identifying transgender individuals into safe, community-based services in lieu of arrest and detention. In this new system a police officer would call a 24 hour hotline to reach an on call advocate who would respond and meet with the individual to discuss options and assess for trafficking victim status or other safety issues. If the individual chooses the CCPDI option (90% do, based on the Seattle LEAD program), then she would be transported directly to a community drop-in center specializing in services for women in the sex trade. Following a needs assessment, a case manager would be assigned and treatment programming would begin.
The transition from a court based system to street-level diversion is a major threshold and represents both a more humane treatment of the issue of prostitution and a more sensible use of government resources.
We encourage everyone who is interested to attend–particularly practitioners within the field and the community.
