This fact sheet provides a brief description of the history, approach, and documented results of the Midtown Community Justice Center, one of the country's first problem-solving courts. It also gives an overview of the Justice Center's programming in areas such as social services, community engagement, and diversion programs.
Research on the effectiveness and ethical mandate of prostitution diversion programs, human trafficking courts, and other specialized responses to the intersecting issues of prostitution and sex trafficking has produced mixed results. To better understand these initiatives, the Center for Court Innovation and RTI International conducted evaluability assessments of five such programs.
Courts across the country are developing new and unique ways to address sex trafficking. Given the differences in local laws, culture, and available resources, there is no universally applicable model, and instead, human trafficking courts rely on shared strategies and goals. In this video resource, practitioners from courts around the country explain and discuss five key principles that animate their work in human trafficking courts.
The video, From Defendant to Survivor: How Courts Are Responding to Human Trafficking, profiles three courts that have forged new responses to sex trafficking. This guide is designed to help viewers understand the key principles of court models that effectively divert human trafficking and prostitution cases from prosecution.
Survivors of sex trafficking are usually treated as criminals rather than victims. But some courts have begun to recognize that those arrested on prostitution charges are often victims of coercion, violence, and trauma. Our video, From Defendant to Survivor, profiles the innovative approaches being taken by courts in Los Angeles, New York City, and Columbus, Ohio.
Based on more than 300 in-depth interviews with adults involved in New York City’s multifaceted sex trade, this study describes a murky and mutable continuum between involvement in the trade due to force and choice. It also examines a unique criminal justice response: New York City's Human Trafficking Intervention Courts, developed to mitigate some of the harm trafficking victims experience in the criminal justice system.
In this New Thinking podcast, Ann Johnson, an assistant district attorney and the human trafficking section chief with the Harris County District Attorney's Office, discusses her office's strategies for combating human trafficking, including increased enforcement against traffickers and buyers, and diversion from prosecution for victims. One of the office's diversion program, SAFE Court, gives those ages 17 to 25 who are charged with prostitution the opportunity to clear the charge from their criminal records by completing a yearlong program of monitoring and social services.
This article outlines lessons from the Human Trafficking and the State Courts Collaborative relevant to all justice system stakeholders. It offers concrete recommendations for multidisciplinary partnerships on how to cultivate and sustain collaboration.
Judge John Leventhal is the author of “My Partner, My Enemy,” a book chronicling his experiences presiding over the Brooklyn Domestic Violence Court from its opening in June 1996 until 2008, the first felony domestic violence court in the nation.
This study in San Francisco and Oakland, Calif. included 136 interviews with youth engaged in the sex trade. Findings show that young people’s involvement in the sex trade mostly fell into three categories: pimps, renegades, and street kids. Although the Bay Area site saw the highest percentage of youth working with pimps (29%) as compared to the other five sites in the study, the large majority of those interviewed were identified as “renegades”—a term used to describe individuals who work on their own without anyone to facilitate their involvement in the sex trade.
