January is National Human Trafficking Awareness Month, and combating the problem is especially important in Nevada, which is home to the largest commercial sex trade per capita in the country.
More than 5,000 people, mostly women and girls, are sold for sex in Nevada each month, according to a 2019 study from Creighton University.
Melissa Holland, executive director and a cofounder at Awaken, a Reno-based nonprofit that helps survivors of sex trafficking get their lives back, said the traffickers target local teenagers.
“Over the last four years,” she said, “Awaken has seen victims come out of every single high school in Reno-Sparks and most of the middle schools.”
All sex trafficking is illegal, online or otherwise, in Clark and Washoe counties, which include Las Vegas and Reno. But solicitation of an adult for sex is only a misdemeanor, punishable by a $1,000 fine or up to six months in jail. Brothels are legal in certain parts of 10 other Nevada counties.
Holland said she’d like to see the sex trade banned in every county – or at least, to have the penalty raised to what’s known as a gross misdemeanor.
“We have a sex tourism community here, which unfortunately means this is where traffickers come to groom girls and to traffic them,” she said. “Traffickers want to come to Nevada because the laws have done half the work for them, in terms of desensitizing people to prostitution.”
Awaken and other groups like it offer transitional housing, a drop-in center and counseling, and make presentations at local schools. The Nevada Attorney General’s website also has links to multiple agencies and programs designed to help victims.
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Survivors of human trafficking in Indiana are required to provide testimony in person during trials, but a new bill would allow young survivors to submit pre-recorded video statements. The proposal would apply to survivors who were 14 or younger at the time of their assault, as long as they’re still a minor during the trial.
Rep. Wendy McNamara, R-Evansville, chair of the Indiana House Courts and Criminal Code Committee, said she wrote the bill after talking with a parent in her district.
“His daughter was victimized when she was 14 and then was forced to testify in court when she was 15,” McNamara recounted. “So hopefully this would be an opportunity for kids not to have to relive this.”
Per the National Human Trafficking Hotline, there were 140 reported cases of trafficking in Indiana in 2020, up from 98 in 2017. McNamara said while her bill is aimed at survivors of human trafficking, it also would cover young survivors of any violent crime.
McNamara’s bill includes other provisions which she pointed out will streamline the prosecution of traffickers and increase penalties for those who pay for sexual acts from minors. She added many of those measures were designed to target the organizations behind the crime.
“It’s not just one individual,” McNamara explained. “It’s often a very complex web of groups of people, multi-state groups, that serve as human-trafficking rings.”
The proposal also will require local agencies to report human trafficking investigations to the Indiana Attorney General’s office within thirty days. It will be before the Courts and Criminal Code Committee for consideration Wednesday.
Human trafficking can be reported to the National Human Trafficking hotline via the organization’s website or by phone: 1-888-373-7888.
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The Florida Department of Corrections now bans people in prison from receiving traditional mail, such as greeting cards and handwritten letters, requiring that it be scanned and sent electronically, with few exceptions. The department says the change was made to reduce contraband from entering facilities, but Denise Rock, executive director of Florida Cares Charity Corp., sees it as choosing to punish the estimated 80,000 people in prison for an offense that affects less than 1% of the prison population.
Rock said the department is taking away important intangibles, such as being able to hold and smell the paper a loved one has written on, “or touch the colors of the crayons that your child wrote a card to you. What we have found from talking to people that are both incarcerated or formerly incarcerated is that this stuff provided an invaluable connection back home.”
Rock is urging the Department of Corrections to consider punishing only those who violate mail rules.
The new rule, finalized Nov. 29, is being phased in beginning with four state-run facilities — the Calhoun, Lawtey, Polk and Martin Correctional Institutes – starting Jan. 18.
Florida is following in the footsteps of several states that have banned or drastically restricted mail. Texas banned greeting cards and artwork in 2020. Michigan and Indiana have taken similar steps. Rock said she believes this approach is wrong.
“The overall goal of incarceration should be that someone comes out and is well connected to their family, and able to get readjusted and reacclimated,” she said, “and we feel like this just further isolates them from how the real world functions.”
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, 50 years of research has found that visitation, mail, phone and other forms of contact between incarcerated people and their families has positive effects on both. Also, an investigation by the Marshall Project after Texas limited its prison mail found drugs and other contraband still were entering facilities – smuggled in by corrections officers.
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Maryland could become the second state in the nation to provide specific support for the health and well-being of incarcerated people who are pregnant and their newborns.
In the next General Assembly, a bill will recommend community-based alternatives to jail or prison for pregnant women with nonviolent offenses, for up to one year after the birth. Current Maryland law requires separating an incarcerated mother and infant after two to three days.
Del. Lesley Lopez, D-Montgomery County, is co-sponsoring the legislation, which she said would allow a child to be near his or her parent to bond in the first crucial year of life.
“I myself am going to deliver any day now, and so I’m looking ahead to those next few months of what it’s like to bond with your child for a lifetime of parenting,” she said. “And if we are a society that really puts a family as the center of what community means, then we need to emphasize that.”
She said the Prevention of Forced Infant Separation Act is modeled after Minnesota’s Healthy Start Act, which went into effect in August. That bill had bipartisan support, and Lopez said she thinks hers will, too, when the General Assembly convenes in January.
Anushka Vakil, who is working on the bill with the Maryland Justice Project on the bill, noted that infant bonding in the first year is biologically and socially important, and numerous studies show show babies who lack this contact can have serious issues later in life.
“From the research we have found,” she said, “we know that when infants are separated at this really young age, it increases baby stress levels, these babies are more likely to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when they become adults, and a lot of these effects are permanent.”
An estimated 58,000 pregnant people enter U.S. jails and prisons every year, according to research from the Prison Policy Initiative. In some state prison systems, it said, miscarriage, premature birth and cesarean section rates are higher than those for the general population.
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