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Oakland Local, a web site run by BlogHer Contributing Editor Susan Mernit, is running an original investigative series on youth sex trafficking in the Bay area. This story is reposted from that series at Oakland Local. Here are part one and part two of the series.
Recession slices with a double-edged sword into efforts to rescue young victims of sex trafficking from the streets. On the one hand, joblessness and foreclosures at levels higher than have been seen in a generation are pounding families, bringing out stresses and conflicts that cause youth to run away.
On the other hand, the recession has taken away resources to help troubled and homeless youth –- as well as reduced resources for arresting traffickers.
In Oakland and Berkeley, youth shelters report a record number of clients. The Youth Engagement, Advocacy and Housing (YEAH!) shelter in downtown Berkeley reported that every night during this November-to-May season it has had more kids line up at its doors than in any previous year. Administrators attributed this to the recession.
"Some youth just cannot stay with families anymore because the family can't afford it or there are way more people in the household -- extended families living together -- and that raises the stress level at home," YEAH! Director Sharon Hawkins Leyden said about the record number of local homeless youth she is seeing.
California's Child Welfare Services endured a $133 million cut for the current fiscal year in state funds and matching federal grants, a loss of about 10 percent of its budget even as the number of poor children needing its services grows. CalWORKS welfare-to-work grants for families with children have been cut 15 percent for the typical recipient, and the Emancipated Foster Youth Stipend totally eliminated thanks to California's current budget crisis. Meanwhile, the state's education budget was slashed by $5.4 billion for the current school year. Schools have fewer guidance counselors, coaches and teachers. Cities have fewer youth shelters and recreation programs.
Some group homes have been closed, such as the 32-bed Kairos House in East Oakland for at-risk teens. Programs that keep kids from the streets (everything from school sports to community programs) have been on the chopping block across the state.
Recession, Internet Make Police Job Harder
Police budgets have also shrunk. Oakland Police Lt. Kevin Wiley said the department's Vice and Child Exploitation Unit is now operated entirely from grants, so he has to keep applying for grants to keep it going.
Vice Unit Investigator Jim Saleda, trolling the streets to arrest traffickers and rescue girls, said he knows firsthand the frustration of fewer resources."We are very limited in the work we can do, it drives me crazy," he said. "The feds, the city, the state, everybody is broke."
"If we had more resources, we would do more sweeps. We'd have decoys. You need decoys to catch johns and you need more UCs (undercovers) to catch pimps," Saleda said.
Two years ago, before its budget was severely cut, the Oakland police deployed undercover officers to pose as prostitutes. "We'd get two or three pimps a night" as well as 30 to 40 johns, Saleda said.
The Internet has also made catching and arresting johns and pimps much more difficult. Deals are made out of sight on laptops and cell phones. Both parties then just show up at prearranged meeting spots.
Wiley said, when the police scan online classifieds on Craigslist and the escort service site My Redbook, they sometimes find 50 to 100 individuals advertised from the Bay Area who look like teenagers -- even though they are described as adults. With cell phones, a john can call up a number on the advertisement and "have a girl delivered."
"It is very hard to catch up with this" when technology has made the crime so easy, Wiley said.
California Law Has Not Helped
Amid these challenges brought by economics, California's weak laws have not helped.
The state's human trafficking statute, AB 236.1, requires prosecutors to show that force or coercion were used to prove that trafficking occurred even for minors. State Assemblyman Sandre Swanson (D-Oakland), working with Deputy District Attorney Sharmin Eshraghi Bock, has drafted legislation AB 2319 to amend that statute to
