Houston’s SAFE Court Offers Victims of Human Trafficking a New Path

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 programs, SAFE Court, gives those aged 17 to 25 who are charged with prostitution the opportunity to clear the charge from their criminal records by completing a year-long program of monitoring and social services. SAFE Court was created with support from a Smart Prosecution grant from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance. To learn more, visit the Association of Prosecuting Attorney’sSmart Prosecution website. ROB WOLF: Hi. I’m Rob Wolf, Director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation. Welcome to another New Thinking podcast. Today I am speaking with Ann Johnson, who is an Assistant District Attorney with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in Texas. She is also the Human Trafficking Section Chief of that office. For those who may not realize, Harris County is where Houston is located, very large county. Thank you very much, Miss Johnson, for joining me today. JOHNSON: Thank you. It’s an honor to be here. It’s an honor to speak with you on behalf of District Attorney Devon Anderson and the other folks that are working tirelessly to combat human trafficking in the Houston area. WOLF: You’re here today and tomorrow to observe what goes on here in New York at some courts that are also working to address human trafficking. JOHNSON: Yes, we are very fortunate that our SAFE court team, which is a prostitution diversion court, our defense attorney, our probation officer, our judges and our research partner and myself have been able to come up and visit two of your companion courts to be able to work with our peers and exchange ideas and see about the innovations that are taking place here locally. WOLF: Well, as I said when I introduced you, you are the Section Chief for the Human Trafficking Division in your office. You do have a robust program going on there as well. I wanted to talk to you about that. In particular, I thought we could focus on what you guys are calling the SAFE court, which I understand stands for Survivors Acquiring Freedom and Empowerment court. I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about how that court got started and what its goals are. JOHNSON: The vision for this court actually started about four years ago when then District Attorney Mike Anderson hired me to come in as a human trafficking specialist. I had been with the DA’s Office. I had left for health reasons and I was actually doing juvenile defense work and began representing children who were charged with prostitution. Through the course of that time in private practice, not only did we challenge a case of an individual charged with prostitution of which the Texas Supreme Court ruled in the case of IN RE: B.W., that children are the victims of child prostitution not the offenders. Myself and District Attorney Devon Anderson were actually the two founding defense members of a court called GIRLS court, which is for Growing Independence and Restoring Lives, which assist children at risk of human trafficking, who are in our Juvenile Justice System between the ages of 10 and 17. With this background, I came back to the DA’s Office in February of 2013 and the commitment at that time was just recognizing that Houston was well known as a hub of human trafficking and District Attorney Anderson had this vision to see how we could best combat the issue and reenergize our focus within the DA’s Office. At the time, we began looking at cases of individuals charged with prostitution because we knew from the Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force report that the State Department was estimating that we identify about 0.04% of victims in existence. We knew that we had hundreds of people being charged with the offense of prostitution. The commitment was to start with the new vision from the legislature, which was that now in Texas, if you are a victim of human trafficking, it’s a defense to prosecution for prostitution. Our office has taken this commitment that that’s a defense that we value and want to assist the defense bar in identifying. We began this new procedure of reaching out to the defense bar, talking with individuals who were charged with prostitution and helping them identify and disclose a human trafficking defense. We’re very proud of those efforts, but what we saw is we began to see a population of young offenders who did not technically have that defense. Yet they got into the gang when they were 13 or 14. They don’t have high school diplomas. At this point, they’re of an age where they’re willing, but not reaching the level of force, threat, prod or coercion. We saw a very vulnerable population that legally we were able to prosecute, but inherently we wanted to do something more. District Attorney Devon Anderson sought the smart prosecution grant, with the vision of being, of us targeting this population between 17 and 25, charged with prostitution with the companion being that we would be evaluated by Sam Houston State University and have a research component to see if we could come up with a way to divert these folks out of the life. WOLF: Just to clarify, this smart prosecution grant comes through the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance. JOHNSON: Correct. We were one of the original recipients of that grant. We were very honored to be part of that initial “Smart Suite” prosecution and glad that we could create and comply with the Department of Justice in trying to combat the issue of the vulnerability of human trafficking for people that are caught in the Criminal Justice System. WOLF: Also, to clarify, you had said the statute had changed, so the other cohort of people you were talking about, if they do have a defense of human trafficking, their cases … What happens then? They are dismissed? JOHNSON: They are dismissed. The legislature in Texas and people always say, because the case of B.W. was a case of first impression and they say, “Really? All these reforms are coming out of Texas.” I say, “Absolutely.” These reforms have come from the Texas Supreme Court, the legislature has given us incredible tools and District Attorney Devon Anderson has been very committed to this process of leading this charge to not only identify victims, but to better prosecute pimps and exploiters, such as johns and the demand side. That’s what we’ve been doing in the office for the last almost four years to combat this issue of human trafficking. If they are technically a victim of human trafficking, we dismiss their case. They’re no longer in the Criminal Justice System and we are dependent on those private public partnerships that can provide services. Where they legally can be prosecuted, we are still offering them the diversion of working through the court process or working through a pre-trial diversion contract with our office, so that ultimately their case is being dismissed. WOLF: Is that what the SAFE court is? JOHNSON: That’s what SAFE court is and that’s what we do with other populations. Our District Attorney Devon Anderson has expanded these efforts beyond this age requirement of 17 to 25. She says in her leadership is that arrest as recovery, not as conviction. She has a vision to make sure that we are assisting this population that maybe charged as defendants, who have an underlying vulnerability, who need our help to get out of the game. That’s important because it not only helps the individual and stops that revolving door in criminal justice that is not only costly to the person, but it’s costly to the community. By doing this, we are not only helping people, but we are helping community safety in general. WOLF: How do you help them? What services are you offering them? JOHNSON: When those are in our system, are with our contract or in SAFE court, the assistance is provided for mental health services or drug treatment services. We work with the Harris County Probation Department. They work with our private partnerships, which we are very fortunate to have a number of key partners, such as the Houston Area Women’s Center and the Bridge and other organizations that many other communities might find already assisting domestic violence population. Basically where you see other service providers who are helping those who are vulnerable in the community, that’s a key partnership that your court can set up and establish with. WOLF: Do you mandate that participation? Is that how the court works? JOHNSON: Yes. By being in the court and I’ll tell you when we started a lot of people looked at us and said, “You guys are nuts. Why in the world would somebody sign up for a program where they’re going to have to do basically a year-long probation, when they could take time served and just take their conviction and go about thei...