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Nov 5, 2009 10:02 am US/Central
Local Program Helps Prostitutes Turn Lives Around
DALLAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
According to police, arresting prostitutes is like walking them through a revolving door. One night they are wearing handcuffs and the next night they are back out on the streets. "You already know about the jail overcrowding situation, so within 48 hours she's set free," said Sgt. Louis Felini with the Dallas Police Department. "Well, she returns back to the only environment she knows how to survive in."
But a two-year-old initiative first implemented in Dallas is drawing global attention. The program aims to get prostitutes off the streets and back into real life, and hundreds of folks came to town on Wednesday to see how the program works.
Sgt. Dana Reynolds and Sgt. Jim Elves are police officers from Ottawa, Canada. They are in Dallas along with 200 other officers from across North America for the first Prostitute Diversion Initiative Conference. There, the officers will learn how Dallas police and sheriff's deputies are fighting prostitution.
"What we've really garnered from this is how it involves so many different partners and agencies," said Elves. "And what we've been so impressed with is the way everyone works together."
The approach is to treat the working prostitutes like victims, not criminals. Once a month, police round up prostitutes working streets and truck stops. They bring them to a mobile command center typically set up in south Dallas.
"This is a place where women can come and find hope," said former prostitute Karen Green. She is one of the many women who have been helped by the Dallas program. "A lot of women, when they come off the streets, they're so entangled in what they were a part of, and they're so angry and so hurt."
At the command center, the prostitutes are tested for sexually transmitted diseases and fed before they appear before a judge who holds court, right then and there. The choice is simple: jail or an extended rehabilitation program.
Former prostitutes are on-hand to help troubled women make the right decision. Some of the former prostitutes, like Green, are even women who have been previously helped by this very program, now returning to help others. "It worked for me," said Green.
Some of the prostitutes opt for jail. However, those who enter the rehabilitation program are housed for 45 days in a recovery center. They go through drug rehab, and some even get their GEDs while receiving job counseling.
The success rate is far from 100 percent, but police officials said that the initiative has definitely slowed down the revolving door.
And as an added bonus, police said, officers are able to gather other information from these women to assist in solving other crimes like murder cases and drug trafficking cases.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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