First Offender Probation: CCH policy staffers helped to draft the First Offender Probation law, working three years for its enactment in 2007. This law allows judges to order probation for someone charged for the first time with felony prostitution, a charge possible after just two misdemeanors. This law allows judges to offer two years probation, with rehab services, in lieu of incarceration. When probation is completed, the case is dismissed and no conviction is recorded.
Women survivors worked actively with PART to advocate for a probation option. PART now educates the community and court system about this law, encouraging implementation in Chicago and Cook County -- where 95% of felony prostitution charges are filed in Illinois. PART has tracked the disproportionate number of felony-level convictions of prostitutes compared to the customers and pimps whose money fuels the sex trade. Our research documented that in Cook County in 2005, 11 men were convicted of felony-charges compared to 381 women -- one man for every 35 women convicted. For more information, please see our fact sheet (PDF).
Predator Accountability Act: PART sucessfully advocated enactment of the Predator Accountability Act. CCH staff co-authored this 2006 state law, modeled after laws in Minnesota, Florida, and Hawaii. It allows people harmed or exploited in the sex trade to seek civil damages for the pain and suffering they endured. "Predators" include the pimps, individuals or organizations that trafficked people into prostitution through physical and emotional coercion, sexual abuse, manipulation and deception.
PART worked two years to get the law enacted. Staff and surviors testified before six Judiciary Committee hearings in the Illinois House and Senate, and arranged 15 in-district meetings with legislators. After it passed the Senate on a 45-9 vote in March 2006, it passed the House on a concurrence vote and was signed into law in July 2006.
Intersystem Assessment: PART initiatives seek to strengthen the community systems that affected survivors of the sex trade. As part of its research, PART organized the Intersystem Assessment of Prostitution in Chicago, a three-year study funded by the Chicago Foundation for Women. Partnering with the Mayor's Office of Domestic Violence (MODV), PART mobilized a study of 35 government and private agencies that interact with adults who prostitute in Cook County. It was overseen by a 29-member Steering Committee that included staff from these agencies. They helped PART and MODV research a 110-page report detailing how programs in Cook County could coordinate and be more effective.
Since then, the Cook Cunty Sherriff's office has hired two survivor advocates to run outreach to women arrested for prostitution. Directors of the sheriff's Department of Women's Justice Services has reported that the Intersystem Assessment "unequivocally" spurred the 2008 creation of this outreach program. Its work includes a "rapid response team" that reaches out, within hours of arrest, to women who show interest in leaving prostitution. Furthermore, PART's Intersystem Assessment study is referenced regularly by End Demand Illinois, an anti-trafficking campaign begun in 2009.
Turning A Corner: Working with Beyondmedia Education, women survivors active in PART produced a 1-hour documentary, Turning a Corner, about the diffuclt lives they led while in the sex trade in Chicago. To order a copy of this 2006 film, please print and mail this order form (PDF).
District 14 Pilot: After a 4-year effort, PART helped organize a model project that assists women who are leaving jail after repeated prostitution arrests in Chicago's Shakespeare (14th) Police District. This Northwest Side district was targeted because it made more prostitution arrests then any other Chicago district in 2002. Chicago's Low-Income Housing Trust Fund pledged $100,000 to fund scattered-site housing for 15 women in the first year (2007), and Heartland Alliance runs the program. The pilot offers rent-supported housing and services to women placed every six months.
Record-Sealing Act: In 2004, PART co-led a sucessful effort by the Developing Justice Coalition to enact the Prisoner Re-entry/Reducing Recidivism Act in Illinois. Survivors active in PART traveled to Springfield four times to advocate and speak for the measure. Signed into law in 2005, the law offers one-time sealing of public court records, after a 4-year wait, for those who served their time for prostitution charges and some felony drug possession cases.
Cook County Residential Treatment Center: PART advocated for the 2002 state law that allows Cook County to pilot a diversion program for mothers with children who are charged with non-violent offenses, including prostitution. Since then, PART and its allies have worked to secure funding for a residential treatment and transition center that would serve up to 48 women a year.
Foundation Support: Chicago Foundation for Women is a long-time and generous supporter of the groundbreaking work done by PART. In FY 2010, PART was honored to win new grant support from the Sisters of Charity, BVM. The Field Foundation of Illinois has also funded PART outreach and advocacy.
