'Prostitute testifies she traded sex for protection from ex-Dallas cop'

The Dallas Morning News yesterday reported ("Prostitute testifies she traded sex for protection from ex-Dallas cop," Oct. 6) on an episode in which a police officer allegedly traded advice and protection for sexual favors. The article opened:

A prostitute testified Monday that she gave a former Dallas vice detective sexual favors in exchange for advice about how to avoid arrest and tips about his unit’s raids and investigations.

The woman, who asked that her identity not be revealed, testified on the opening day of the federal trial of Jose Luis Bedoy. He was arrested last year and charged with three counts of obstruction of an official proceeding and one count of obstruction of due administration of justice. He later resigned from the Dallas Police Department as a senior corporal.

Evidence that the U.S. attorney’s office is presenting during the trial also includes numerous text messages and recorded phone calls between Bedoy and the prostitute he allegedly had sex with in exchange for police protection.

The government’s case, however, may be hurt by disclosures last week that the FBI’s two key witnesses — including Monday’s witness — have continued to work as prostitutes while acting as FBI informants. Bedoy’s attorneys sought a delay in the trial to be able to research prosecutors’ “eleventh hour” revelations. But U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn denied the request.

Bedoy, 40, met the woman in early 2009 during a raid on an adult entertainment business, court records show. He helped her when she tried to recover property that was seized in the raid.

Bedoy later contacted her to say he would like to get a massage from her, federal authorities said. That gradually led to more regular contact between the two over several years in which Bedoy alerted her to police investigations and then sought “massages” from her in return, prosecutors said.

On Monday, the woman described the relationship. She said Bedoy once helped her identify a client as an undercover police officer. He also told her when his vice unit was on duty so she could work certain days and hours without risk of being arrested, she said.

Once Bedoy went to her apartment to tell her how to detect an undercover officer, she said.

“If he was an undercover, he wouldn’t let me touch his private parts,” she said.

It's hard to guesstimate how often such line-crossing occurs when it comes to policing the oldest profession. Long-time readers may recall a study out of Chicago finding that three percent of tricks turned by prostitutes without a pimp in their dataset were for police officers in exchange for protection. And we've seen allegations that the feds intervened to protect an informant running a prostitution ring in San Antonio.

Either way, that doesn't change the big picture Catch-22: Criminalization of prostitution makes offenders out of victims in ways that further the aims of sex traffickers, making women less likely to cooperate with police or prosecutors. It's one thing for the Lege to talk about diversion programs, another thing to fund them. Make the path out easier and perhaps more women will follow it.

In the meantime, requiring police to wear body cams would reduce the overall number of opportunities for such misdeeds. These are coercive methods exercised exclusively in the shadows; they're arguably best prevented by exposure to disinfecting sunlight, which is an added benefit of this case making it all the way to trial.

Lies and damn lies about sex trafficking data

Houston attorney Mark Bennett has an fine post up debunking a claim by the Dallas Morning News that, "In Hous­ton alone, about 300,000 sex traf­fick­ing cases are pros­e­cuted each year." The real number: Two, if you tally up state-level prosecutions; add in federal indictments and the number gets into the double digits. "So 300,000?," writes Bennett, "Utter and com­plete nonsense." Read the full post. MORE: The DMN has now updated its editorial to delete the false information; hope they also included a formal correction in the print version of the paper.

Prostitution/law enforcement follies

A couple of stories about law enforcement in Texas allegedly protecting prostitution lately caught Grits eye:

First, a major prostitution bust in San Antonio in 2007 "fizzled amid allegations from some who alleged the FBI interfered with the SAPD probe, and that [the main target Samuel] Flores was protected because he cooperated with the FBI on unrelated investigations," the SA Express-News' Guillermo Contreras reported last week. Mr. Flores "was nabbed [last] week in Austin on an indictment alleging he was dealing methamphetamine in San Antonio. He was denied bond during a hearing in Austin on Thursday, and ordered transferred to San Antonio for trial. "

Wrote Contreras, "The FBI and U.S. attorney's office denied the allegations, but nonetheless, the matter bruised feelings between the FBI and SAPD and resulted in an internal affairs investigation by the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility," the results of which were never released.

Meanwhile, in Dallas vice squad Detective Jose Luis Bedoy has been indicted on federal charges for tipping off a prostitute with whom he was engaged in intimate relations about upcoming Dallas PD stings, giving her tips on how to avoid arrest, Tanya Eiserer at the Dallas News reported. “Authorities allege that the relationship lasted for years and during the entire time Bedoy provided 'law enforcement-sensitive information to her about DPD Vice Unit prostitution raids and other enforcement actions.'”

Both stories hint at larger, big-picture issues. The latter reminds me of a study out of Chicago that found 3% of tricks by prostitutes operating without pimps were "freebies given to police" in exchange for protection. The former reminds us of the pitfalls of police reliance on criminals as confidential informants, who frequently go on to commit as many crimes as they help police solve, but under the de facto protection of law enforcement.

In an era when HBO has turned a legal Nevada brothel into a popular reality TV series, Grits has to wonder whether, when it comes to keeping the "oldest profession" illegal, the juice really is worth the squeeze. Many of the worst negative consequences - including human trafficking, exploitation by pimps, and law enforcement corruption - primarily result from delivering services through a black market.

State law encourages prostitution diversion programs, if grants are available

Good coverage from the CBS affiliate in Dallas of the new prostitution diversion initiatives mandated for larger Texas counties by the 83rd Lege - or at least it's mandated that they apply for a grant and mandatory that they implement the program if they get one. Here's a notable excerpt quoting a judge from Dallas Harris County, describing the model that the bill now aims to get other counties to emulate:

District Court Judge Maria T. Jackson has sentenced 20 women to the program, working closely with [nonprofit advocate Kathryn] Griffin to monitor their treatment.

“Society has not been addressing the problems of the prostitutes and the women who come in for possession of controlled substance and theft. They’ve been locking them up when they should be dealing with the other, the underlying issues, which are the majority of these girls come from abused homes,” Jackson said.

“They are the victims and they’ve been treated like criminals,” she added.

When they’re released, Griffin first takes the women shopping, “cause all they have is hooker clothes,” she said. Some go to drug rehab or a halfway house. Many require job training. And all must attend Griffin’s external workshop every Wednesday for at least 18 months.

Grits generally supports this project but dislikes this namby pamby non-funding mechanism. If it's worth mandating, ostensibly, it's worth budgeting for. Why leave it up to the Obama Administration or other grant makers whether to fund the Legislature's priorities?

Preview: Full slate of bills at first Senate Criminal Justice hearing next week

The Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee has finally posted the agenda for its first meeting of the 83rd Legislature. They're getting started late (because most of the committee members have been tied up with the budget) so it's quite a long agenda. Here are a few items that jumped out at me:

Innocence, prosecutor misconduct bills
A couple of good reform bills are on there: SB 344 allowing habeas writs based on false or discredited forensics, which was the subject of an excellent recent story by Maurice Chammah at the Texas Tribune, and SB 825 making grievances related to prosecutorial misconduct public records and extending the statute of limitations for State Bar sanctions when prosecutors hide exculpatory evidence. See the discussion in this Grits post.

Felony for use of unsecured wi-fi?
State Sen. Dan Patrick has a rather odd bill up, SB 249, that on its face appears to potentially criminalize getting onto someone else's unsecured wifi. Currently Section 33.02(b-1) of the Penal Code makes it a state jail felony Class B misdemeanor if, with intent to "defraud or harm another, or alter, damage, or delete property, the person knowingly accesses a computer, computer network, or computer system without the effective consent of the owner." (Ed. note: It's a state jail felony if you've been convicted twice before or the network belongs to the government.) To that list, Patrick's bill would also criminalize accessing a system to "obtain a benefit." Since accessing the internet for free is a benefit, and effective consent is defined in the penal code as "consent by a person legally authorized to act for the owner," on its face accessing someone's wi-fi without their express permission would be a crime. Personally, I consider leaving wi-fi unsecured simply common courtesy, though internet service providers would like to restrict it for their own commercial benefit. As far as I'm concerned, criminalizing a neighbor using my wi-fi is akin to criminalizing their reading by my porch light. People can always restrict access if it bothers them. I don't think Sen. Patrick has fully thought through the unintended consequences this legislation. (MORE: From the Dallas Observer's Unfair Park blog.)

Introducing prior bad acts in guilt phase of sex-offender trials
A bill by Sen. Joan Huffman which Grits criticized last session, this time styled SB 12, is back again for a repeat: The bill would upend rules 404 and 405 of the Texas Rules of Evidence in trials of alleged child molesters, allowing evidence of past crimes in lieu of provable facts in the current case. When it came up last session, state Sen. Robert Duncan, a Lubbock Republican, expressed concern that it would allow juries to consider "allegations that have not even been vetted by a grand jury." Sen. Royce West argued strongly on the Senate floor the bill would result in "more wrongful convictions." The philosophy behind this bill was articulated by the Vichy policeman in the movie Casa Blanca: "Round up the usual suspects!" If you were guilty before, obviously you must be guilty this time. The bill analysis says the legislation would "provide prosecutors with a much needed tool" to win cases, but a prosecutor's duty is to seek justice, not convictions. See excellent Houston Chronicle coverage of the version that passed the Senate but died in the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee in 2011.

Needless expansion of wiretap authority
Another bill by Huffman, SB 188, would expand the array of law enforcement entities authorized to perform wiretaps.This is a solution looking for a problem. Presently local agencies that want to perform wiretaps must have the Department of Public Safety do it, a system which has worked fine for many years. Indeed, local law enforcement agencies rarely use wiretaps, which are mostly performed at the federal level. In 2011, for example, there were just two wiretaps performed on behalf of local Texas agencies - both in Travis County. Given that incredibly low volume there's just no need to delegate additional authority to the locals.

Make counties report case disposition data
Sen. Huffman also has a good bill up, SB 262, which would codify successful incentives informally imposed by the Governor's office to make counties report case disposition data to the state. Lots of problems occur because arrests or indictments may be reported but dispositions, including acquittals, dismissals and reductions of charges frequently fall through the cracks. Under the bill, before counties could receive grant money from the Governor's Criminal Justice Division they'd have to certify with DPS that they'd reported 90% of case dispositions in the previous year. While arguably reporting rates should be even higher, 90% is a far cry from where many counties were at just a short time ago.

Prostitution prevention
Chairman Whitmire has another bill on the agenda, SB 484, which would create mandatory specialty courts related to prostitution prevention and diversion (see the bill text for more details) in counties with more than 200,000 people, but only if they are able to secure state or federal grant funding. They could also charge fees to defendants not to exceed $1,000, but many will be indigent and anyway that's likely not enough by itself to cover the costs. Dallas pioneered this model and by all accounts it has worked extraordinarily well. Counties that refuse to apply for grants for that purpose would lose all their state support for their local probation departments, which is a pretty darn strong incentive. One potential problem: Many of those federal grant funds may dry up if the sequester remains unresolved.

Regulating specialty courts, excluding violent felons
Sen Huffman has a bill, SB 462, which, according to the bill analysis, "consolidates Texas statutes by creating a new Subtitle K within the Government Code where all relevant specialty court provisions can be easily located; improves oversight of specialty court programs by requiring them to register with the criminal justice division of the Office of the Governor and follow programmatic best practices in order to be eligible to receive state and federal grant funds; and changes the composition of the Governor's Specialty Courts Advisory Council to nine members and requires the council to recommend programmatic best practices to the criminal justice division." It would also exclude defendants from participating in specialty courts if they'd been previously convicted of serious, violent (3g) offenses. The number of specialty courts in the state has ballooned but their day to day practices vary from judge to judge, so Grits understands the desire for greater uniformity and oversight. But excluding past 3g offenders may be a mistake. If the new offense was minor enough to otherwise qualify for participation in a specialty court, IMO strong probation closely supervised by a judge is more likely to rehabilitate than a relatively short prison stint.

Providing punishment for 17-year old capital defendants in legal limbo
Yet another bill by Huffman, SB 187, aims to fix the legal limbo that presently exists for 17-year old capital murder defendants, for whom the US Supreme Court has eliminated all legal punishments under Texas law. (See prior Grits coverage.) Seventeen year olds are adults under Texas law but juveniles according to the US Supreme Court, which has eliminated the death penalty and life without parole for juveniles. (States can still offer LWOP sentences, but it cannot be the only alternative.) Huffman's bill would create two sentencing options for 17-year olds, life and life without parole. IMO a regular "life" sentence would be perfectly acceptable for 17-year olds. Paying for a 17 year-old to stay in prison till they're 90, at $18,000+ per year, would cost more than $1.3 million in 2012 dollars. Allowing such youth to become eligible for parole after 30 or 40 years - and of course the parole board can always keep them in longer if their behavior in prison warrants it - makes a lot more sense to me. Another way to go, though with much more sweeping consequences, might be to simply change the state's definition  of a juvenile for criminal justice purposes to comport with interpretations by SCOTUS. Either way, the state has to do something on this issue. Right now there are no legal sentences for 17 year old capital defendants in Texas.

There is a lot more on the agenda so go here to see the full list of bills the Senate Criminal Justice Committee will hear on Tuesday.

Diversion programs treat prostitutes as victims

Corpus Christi is developing a new diversion program for alleged prostitutes based on a similar, successful initiative in Dallas, the Corpus Christi Caller Times reported ("Corpus Christi police mull program to treat suspected prostitutes instead of jail them," Dec. 17). The story opened:

Police officers and health care providers soon will give prostitutes an option to get off the streets and find help.

Instead of jail time, law enforcement plan to work with county health care officials and judges to provide social services and health screens for people accused of prostitution.

Police Chief Floyd Simpson said the idea is modeled after a program he saw while working in Dallas, where police and medical staff set up mobile clinics in areas with the most prolific prostitution rates.

Known prostitutes were screened for diseases and offered options to find a legitimate job, go back to school, or receive mental health care instead of jail time.

"We're trying a different approach rather than just arresting them again and again," he said.

The news was welcomed by the Caller Times editorial board, which concluded:

The shifting attitude of law enforcement is a welcome about-face from the hard line encouraged by a state law passed in 2001 allowing felony prison time for a third prostitution conviction. All that did was clog the system at a high cost. The Simpson/Dallas solution is compassionate but also pragmatic.

As Jason Boland says in his song about a stripper, "it's all about the money," and society saves a lot of it by not arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating. The American-Statesman's Mike Ward reported last summer that incarceration in a state prison for a year costs $18,538, or $15,500 in a lower-security state jail, but enrolling the prostitute in a community-based program for a year costs $4,300.

That's a simple equation that tough-on-crime sticklers should take into consideration: Treating prostitutes as criminals costs quadruple the price of helping them rejoin society.

There's something poetic in those mathematics, considering that society's treatment of them as throwaway people is what pushed most of them into their unfortunate circumstance in the first place.

This is a rare case where turning around one life makes the whole program worthwhile on at least three levels — heart, soul and pocketbook.

Such programs are a welcome change from the sorts of anti-prostitution stings we usually see, like the one recently reported by WOAI in San Antonio. That story quoted a business owner in the area where SAPD conducted labor-intensive undercover stings last month, and "while he is glad the activity has recently slowed down he said it won't last." “It's usually a temporary thing that it slows down for awhile when I guess the cops get tough on them and then it starts all over again,” he said, presciently.

It's been said a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result; to the extent that's the case, the traditional law enforcement approaches to prostitution are clearly insane. So it's great that Dallas has pioneered a service-based approach to prostitution diversion, and I'm glad to see other jurisdictions are considering following their lead.

At the Legislature, a quick check finds three bills filed so far related to prostitution: HB 32 by Menendez is an enhancement for pimps, as though passing harsher laws ever succeeded at eliminating the "oldest profession." And HB 90 by Senfronia Thompson would create broad civil liability for pimps, an approach which to me seems laughable given that most all of them would likely be judgment proof.

The only bill so far building on the Dallas diversion model is HB 91 by Rep. Thompson, which would create a "pre-adjudication diversion program" for juvenile prostitutes, mirroring the approach Dallas and Corpus Christi are pursuing. Grits sees no reason to limit such a approach to juveniles, but that bill would be a good start.

Criminal justice action on bill filing day at Texas Lege

Bill filing at the Texas Lege began yesterday for the 83rd session and the Texas Tribune listed these criminal-justice related bills filed on the first day:

• Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, and Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, filed three bills that would focus on helping victims of human trafficking.
• HB 21, by Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, would create a database of individuals with multiple family violence crimes.
• HB 23, by Martinez Fischer, would require sex offenders to list their offenses on social media sites.
• HB 104, by Rep. Larry Gonzales, would repeal the Driver Responsibility Act, which requires drivers to pay expensive annual surcharges for certain traffic violations. Failing to pay results in suspension of a driver's license.
• SB 88, by Ellis, would allow the governor to grant more than one 30-day reprieve for a death row inmate.
• SB 89, by Ellis, would create a commission to investigate and prevent wrongful convictions
• SB 91, also by Ellis, would require prosecutors and defense lawyers to share evidence in criminal cases

So in the House, we've got two of the more liberal members of the Legislature filing enhancement bills, and a conservative pushing to abolish the Driver Responsibility Act. Typical. Re: HB 23, if they're going to do that, I'd like an amendment to say legislators must attach a list of interested donors and how they'd benefit to bills they support. (In all seriousness, that's an ugly, slippery slope.) The family violence registry is as silly and unnecessary as an arson registry. Ellis' bills are repeats. SB 88 seeks to give Gov. Perry power he'd never use. SB 90 has been a major bone of contention  and in the past has earned support and opposition from factions of both prosecutors and the defense bar.

Ellis' innocence commission bill IMO is a bit of an anachronism and efforts in Texas to exonerate innocent folk from prison have arguably moved beyond it. Grits would rather see the state boost funding to innocence clinics at the state's largest law schools if it's going to invest in the task of investigating old innocence cases. (In the interest of full disclosure, my day job is with the Innocence Project of Texas, whose policy stance happily coincides with my own.) The innocence commission was a suggested tactic from the past, but where they were created they never did much and Texas has developed its own mechanisms - somewhat organically, though spurred and partially funded by the Legislature - for pursuing cold innocence cases through the law schools and a network of private attorneys. The investigation into old arson cases currently underway shows more promise as a model for how to vet old innocence claims than any "innocence commission" created anywhere in the country. At this historical juncture, the state should build on its own successes on this score rather than seek to copy what somebody else has done.

These weren't the only criminal justice related bills. On the House side (see all filed bills), Martinez-Fischer has a bill to create "an executive commissioner for the prevention of driving while intoxicated." His HB 27 would make cell phone use while driving illegal except for law enforcement and emergency vehicles. Allen Fletcher has an enhancement for leaving the scene of an auto accident that results in death. He also filed a bill exempting drivers' contact information on traffic tickets from the Public Information Act, a suggestion with all sorts of unintended consequences which IMO make it a very bad idea. (More later.) Rep. Menendez has a prostitution enhancement and another one for graffiti. And he's filed an interesting little bill requiring suspension of Medicaid eligibility for jail inmates bur also mandating their reinstatement upon release. (I'd need to know more about what problem this aims to solve to form an opinion.) Senfronia Thompson has a bill related to diversion programs for juveniles accused of prostitution. Lois Kolkhorst has a bill banning the use of RFID tags to track kids in school. David Simpson has refiled his bill to limit intrusive searches in airports. Richard Raymond filed a manslaughter enhancement for DWI, and a perhaps quixotic bill to abolish the Court of Criminal Appeals.

On the Senate side (see the full list of filed bills), I like state Sen. Dan Patrick's idea to eliminate straight ticket voting in judicial races. I'd personally like to make them entirely nonpartisan, like city council seats. And Sen. Ellis has a bill expanding access to probation for low-level drug offenders, including a court-fee based funding source for treatment programming. Though not exactly a criminal justice bill (the drug war prosecuted by other means), SB 11 would require welfare recipients to pass a drug test to receive support.

For betting purposes, Grits would put the over-under on new crimes and penalty enhancements the Lege will pass at 53. As an added prediction: Despite having just more than a third of House seats, most enhancements that pass will be filed by Democrats and most of them will originate in the House. I don't know why, but judging from years past that seems to be the trend.

Obviously, these are only filed bills listed above, and as my father likes to say, there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip. Likely there will be some 7,000 or so pieces of legislation filed before the session is through, with perhaps 1,000 of them in some way shape or form (often quite different from how they began) eventually becoming law. I've only provided cursory summaries here, so please check out the bills that particularly interest you and provide your own analyses in the comments.

Revolving door spurs officials to contemplate eliminating felony prostitution enhancement

"Few other states imprison prostitutes as does Texas, which has a long history of locking higher percentages of its lawbreakers in state prisons than all but a few other states," reported Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman last week. "The felony prostitution charge was enacted when the Legislature was still in the throes of its lock-em-up, three-strikes-and-you're-out fervor," he wrote, though Grits would argue that with dozens of new crimes created every legislative session, that fervor has not yet entirely abated. In any event, now legislators and even some prison officials are considering reversing the ill-conceived decision to make prostitution a felony after three misdemeanor convictions. Reported Ward ("Texas rethinks law making repeat prostitution a felony," Aug. 25):

Melissa Farley, a clinical psychologist and recognized national expert on prostitution who heads the San Francisco-based Prostitution Research and Education organization, said Texas is the only state she knows of that makes prostitution a felony. "Jail is simply not the place for these women ... who have other issues," she said. "People look at them as drug addicts who were forced into the sex trade."

Under the 2001 law, prostitutes and their customers can be sent to a state jail for up to two years on a fourth-degree felony — although no customers are currently doing time and probably have not, officials said.

Gradually, philosophies changed and people began questioning whether sending women away to a prison is the best solution. Even some prison officials privately concede the law became just another — more expensive — revolving door. Without specialized treatment, women could cycle through prison several times — much as they do in county jails without programs. ...

State leaders say the program illustrates why prostitutes should never have been sentenced to prison in the first place. It costs $18,538 to house a convict in state prison for a year and about $15,500 in a lower-security state jail, according to Legislative Budget Board calculations. By contrast, a community-based program costs about $4,300 a year.

About 350 women are serving time at TDCJ for prostitution and related charges, said the article. Grits certainly agrees that strong probation programs have a better chance than prison of turning these women's life around - the same is true for many repeat drug offenders in prison as well. But the key as always will be properly funding probation programming, and on that score Grits remains far from sanguine: In the last legislative session Texas reverted to its lock-em-up ways to keep understaffed prison units open at the expense of probation programming.

Still, this is the dynamic - reducing incarceration and shifting part of the savings to strengthen community supervision - which offers the best hope for avoiding a mid-nine figures boost in TDCJ's budget in 2013, so I'm glad to see legislators and prison officials thinking along these lines, even if the scope of this particular proposal remains relatively narrow.

MORE: From the Unfair Park blog. AND MORE: See a related editorial from the Austin Statesman.  

ALSO: A reader emailed to point out that among women's units at TDCJ, "Hilltop and Bridgeport ... both have maximum capacities of fewer than 350." Of those, the reader added, "Bridgeport is a 'pre-parole' facility, so shuttering it may not be feasible for other programmatic reasons, but Hilltop is just a regular prison," so conceivably eliminating the prostitution enhancement could allow the state to close an entire women's prison unit. Just sayin' ...

Save journalism, legalize prostitution

At the Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, editorial writer Tod Robberson takes a slap at the Dallas Observer for contracting with a national aggregator criticized for accepting ads from prostitutes and escort services, noting that "Washington State last week enacted a law that would expose companies like Backpage.com to criminal prosecution if such ads involve underage prostitutes." He continued:

Few of us here at The Dallas Morning News like to admit that, occasionally, we read the Dallas Observer. But we do. And lots of folks around here are trying to figure out how the Observer seems to do so well financially while we're in a constant state of struggle. I will speculate a little bit here. I suspect readers do not necessarily flock to the Observer for their quality journalism. And even if they do, that's not what is keeping the Observer in business. Heck, it's a free newspaper. What keeps the Observer in business is advertising, and that weekly tabloid is thick with it. Online, it's hard to visit their site without being overwhelmed by all the colorful, flashing ads.

Not just any ads. If you look at the numbers posted by the Observer, you'll find some telling statistics of what's bringing in the dough. Let's see, there are 26 ads for restaurants, two for fashion/accessories, one for home furnishings/home improvement. No, I don't think those are what's paying the bills. A bit farther down the page is a category called adult entertainment, which has 13,773 ads. Hmmm, there might be a clue there.

He then quotes some racy, suggestive captions, joking that he didn't click on them for fear of alerting Belo Corp. human resources staff, but concludes that:

The journalism world is misguided in pointing to the Village Voice and other publications of that ilk as models of success in a market desperately struggling to stay afloat. We are looking at all options (well, almost all options) to maintain a positive revenue stream and attract readers. No one knows what the formula for survival ultimately will be. But if it means stooping to the level of health & wellness ads, I would opt for closing our doors first. These days, it's getting harder and harder to define what journalism is. But I know what it isn't, and Backpage.com nails the "isn't" part on the head.

Grits responded thusly in the comments:

Really? You'd rather see daily journalism die than pay for it by selling advertising for services that a not-insignificant portion of your readership would patronize (or at least read voyeuristically, as they do your crime coverage)? No wonder conservatives think the MSM disdains the public: You do. I don't know if it's true, as was said on GCB, that Dallas is the world's strip club capital, but it's gotta be up there: This is your readership. Own it.

And btw, if you'll look around the newsroom at the Dallas News' depopulating ranks over the last few years, "quality journalism" isn't doing much to keep y'all in business, either. Should newspapers knowingly profit from exploitation of minors? No, and you certainly haven't demonstrated here - by a longshot - that the Dallas Observer has done so. But if y'all want to keep printing with ink on dead trees, perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to criticize a model that's clearly catering to a substantial, monied audience and employing quite a few excellent journalists at weeklies around the country.

Porn sells. Add a porn section behind the paywall and y'all could afford international bureaus and a small army of beat and investigative reporters that would rival the NYTimes and Washington Post. But no, you don't want to do that because you're too pure to give your audience what they want. IMO journalistic snootiness isn't just a political problem for conservatives, it's killing your business model.

I wrote that a bit as a provocation, though I do think the Morning News would make a lot more money - and make their photographer corps a lot happier - if they paid for daily journalism with a behind-the-paywall porn (or, if you like, "adult entertainment") section. The exchange with Robberson, though, got me thinking. I've often felt there's a strong argument that legalizing prostitution would do more to protect underage girls from exploitation - by regulating the workplace - than does an outright ban, which clearly has not stopped a thriving, underground trade. (When brothels on Hotel Street were tolerated in Honolulu before and during World War II, local government and later military commanders were able to closely regulate the industry for abuses; see a good account [pdf] from the Hawaiian Journal of History.) Might it also be the case that legalizing prostitution could save journalism with a lucrative new ad source on par with auto dealerships or real estate? Taking a long-term perspective, it's not the "oldest profession" for nothing.

When markets are large enough they trump laws. Whenever there is significant demand, supply will arise to fill it in a black market. A legal market, though, can be regulated. State lotteries and legalized lottos did more to wipe out numbers running by the mafia on the east coast than the FBI ever did, just as ending Prohibition effectively quashed violence related to alcohol production and distribution, and reduced deaths from bad product. We hear terrible stories in the media and certainly at the Legislature, which has passed potent sex trafficking enhancements, about coercive sex trafficking that's often compared to slavery. Would legalizing and regulating adult, consensual prostitution similarly drive out the criminal element the way a legal lottery defeated the mafia? Perhaps. If so, it would be a greater boon to exploited young girls than another criminal-penalty enhancement.

In any event, Grits would rather see newspapers make money from "adult entertainment" than treating news reporting as entertainment, which is another common route some outlets have taken to draw in more readership (though to its credit, mostly not the Morning News). I don't consider voyeurism about gory, personal crime details any more commendable than sexual voyeurism, but newspapers have profited from printing salacious crime details for years. To save the industry, newspaper editors need to get off their high horse, or else fall off, probably into the unemployment line, albeit with their self-righteousness and dignity intact.

Choosing gifts for the amnesiac, and other tall but true tales

A few Sunday morning odds and ends:

Debating the legality of D.I.V.E.R.T.
The 14th Court of Appeals said a Harris County judge was within his realm of discretion to refuse to use DA Pat Lykos' much-heralded D.I.V.E.R.T. program on DWI cases because it amounts to deferred adjudication, which is illegal for DWI under current Texas law. Does that mean the program itself will be overturned as illegal in and of itself on appeal? Not necessarily. Mark Bennett thinks Murray Newman overstates the legal import of the case and that David Jennings' take is too politicized, but between their various posts you can get a good sense of the issue. This is a strange one. As far as this non-lawyer can tell, D.I.V.E.R.T. may be technically illegal, but if the prosecutor offers it and it benefits the defendant, nobody is in a position to challenge its legality on appeal. Hundreds or even thousands of DWI defendants have been processed through the program. What happens to those contracts, wonders Bennett, if a DA is elected who thinks they were illegal? ¿Quien sabe?

Decked Out: Austin PD halls decked with expensive, distracting in-car computer system

When purchasing a new in-car video system, did City of Austin "officials fall for a system too expensive to buy and too impractical to use"? A former garage employee alleges in the Austin Chronicle that Austin PD essentially rigged a bid to favor a preferred vendor for expensive, in-car police equipment when a cheaper in-house solution was available. The purported whistleblower says APD created detailed specifications they knew only a single, preferred vendor could meet, but really they just needed extra battery power for vehicle video systems which could be done in-house, he says, on a much cheaper basis. Jordan Smith, as usual, provides an excellent, detailed account. Incidentally, having recently mentioned the issue of distracted driving at Austin PD as a large source of civil liability for the city, I was interested to see Jana Birchum's photo (at left) of the inside of an APD cruiser decked out with the new rig. Who wouldn't be distracted with all that gadgetry in their face? Moreover, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If cops get to do this, how can you then criminalize texting while driving? There's a friggin laptop pointing at the driver with a QWERTYUIOP keyboard, no less!

Pressing prostitute for patronage procures prosecution for San Antonio police
In San Antonio, "A police officer accused of accosting an 18-year-old woman for sex after she was targeted for a drug arrest four years ago pleaded no contest Wednesday to one count of official oppression and will lose his Texas peace officer's license." The sentence of one-year deferred adjudication probation, though, means the conviction may eventually be expunged from his record - a courtesy unlikely to be extended to the 18-year old he coerced for her various offenses. Reading the account from the SA Express-News, it sounds like the underlying facts amount to using a drug-warrant as a pretext and coercion tool to solicit the the services of a prostitute on behalf of a fellow officer, who fondled the woman but was then rebuffed when he could not pay. The two cops then stood lookout on behalf of a third, unidentified "friend" who paid for oral sex. Another former SA police officer - the one who would've liked a freebie but couldn't afford it - is awaiting charges related to the same incident. You can only lean on folks so hard, I suppose, even prostitutes with outstanding drug warrants. I've often wondered how common this is. The incident reminds Grits of a study out of Chicago, discussed here, which found that 3% of all tricks performed by sex-workers operating independently (without a pimp) were freebies given to police for protection. Via Injustice Everywhere.

Abuse alleged at South Texas detention center
Bob Libal at Texas Prison Bidness lets us know about a recent media report I hadn't seen:

Last month, PBS's Frontline aired a damning exposé of the immigration detention system that focused on MTC's Willacy County Processing Center.

The show, which you can watch online in its entirity, reported a pattern of sexual and physical abuse by guards at the MTC facility.  Frontline correspondent, Maria Hinojosa, highlights stories of terrifying and repetitive abuse and harassment of immigrant detainees at the facility.

See a transcript of the show. Relatedly, from Slate/Alternet: "How private prisons game the system."

Newspaper sides with Harris DA on crack-residue policy
The Houston Chronicle editorial board sides with District Attorney Pat Lykos in the debate with police unions and their proxies over prosecuting felonies based on residue-level drug amounts when officers arrest someone with a crack pipe. See Grits' earlier discussion.

Please keep pretending the naked emperor is clothed
Border Patrol officers are fired if they voice critical opinions about the drug war.

Holiday gifts for the amnesiac
If anybody out there is looking for Christmas gifts for Judge Ken Anderson or former Williamson County Sheriff's Sgt. Don Wood, after their amnesiac performances in recent depositions, I'd humbly suggest books on mnemonics. A mind, they say, is a terrible thing to waste. Please suggest other possible memory-related gifts or mnemonic tips for the Michael Morton prosecution team in the comments.

Juvenile justice roundup: School discipline and getting smart on crime

Wanted to share with y'all a few notable juvenile justice stories:

• First, a new specialty court in Houston will address the issue of child prostitution by treating juvenile prostitutes as victims instead of perpetrators, reports the Houston Chronicle. "'We already have funding for case managers, for staff to run the court and orchestrate all the services we will need,' said [state District Juvenile Judge Mike] Schneider. 'A big concern now is to find suitable housing.' To that end, they are working with the Arrow Project, an organization that provides foster care with clinical case management and in-home therapy to children who have been severely traumatized by abuse or neglect."

• From NPR, check out the story "Zero tolerance policies doing more harm than good." The segment includes a interview with Deborah Fowler from Texas Appleseed . See also Fowler's recent op ed in the Houston Chronicle titled "Time to repair broken system of student discipline," and Washington Post coverage of a recent study on Texas school discipline.

• Relatedly, the feds have launched a joint initiative between DOJ and the Department of Education to "promote evidence-based practices that reduce the likelihood that students disciplined at school will have subsequent contact with the juvenile justice system."

• Finally, a group of high profile juvenile justice experts has published a paper titled "Smart on Crime: Recommendations for the Administration and Congress."

Fish stories and dog tales: Police misconduct roundup

Here's a roundup of recent police accountability stories that were big enough to make it onto Grits' radar screen but haven't found their way into individual posts:

Firing too harsh for failure to report jail beating?
Three Cameron County jailers have been fired: One for beating an inmate and two for watching and failing to report. The two who covered up the incident  say firing them was too harsh. Let me know if you agree in the comments.

Sheriff convicted over fish story
Sheriff Weldon Tucker in Bandera County was convicted of a felony charge of abuse of official capacity after he was caught using the department's rescue boat to check his trot lines. The offense seems trivial except that he lied about it: "In 2009, Tucker publicly denied using the boat recreationally, or outside Bandera County. But a game warden had stopped him as he used it to retrieve trot lines at Choke Canyon after his personal boat broke down."

Dogs v. State
Under pending legislation, you could soon get life in prison if your dog attacks and kills someone under 18 or over 65, but if a cop comes on your property without a warrant and shoots your dog, they won't pay the vet bill because they're not liable for property damage. Go figure.

Not quite a 'mastermind'
Reports AP, "A former Dallas police officer convicted of aggravated robbery for masterminding a heist at a Sam's Club while working there off-duty as a security officer has been given probation." When you fail at robbing a place where you yourself are providing security, perhaps "mastermind" isn't the right word.

Shake down
Another cop, this time in Houston, arrested for allegedly shaking down drivers at traffic stops. Here's an interview with the fellow who reported the alleged extortion.

Prostitution stories
A former Houston police officer was sentenced to six years in prison for raping a prostitute, while a Harris County deputy constable was murdered after an argument over money with a pimp whose employee's services he'd just enjoyed.

Wrongful death suit over off-duty shooting
The family of a wrecking truck driver has filed a civil rights suit over his death at the hands of an off-duty Houston police officer, alleging that Officer Ryan Gardiner "shot and killed John T. Barnes under circumstances where no reasonable police officer would have done so."

Bystander shot after foot chase
A Bryan police officer chasing a man, apparently, because he ran, shot him several times at the denouement of a foot chase, also injuring a construction worker/bystander. "The shooting happened Friday morning as an officer was running after a suspicious person who may have been intoxicated, according to the Bryan Police Department." He and another officer are on administrative leave pending the investigation.

Second time's the charm
An arbitrator upheld the second firing of Austin police officer Leonardo Quintana over a domestic violence allegation after he'd been reinstated to the force after his earlier firing in the wake of shooting Nathaniel Sanders, which is the subject of an ongoing civil rights lawsuit by the family of the deceased.

Deputy allegedly picking colleauge's bones
From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "A former deputy recently fired by the Parker County Sheriff's Department surrendered to authorities Saturday after he was indicted in the theft of thousands of dollars from a memorial fund set up to benefit the widow and son of a fellow deputy." Yikes!

Might budget crisis prompt rethinking of prostitution punishments?

Texas Watchdog says Texas could save $8 million per year by incarcerating fewer prostitutes, joining the overwhelming majority of other states that don't treat the offense as a felony, even after multiple offenses. Their post reacted to an excellent KHOU piece on using strong probation through a specialty court to divert repeat prostitutes from prison, and more generally, the life.

Some jurisdictions - in the Lone Star State, notably Dallas, which created its own specialized prostitution court - are have begun to pioneer new approaches to this problem that treat prostitutes, particularly juveniles, more as human trafficking victims than criminals, providing evidence-based supervision, services and assistance changing their lifestyle instead of only punishment. It won't always work, but neither does the traditional "catch and release" approach. State Sen. John Whitmire recently mentioned that about 300 women were locked up in TDCJ for prostitution, citing them among potential candidates for reducing inmate numbers. If the Legislature reduced felony penalties for prostitution and used some of the savings to fund specialty courts and/or dockets along the models in Dallas and now Houston, it'd be both cheaper and a lot better public policy.

See related Grits posts:

• Casey: Prostitution charges against 13-year old criminalized victimhood
• Should prostitutes be protected or prosecuted?
• Dallas to create specialized prostitution court
• What if they held a prostitution sting and nobody in the media reported it?
• Study: 3% of tricks by sex workers without pimps are 'freebies' given to police
• Cop: Snitches keep escort services in business
• Dallas' Letot Center combats prostitution among runaway girls

Casey: Prostitution charges against 13-year old criminalized victimhood

Rick Casey at the Houston Chronicle describes a fascinating appellate case ("When the victim is the 'criminal,'" June 23):

In a decision fought by the Harris County District Attorney's Office, the Texas Supreme Court ruled last week that a 13-year-old girl who had made an offer to an undercover vice cop could not be charged with prostitution.

Why? Because, the high court ruled, a 13-year-old cannot legally consent to sex. And if you can't consent to having sex, you can't consent to selling it.

Makes sense to me. See the rest of Casey's story for the sad details of the case. Bottom line: Should criminal law treat a 13-year old prostitute as a criminal or a victim? The Texas Supreme Court said she's a victim. But how about a 14 or 15 year old prostitute? The high court's logic would allow them to be prosecuted, but what are the costs of ignoring her victim status to focus on criminal prosecution? Indeed, the courts are not alone in rethinking the status of prostitutes. One of the lessons from the Prostitution Diversion Initiative out of Dallas is that even adults in the business often may be categorized as victims as readily as offenders.

The opinion's logic almost bears resemblance to writings over the years from the Law & Economics movement, burnishing the consensual nature of economic exchange to undermine the precepts of criminal law. Because they usually handle civil cases, justices on the Supreme Court of Texas perhaps are more versed in and amenable to Richard Posner-style "Law and Economics" logic, which I've always suspected could unleash a great deal of mischief along these lines if ever applied wholesale toward criminal law and particularly vice crimes.

Interestingly, this case was decided by the SCOT because crimes by juveniles are handled in family court. That takes them out of the jurisdiction of Texas' Court of Criminal Appeals, where it's hard to imagine a majority of judges denuding prosecutorial power so overtly.

See more discussion from the Supreme Court of Texas Blog.

Should prostitutes be protected or prosecuted?

Are prostitutes criminals or victims? Or might the correct answer be "both"? And if it's "both," what should be the relationship of law enforcement to workers in the sex trade - should they seek to prosecute or protect them? Those questions are raised by an interesting program established by the Dallas Police Department known as the Prostitution Diversion Initiative (PDI). According to the Dallas News ("Dallas police to collect DNA from prostitutes," Nov. 3):

The Dallas Police Department plans to start collecting DNA samples from truck-stop prostitutes on a voluntary basis to help identify the women if they are later reported missing, comatose or murdered.

The unprecedented endeavor is scheduled to begin early next year as a new phase of the department's 2-year-old Prostitution Diversion Initiative, which offers prostitutes a chance at rehabilitation, often as part of a criminal sentence.

It comes as authorities nationwide are increasingly working together and with the FBI to solve hundreds of murders along major highways that are thought to be committed by serial killers working as truckers.

Dubbed the High Risk Potential Victims' DNA Database, it will be funded and maintained by the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification in Fort Worth.

"These women who are essentially working a lot of these truck stops, they are ... high risk to be killed, to disappear," said Arthur J. Eisenberg, co-director of the UNT center.

He hopes the database eventually will be nationwide.

For Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle, the DNA plan is a logical extension of the philosophy of the DPD prostitute diversion program, which is that prostitutes ought to be treated as victims.

Dallas is taking a novel approach to prostitution, as evidenced by this description of the program:

The Prostitute Diversion Initiative (PDI) was developed by the Dallas Police Department (DPD) in collaboration with multiple organizations to address this increasing problem of street prostitution. Instead of treating prostitutes as criminals, the DPD would approach them as victims, offering an opportunity for prostitutes to gain access to a comprehensive and multi-step in-patient and out-patient treatment program as an alternative to further victimization and continued involvement in the criminal justice system. Recognizing that violence and substance abuse outcomes characteristic of this vulnerable subgroup are points of common interest for criminal justice systems, social services, and public health, the PDI capitalizes on the participation of a broad range of organizations with multi-disciplinary expertise and key resources to understand the causes of high risk behaviors and ultimately inform more effective ways to reduce associated crime. Included in this collaboration are the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office, Dallas County Health Department, Parkland Hospital, courts, and Homeward Bound which takes the lead for over 45 social service and faith-based organizations. The overall goal is to provide those individuals engaged in prostitution, should they choose, a complete exit strategy from the sex trade industry.

According to the PDI annual report (pdf), "More than 1,100 individuals, both men and women, have been identified by Dallas Police as engaging in prostitution at four major truck stops along the I-20 corridor." What's more, "Last year, 3,342 prostitution arrests were made in Dallas county alone," but those arrests didn't make a dent in the problem because they merely moved "the visible foot traffic from the streets into the big rigs. This unexpected result from conventional enforcement illustrates how prostitutes are able to quickly adapt to the environment and frustrate law enforcement." The county last year created a specialized prostitution court to handle these cases and administer the program.

At the end of the day, says Dallas PD, the strategy of arresting and jailing prostitutes hasn't reduced the problem. "Many, if not all, arrests resulted in only a temporary solution, due in part to the turnaround time of these types of offenses. Since prostitution is considered a minor offense, these offenders are one of the first to be released from overcrowded jails, essentially creating a revolving door to which prostitutes would return upon release to the only environment and option they believe they have for survival."

It's too early to judge whether this program works better than an enforcement-only approach, since "It is understood that the process for a successful exit from a life of prostitution is long term and could take years for each participant. There may also be those that will require them to be dependent on services for the rest of their life." Of course, those in jail are 100% dependent on government services.

The annual report also included results from a survey of 175 Dallas prostitutes. Here are some of the highlights.

Summary of Findings Demographics

• Current ages of participants ranged from 19-59 years old, with an average of 37 years.
• Sixty-seven percent of participants were African American
• Half completed at least a high school education or GED
• Nearly seventy percent were mothers

Physical Health Problems

• Over half of participants tested positive for a STD
• Five new HIV cases were identified
• Twenty-three percent of participants reported high blood pressure
• Approximately ten percent of participants reported asthma and seizures
• One participant was currently using a colostomy bag
• Four of the participants reported having cancer

Mental Health Disorders

• Sixty one percent of participants reported having a mental health condition
• Nearly twenty percent of participants reported having more than one mental health condition
• One third of participants reported major depression and bipolar disorder
• Twenty percent of participants have attempted suicide
• Thirteen percent of participants reported having schizophrenia
• Nearly three-quarters of participants were diagnosed on Axis I (DSM criteria)
• Over half of participants received diagnoses on multiple axes (DSM criteria)

City Courts

• Seventy-nine percent of participants had citations pending warrant status
• In total, there were 4,397 citations pending warrant status
• Outstanding warrant fines totaled $1,979,109
• Six year back log on citations being signed into warrants

Outcomes

• Fifty four percent of participants were eligible for immediate diversion to treatment services
• Over half of those participants eligible opted for treatment
• Of those participants entering into the program, nineteen percent completed the initial recovery phase
• Seventy-six percent of participants entering PDI outside the night of initiative completed the initial recovery phase
• Of those participants completing the initial recovery phase, 90% have not returned to the street
• Twenty one participants were repeaters to the PDI
• All of the repeaters to the PDI have relapsed
  

Human trafficking is fallout from failed immigration policies

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and State Senator Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio) held a press conference this week (see the video) to unveil a new AG office report on the subject of "human trafficking" (link here - pdf).

In Texas' context, human trafficking is mostly an unintended consequence of pointlessly restrictive immigration policies that forbid workers from entering the United States legally to work. When wannabe immigrants can't obtain official approval or else pay the ever increasing fees charged by coyotes (immigrant smugglers), not infrequently they'll agree to what's basically a form of indentured servitude or debt peonage to pay off the fee that, once they get to the United States, can morph into what the AG's report referred to as "modern day slavery." According to the report:

Texas is considered a major hub for human trafficking into the U.S. According to recent estimates, one out of every five U.S. trafficking victims travels through Texas along Interstate 10. Nearly 20 percent of human trafficking victims found nationwide have been in Texas. The DOJ Report on Activities to Combat Human Trafficking, Fiscal Years 2001-2005 included El Paso and Houston in its list of “most intense trafficking jurisdictions in the country.”

Sen. Van de Putte said that international agencies now consider human trafficking the second largest global criminal enterprise behind drug smuggling, tied with illegal arms smuggling. Moreover, she said, of the three it's the fastest growing.

Most of the recommendations in the report involve more training for police and others in the justice system and more data gathering and analysis, but they also suggested a couple of expansions of new criminal statutes passed last session, in particular making "commercial sexual exploitation of a person less than 18 years of age as a per se violation of the human trafficking statute," and also to "Define and criminalize child sex tourism.'” (That last one's a headscratcher ... was anybody out there claiming "child sex tourism" is legal?)

In addition to the AG's report, the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee had an interim charge on human trafficking, but they held that hearing outside of Austin and no video or audio was ever made available online. We'll get a sense of their analysis, and whether it differs from General Abbott, when they release their interim report sometime before the legislative session begins.

See MSM coverage here, here, here, and here, and a related blog post from the national ACLU. Sen. Van de Putte's bill on the subject is SB 89, for those interested the details of her proposals.

Dallas to create specialized prostitution court

It may be the oldest profession, but not many young girls will tell you they want to be prostitutes when they grow up.

Instead, the path that leads them to that point frequently involves poverty, abuse, addiction, or some combination of the three. Often women committing these crimes - particularly on the low end of the economic scale - arguably are the primary victims in the situation in addition to being criminal offenders.

Building on the model established by drug courts, Dallas County will create a new specialty court aimed at prostitution using stronger probation and more aggressive judicial oversight, particularly for chronic offenders. Reports the Dallas Observer ("Courting Hookers," July 10):

Criminal District Judge Lana Myers will preside over the STAR (Strengthening, Transition and Recovery) Court, which will become one of the county's 11 "specialty courts"—those dedicated to handling specific criminal behaviors—and one of the first specialty courts for prostitutes in the country. The court, which opens on July 21, is the brain child of Criminal District Judge John Creuzot, the father of the diversion programs operating in Dallas County, which offer offenders an alternative to incarceration through intense supervision and treatment.

"There are a lot of women who want to come into the normal world and don't want to be prostitutes, but every time they come to the courthouse, it's the same response," Creuzot says. "So what we're trying to do is be more proactive in what it is we're doing to address the underlying issues."

In early 2007, Creuzot approached Myers with his plans for a prostitution court. Although its parameters are still a work in progress, a candidate for STAR Court must having a pending charge for felony prostitution, which means she has already received two prior misdemeanor prostitution convictions. Like two of the county's drug diversion courts—DIVERT Court for first-time drug offenders and Re-entry Court for ex-convict drug offenders—the court will be designed to reduce recidivism and thereby ensure public safety through extensive judicial oversight. Defendants will be subject to intense supervision, both by a probation officer and Myers, who will hold STAR Court every Monday at 3 p.m. The court will use a state grant to pay for the probation officer and a licensed counselor, and it allows for a maximum of 50 cases. Myers says these cases will come from her court and possibly two other criminal district courts.

Myers feels she isn't naïve enough to believe that she's going to get every woman to change. "All I can do is give them the tools that they need and try to closely monitor them on probation so I know what's going on with them," she says. "And before they commit another offense, I'm trying to do everything I can to keep them from taking drugs, keep them off the street and find them housing."

If Myers needs any assistance, she might think about turning to Judge Kevin Sasinoski of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, who, since 2001, has been in charge of a similar court called PRIDE (Program for Reintegration and Development and Empowerment of Exploited Individuals). He sees violators—many with 10 to 15 prostitution offenses—on a monthly basis.

Much like the STAR Court will do, PRIDE works to give prostitutes counseling and drug treatment, along with helping them get jobs and re-establish family relationships. Sasinoski says five women graduated from the year-long program in May, and 11 are scheduled to complete the program in July.

"If we have five women that have gone through the process, turned their lives around with regard to drugs, got some self-esteem back and realize that they matter, then that's a success story," he says. "That's five that might not end up on a street corner."

Not every local official fully embraces the concept of a specialty prostitution court. "I suppose it's the chic thing to do, but every time I look up there is another specialty court," says Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. "That's all well and good as long as it gives benefits and gets results."

If what Price means by "results" is to minimize cost per case, he may be disappointed. Lately that seems to be his primary concern. But if by "benefits" he'd include the notion that stronger probation may give more young women a chance to turn their lives around, these types of focused specialty courts pretty much represent the cutting edge, evidence-based approach most likely to reduce recidivism among chronic offenders.

Some will fail, no doubt, but the failure rate of the current system is unacceptably high. The idea's certainly worth trying. Its success may depend on whether there's enough money for support services and to implement progressive sanctions for probation violators. I'm sure there's both crossover with what's involved in a drug court, and also specialized nuances to managing the group, some of which won't come out until the program is well underway.

Kudos to Dallas Judges Lana Meyers and John Creuzot for spearheading the project.

Dallas officers fired for ticket scandal believed end justified the means

The firing of two Dallas police officers and the suspension of a third highlight abusive ticket writing practices that apparently have gone on at the agency for years. Reported Tanya Eiserer in the Dallas News ("2 Dallas police officers fired, 1 suspeded, after investigation of tickets," March 28):

Senior Cpl. Jeffrey Nelson and Senior Cpl. Al Schoelen entered "inaccurate, false or improper information on citations" and engaged in an unacceptable "pattern of enforcement activity," according to police. Cpl. Nelson also used "inappropriate force" on a handcuffed woman and had people sign blank citations.

Chief Kunkle said the officers weren't fired for specific incidents, but for a pattern of "activity that we as a department think is inappropriate." He declined to comment further.

A third patrol officer, Senior Cpl. Timothy Stecker, was suspended for 10 days after investigators concluded that he had also had people sign blank citations. A supervisor was suspended for five days.

In general, there are two types of police corruption, both of which undermine police ethics and the rule of law and cannot be tolerated in a free society. Some corruption cases involve straight up bribe taking or officers making personal profit collaborating with crooks. But the more common brand of police corruption involves officers, like these three, who come to believe that the "end justifies the means." To me, that's almost a more dangerous brand of misconduct because it's more frequently tolerated or even encouraged. Eiserer quoted me in her story on this topic, declaring:

"That's just megalomaniacal," Mr. Henson said of having someone sign blank citations. "That's police officers who think they're just in charge of these people's lives and can decide at their leisure down the line what they will accuse them of."

Mr. Henson, who now writes Grits for Breakfast, a blog that focuses on Texas criminal issues, said the chief's decision to discipline the officers was a "good start because it lets officers know that the chief takes" that type of conduct seriously.

I also added, though the comments didn't make it into the story, that Kunkle's actions won't be enough on their own to stop this behavior. Such activities are tolerated because of a departmental culture that develops over many years. Chief Kunkle can only do so much. We mustn't forget that the commanders, captains, and field supervisors under him have been operating for a long time in an arena where this kind of policing was not just tolerated but rewarded.

Robert Guest rightly asks why no criminal charges are being pursued.

The victims of these officers' unlawful ticketing are among the most disadvantaged and defenseless folks in society - mostly homeless people and street prostitutes. That makes sense; I imagine they wouldn't get away with treating middle class folks that way for five minutes, though aimed at street people this apparently has gone on for years. Since Dallas PD policy won't allow the department to take action based on anonymous complaints (in this case other officers came forward after anonymous complainants were ignored), people like that who are vulnerable to retaliation by police are highly unlikely to come forward.

This case reinforces to me why the "Rate My Cop" website is such a good idea, and really should be a government operated function, with many different avenues (not just the web) available for complainants. The ability to receive anonymous tips about police misconduct might have clued in these officers' supervisors years ago, and prevented a lot of abusive behavior committed in the department's name. When I'd earlier discussed the Rate My Cop site, a police supervisor added this positive response in the comments.

As a police supervisor, I agree. The cities should have a place (easy to find) on their PD's website where citizens can file anonymous tips and complaints. In my experience, people are reluctant to come face to face or even call on the phone even for the most minor perceived officer misconduct. And yes, I know why. But anyway, what I like is that it would give me the heads up on officer behavior that will not be seen with his sergeant standing there. I can follow up on the anon tip and see where it goes. If it's unfounded, no harm no foul, but if not...

Watch the giant turd the police unions will have over that one!

This supervisor is absolutely right about police unions fighting the idea. Hell, they're bitterly opposing the firing of these cops, though IMO they shouldn't just be fired but also prosecuted.

However, in an era where technology and changing attitudes have made customer feedback easier than ever and more commonly integrated into all types of management systems, union opposition is no reason to avoid creating easier and more accessible means for the public to provide feedback - positive and negative - about the officers with whom they interact.

What if they held a prostitution sting and nobody in the media reported it?

In the process of tracking Travis County's new immigration detainer policy, Jamie Spencer happened to notice at the Travis County jail the results from a recent Austin prostitution sting that received no local publicity. He makes a good point and asks a legitimate question:

It used to be that I’d see these things publicized in the local paper – not the names of the arrestees, but the fact that the police department had run a sting, and how proud they were that they had arrested so many people, etc. But I’ve searched Google News and the Austin American Statesman, and I can’t find a press release or anything.

Hey, if you guys aren’t going to brag about this, is that some sort of indication that you think public support for these stings is waning? And if so, any chance you could use our money on something more useful?

Doc Berman is a fan of "shaming" penalties (to some extent), though he's also recognized in the past that prostitutes may also be "victims" as well as offenders. I'm curious whether he or others think that prosecution of men for soliciting prostitutes is a less effective tactic when it's not publicized?

See also from ACDL:

• Are Prostitution Stings Entrapment?
• Definition of Prostitution

And from Grits:

• Study: 3% of tricks by sex workers without pimps are 'freebies' given to police
• Cop: Snitches keep escort services in business
• Dallas' Letot Center combats prostitution among runaway girls

Study: 3% of tricks by sex workers without pimps are 'freebies given to police'

The national hoo-ha over New York Governor Elliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal has inevitably generated renewed debate in the blogosphere regarding the oldest profession. Doc Berman points to an academic paper studying prostitution in Chicago (pdf) that found:

There is a surprisingly high prevalence of police officers demanding sex from prostitutes in return for avoiding arrest. For prostitutes who do not work with pimps (and thus are working the streets), roughly three percent of all their tricks are freebies given to police.

That statistic reminds me of a post about snitching on Grits in 2005, where an officer accused of having sex with prostitutes who were his confidential informants said that relationships as police snitches "are what keep escort services in business."

The study Berman referenced also estimates arrest and imprisonment rates for prostitution in Chicago:

We estimate that prostitutes are officially arrested only once per 450 tricks, with johns arrested even less frequently. Punishment conditional on arrest is limited — roughly 1 in 10 prostitute arrests leads to a prison sentence, with a mean sentence length of 1.2 years among that group.

So for a pros with no pimp, if it's true that 3% of tricks are with police in exchange for avoiding arrest, then for every 450 tricks, a prostitute will be arrested once and have sex with an officer 14 times! For every prison term given to a Chicago prostitute, following these estimates, a prostitute would have had sex with police officers 135 times! It would be difficult given that personal background, while sitting out your 1.2 years in prison, not to view the criminal justice system as indulging in blatant, enormous hypocrisy.

In practice, prostitution is "regulated" in Chicago but extralegally and informally. The "tax" paid is not money to the government but sex to beat cops in exchange for not enforcing the law - essentially it sounds like a protection racket perpetrated by law enforcers, if the study's figures are accurate.

Those are some eye popping estimates, though the research only examined Chicago. I wonder if similar ratios hold up in other jurisdictions?

In the same post, Doc Berman pointed to another batch of research on prostitution that listed a dozen things one must understand to think about prostitution. I found the list incomplete and ideologically skewed, and offered some satirical additions in the comments.

RELATED: From the Miami Herald, "Internet escort sites rarely policed." From AP, "Prostitution advances in a wired world." From Australia, "Brothel madam was police informant," Samar O'Shea at The Huffington Post asks "Is it time to legalize prostitution yet?" And giving the story an international flair, This is London informs us that the Duke of Westminster allegedly was client #6 among the ten clients discovered in the wiretap that nabbed Gov. Spitzer. CNN has an interview with the young lady in question.