The Pros and Cons of Prostitution Court

The city of Baltimore is the newest city to try a new way of reducing prostitution: a specialized prostitution court.  The idea behind the court is that women facing prostitution charges would, instead of going through the difficult and expensive process of a criminal trial, be diverted to a 90 day social services program.  The goal?  Help women in prostitution find other options, if they want them, and avoid tying up the courts with expensive trials for non-violent offenses.

Baltimore is certainly not the first city to develop such a specialized court.  Dallas began a diversion program last year which has helped women who wanted to leave prostitution but had no options get out.  And other cities around the country are starting to re-think the way their criminal justice systems handle prostitution cases.

But do specialized prostitution courts "work"? Many of these programs are only a couple years old, so few cities have hard statistics on whether or not such a court program has significantly reduced the amount of prostitution in the area.  A huge pro of having a specialized court system for women with prostitution charges is that it becomes much easier to train the people working in that court to identify children in prostitution and women in prostitution against their will.  It also gives women who perhaps entered prostitution willingly but have since wanted to choose something else a way out of the industry.

On the other hand, one con of this system is that some specialized courts and diversion programs may deny due process to the women arrested, forcing them into the treatment program instead of allowing them a full trial to deny the charges.  However, this problem seems possible to avoid if the diversion program/specialty court were optional as opposed to mandatory.  Another con is that depending on how such a court is handled, it could be used to further stigmatize women charged with prostitution.

As cities like Baltimore and Dallas begin to track the progress of their specialized courts, other cities will be able to use their data and experiences to improve their own court systems.  Hopefully, these specialized courts will help other criminal justice systems focus more on providing services to women in prostitution and identifying which women are trafficking victims.  Do you have a specialized prostitution court in your area?  Do you think it has worked?

Image from sharonherald.com