Good treatment programs for prostitutes lack funding

BY STEVE BUTCHER

Frustration was palpable at a panel discussion on prostitution that took place at Minneapolis Third Precinct headquarters last Thursday. Organized by the federally-funded community group Central Weed and Seed, and by Ward 8 City Council Member Elizabeth Glidden, the discussion was billed as a “solution” to the constant struggle between neighbors and streetwalkers.

The city court system was criticized for its perceived inability or refusal to hold and punish prostitutes. Minneapolis police lieutenant Dan Roen and Central Neighborhood activist Jeff Smollar both noted that women often reappear on the streets within 24 hours of their arrest. Corcoran Caring Neighbors member Sarah Blanch circulated photos that showed a half dozen drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes who congregate regularly along the 3000 block of Longfellow Avenue. “More and more residents in the Corcoran neighborhood are afraid to leave their homes,” she said.

The mounting complaints prompted Minneapolis Community Court Judge Richard Hopper to stand and defend the system. He acknowledged the audience’s displeasure and then spent several minutes describing how some obstacles could not be overcome. “People are assuming that the judges are the problem, that we are just letting women go,” said Hopper. “We have a new jail, but it is too small for a city the size of Minneapolis. Even so, nonviolent offenders are always released before violent offenders. That is a fact of life. Prostitution is a nonviolent offence. The system is not set up to do things immediately. Due process is a constitutional mandate; there is a 36-hour window in which to file a formal complaint. The system has to work based upon priority. Pimping is a felony, but women need to testify, and a lot of them are too intimidated to do so. We see multiple problems with crack addiction, sex abuse, organic brain injuries. I can sentence a woman to the workhouse for a year, and when she gets out she is OK, but the minute she returns to Lake Street, she’s back in the life. We need the equivalent of a witness protection program—new life, new geographic location. It’s a long difficult road to get women out of prostitution.”

Judge Hopper favored treatment, but reminded the audience about state-imposed funding restrictions. “I am a big advocate of Volunteers of America” [a lauded treatment program], he said. “But there has to be funding. Chemically dependent women going to treatment have to be rule 25 [a state-funded assessment program, begun in 1986]. And we can’t impose a fine or treatment if the woman has no job and no way to pay for it.”

It is doubtful at this point whether the city can truly and creatively find a solution given its limited resources. A bigger jail would soon be filled, and many people agreed that prostitutes should not be incarcerated when there are other factors motivating their actions—drugs, rent, coercion, or mental illness, for example. The consensus at the meeting was for a solution that would get the women off the streets and out of the neighborhoods. But the city’s many abandoned buildings attract prostitution and drug use, and without adequate police patrols, without a redevelopment plan that includes low-income housing, and without a state-funded treatment program, the courts, the police and the prostitutes will remain locked in an impasse.