Exit Strategy, the Sex Industry Diversion Program: Caddo Parish District Attorney’s Office (Caddo Parish, Louisiana)

Exit Strategy is a pretrial diversion program for people victimized by human trafficking in the district attorney’s office in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. It aims to connect participants who have feel they have been victimized in the sex industry with a local community service provider that focuses on recovery from trauma, increasing life skills, and improving general wellness.

This case study, part of the Mapping Prosecutor-Led Diversion Project, focuses on the specific considerations Exit Strategy addresses while diverting this population, how the program has adapted to challenges, and takeaways for other prosecutors and stakeholders looking to launch similar programs. The information included is based on interviews with program leadership, staff, and partners. This case study is intended as an overview of this diversion strategy and is not an assessment or evaluation.

Exit Strategy

In 2016, program staff at the Hub Ministry, a nonprofit service provider in Caddo Parish, noticed a need to address human trafficking victimization in their community. Some locations in the parish were known by the community as commercial sex markets. In Louisiana, the criminal legal system criminalizes both those who pay for sex and those who engage in sex for sale. As a result, both willing and unwilling actors in the sex industry are subject to arrest for prostitution and other low-level offenses like panhandling. Program staff noted that people charged with these offenses could sit in jail for anywhere from 6 to 12 months because of overcrowding. Prosecutors and service providers alike felt that no positive benefit was emerging from using the criminal legal system to arrest and hold them. In fact, many of them were unwilling victims of human trafficking and continued to be trafficked despite their arrests. Furthermore, their prostitution arrests continued a cycle in which a person would get a criminal history that impacted their ability to find jobs and make a living wage.

To explore a solution, the Hub met with representatives from the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s Office and the parish’s court staff to propose a response that diverted people from the criminal legal system and set them up for future success. Their goal was to work with them to prevent further criminal legal system involvement.

Exit Strategy started as a result of those conversations. It is run by the district attorney’s office and the Hub provides services, including classes and counseling. On the district attorney’s side, there is one prosecutor in the office who manages the program called the human trafficking victim diversion coordinator (or the coordinator, for short). The program’s classes, counseling, and other programming are funded by the Hub’s local community partnerships. The district attorney’s office has also collected funds and other resources to donate, including clothing and toiletries.

There are two ways participants can engage in the program: residential or nonresidential placement. The residential placement lasts 12 months and the participants stay in the Hub-provided housing. The nonresidential placement lasts 12 weeks and allows participants to stay in their own housing.

The diversion program is postarrest and pretrial. It begins with the police arresting someone. If the person is charged with prostitution, they are automatically flagged for the prosecutor serving as the program’s coordinator. If they are charged with a different offense but the prosecutor receiving the case suspects the person is in the sex industry, the prosecutor may refer the case to the coordinator.

After this point, the coordinator screens the case for eligibility, which is decided on a case-by-case basis. To participate in the program, the person has to be assessed and identified as being a victim of sexual exploitation or human trafficking; the easiest cases to ascertain are those in which people consider themselves to have been victimized, but in other cases, ascertaining this can be difficult. The coordinator also screens the case for any charges that would exclude them from the program, including violent offenses, because they believe that people with such charges may put the other participants in the program at risk. Lastly, the coordinator assesses, using their discretion, whether the person is ready to do the program and would be successful in it.

If the person seems to be a good fit for the program, the coordinator will reach out to their attorney if they are represented by one; if they are not represented by one, the program will be mentioned to them directly at their first court appearance. If the person agrees to share their contact information, the Hub staff reaches out to them, conducts their own evaluation to confirm whether the person considers themselves to have been victimized by sexual exploitation (or otherwise seems to have been victimized), and explains the program and its requirements.

The person and coordinator then go to court, where a residential or nonresidential Exit Strategy placement is officially offered to them. The requirements for each type of placement are mentioned, including mandatory drug testing for both placements and securing one’s own transportation for the nonresidential placement. After all the requirements have been explained and the person has opted in to the type of engagement that is best for them, they report to the program. At this point, the activities depend on whether they are in residential or nonresidential placement.

If they are in nonresidential placement, they (and up to six other participants at a time) spend 12 weeks attending recovery classes, doing volunteer work, reporting to the Hub weekly, and reporting to a local employment agency for job-readiness training. They are also required to have a clean drug test for the 12 weeks, according to interviewees and program materials, and must have transportation to the required programming, since the Hub does not provide it for them.

For the residential placement, up to nine participants at a time spend 12 months doing a variety of programming in three stages. The first stage includes recovery classes and trauma-informed counseling. The second moves the participants into “self-sufficiency mode,” where they begin the Rise Up and Roast Initiative. This initiative brings the participants into the coffee industry and gives them barista and business-management training, business-skill coursework, and a salary. The final stage is when the participants accomplish any necessary goals, such as obtaining a driver’s license and vehicle, completing their GED, opening and managing a bank account, achieving gainful employment, and identifying a long-term place to live.

If a participant successfully completes the program, they will either have their case dismissed outright or will be able to plead to a charge without a jail term, depending on the seriousness of the original charge. For the coordinator and the Hub staff, success goes beyond participants completing the program; they view success as building relationships with the participants. This means they keep connected with them and remain a resource for them even after the program ends.

Difficulties Identifying the Target Population

One unique challenge for programs like Exit Strategy is the difficulty in assessing eligibility. People often do not view or label themselves as victims of sexual exploitation or human trafficking, but the program is designed for people who feel they have been victimized or trapped in the sex industry. Also, advocates believe there is a spectrum of sex industry work that ranges from coercion to willing participation, and there are some who land in a gray area, making the delineation messier. For this diversion program, interviewees said they make efforts to identify whether someone is a willing participant in the sex industry during the recruitment stage. Exit Strategy staff also explicitly said they do not want to put labels on the potential participants for them. People will choose to participate if they feel the program is a good fit for them, and they are not required to identify as human trafficking victims. The program is voluntary, but those who do not choose to participate may face additional jail time or future court proceedings.

Program staff determine a person’s eligibility by reviewing the case charge, the police report, and the person’s criminal history, as well as by having conversations with the person. The easiest markers for determining a person’s eligibility are a charge of prostitution and their telling the staff that they were forced into the act or sexually exploited. But these alone do not identify everyone who may have been victimized by the sex industry. Thus, the prosecutor’s side makes an effort to look beyond the charge for other indicators that someone may been victimized. Prosecutors will review the police report and a person’s criminal history, for example, for past prostitution charges or signs of exploitation.

Hub staff members also conduct an additional assessment. They know that people running shelters and other ministries and staff in those organizations have an understanding of who is suspected to be in the sex industry because of their knowledge of informal networks. Hub staff will also check social media accounts for signs of sexual exploitation. They can also identify common signs of sexual exploitation by asking potential participants to take a questionnaire, which asks about their living situations, family connections, and childhoods, among other things. For someone to start the program, either they must confirm they feel that they have been victimized by the sex industry, or the HUB and coordinator must agree that there appears to be evidence of sexual exploitation or human trafficking.

Adapting and Learning

Exit Strategy has gone through many changes since its start in 2016, and its story is one of learning what has worked best and adapting to challenges. In 2019, it faced staff transitions that opened an opportunity to revamp the program. A new coordinator was hired, as were some new Hub staff. They worked together to discuss what they believed worked well about the program and what could be changed.

One major change was how long the program took for both residential and nonresidential participants. Hub staff found the program was as effective when the engagement time was shorter. Participants were still able to participate in all of the same activities within a tighter time frame. Furthermore, the long time frame for the residential option became problematic for participation numbers. The turnaround for bed space, and thus open slots for participation, was slow because of long stays, and a backlog resulted. The coordinator and the Hub both agreed to shorten the program, from 18 months to 12 months for the residential engagement and from 16 weeks to 8 to 12 weeks for the nonresidential engagement.

In addition, when the program began, it was more common for police to make arrests for prostitution. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office has not arrested people on prostitution charges as frequently, so more up-front work by the district attorney’s office is necessary to identify potential participants. Prosecutors are now trained to look for signs of sex industry involvement in a combination of the person’s criminal history (to see whether there are prior prostitution or drug charges) and in the police report (to see whether there is a codefendant who was in possession of the person’s license or other identification).

The following lessons about developing a sex industry diversion program were informed by observations from Caddo Parish District Attorney’s Office leadership and staff and from their partners:

• Build trust between the district attorney’s office and your local service provider. One key to Exit Strategy’s success is the clear delineation of roles and the trust given to each actor to complete their role. In Caddo Parish, the district attorney’s office has more of an active role in identifying potential participants, while the Hub assists with an official assessment and the programming involved with Exit Strategy. The coordinator in the district attorney’s office completely trusts the Hub staff as experts in working with this vulnerable population to manage participants’ involvement in the program, and it’s led to an effective working collaboration.
• Commit to long-term relationships with this population. Working with people who feel they have been victimized by the sex industry requires a great deal of care. Interviewees shared that this population may not trust law enforcement and service providers and should be given agency that has normally been taken from them. Programs need to be helpful to offer them resources but allow them the independence to only use what they need.
• Use trauma-informed care. The Hub offers intensive trauma-informed counseling to repair the damages of exploitation. As one interviewee said, “Everybody has experienced trauma, but the women we serve have encountered it so much and for so long that if you don’t have a trauma-informed approach, you won’t be able to get to these women.”[1]
• Be willing to evolve. Exit Strategy has adapted to new challenges several times. As some shared in interviews, the program is benefiting from the staff’s constant learning and willingness to change practices. Understanding what works has been a process of elimination.

[1] The interviewee referred to Exit Strategy participants as women because the program has typically served people identifying as women. The program, however, is open to people of all genders.