The Informant

Ali Winston

A piece of proposed legislation at the California State Assembly’s Public Safety Committee today would expand the list of crimes that can be charged as “gang-related” in California. Currently, 33 offenses can result in extra punishments if they’re found to be gang-related, including homicide, arson, selling drugs, looting, car-jacking, carrying a concealed firearm, and fraud. The new bill, AB 918, would add pimping, pandering and human trafficking to the list. Enhancements can carry a broad array of possible penalties, up to ten additional years in prison for a gang-related violent felony.

San Diego Assemblyman Marty Block (D, Bonita), who authored the bill, reportedly said in a news conference last week that the bill is necessary because prostitution is increasingly the domain of street gangs. KPBS was at the event:

Gang members are recruiting teenage girls for prostitution in schools and “selling them over and over,” Block said. Where drugs can only be sold once, girls are a “renewable resource for gangs,” he said.

In San Diego County, according to Sheriff Bill Gore, a gang task force targeting prostitution has arrested 164 alleged pimps, 44 percent of whom were gang members, since 2007. Gore told KPBS that of the 372 female victims picked up in the crackdown, 30 percent were minors.

We’ve reported on the boom in the juvenile sex trafficking industry before, which is expected to surpass the market in illegal weapons in 2014 and has become the second largest money-maker for gangs in San Diego and Oakland, according to law enforcement in each city. In Oakland, according to a report in the Bay Citizen today, police strategy for reducing trafficking pretty much focuses on arresting johns:

[Sergeant Jim] Saleda said the strategy may have more lasting impact than operations that target pimps, who are hard to catch, and prostitutes, who often protect the pimps and return to the trade. The new municipal codes approved last month allow the city to pursue lower-level offenses such as solicitation that are often neglected by the district attorney’s office. In the process, they’re making money for the city (the municipal citations often come with fines).

So where do gang enhancements for those on the supply-side fit in to anti-trafficking efforts?

The use of gang enhancements is somewhat controversial in the state, mostly because of the discretion prosecutors have over whether or not to charge someone as a gang member. Defense attorneys often say prosecutors are too quick to use the gang label, which carries added supervision and added stigma. A piece in the Santa Cruz Sentinel from 2009 provides good analysis of the issues at stake in trials involving gang enhancements–which often hinge on police or witness accounts of a defendant’s clothing, tattoos, things they said, or events unrelated to the actual crime being charged, but that may prove gang involvement:

Public defender Tom Wallraff says even the allegation a defendant is a gang member can make their defense an uphill climb. ”It can be hard for jurors to keep an open mind and look at them with the presumption of innocence,” he said. “And it’s harder to defend a whole bunch of uncharged stuff.”

Tomas Alejo, a member of he Santa Cruz Alliance Against Gang Enhancements argued that the “‘majority of active gang members are adolescents,’” and that when “‘young people are incarcerated for a long time, it stops the maturation process. And prison is chaos, especially with gang enhancements; they are sent to a maximum security area.’”

San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, a supporter of AB 918, said in a press conference that the enhancements for prostitution-related crimes are not just about tougher punishment. The “gang” tag is a useful tool for tracking and monitoring those participating in this growing industry. According to KTLA, Dumanis said the proposed law “helps document. It lets us keep track of them, gives us better supervision and so that’s really the person we want to focus on is the one that’s really just cashing in on these poor young girls.”