Tuesday, April 5, 2005 | 11:07 a.m.
By the time Joy found out her teenage daughter had been picked up by police for soliciting prostitution, it was too late to pick her up and take her home from jail.
"They asked me how come I didn't show up in court, but they never notified me that she was incarcerated," said the Las Vegas woman, who asked that she be identified only by her middle name.
"I said, 'Can I get my daughter? Can I come and get her?' They said, 'No, it's usually better if we keep them locked up.' "
When the 17-year-old was booked into the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center around midnight March 22, her family was never called, Joy said, and so when the girl came before a magistrate the following morning, nobody was there to attest that she could be safely released to her family.
County lawyers who defend poor youths say it's a familiar story.
Teens arrested for prostitution, almost all of whom are girls, are not being treated as though they are innocent until proven guilty, public defenders for juveniles say. Instead, the teens are being jailed for weeks at a time as though they were violent thugs, the lawyers say.
The defenders' objection to the long-standing practice is leading to heated clashes with prosecutors, but little success in court.
"When girls are arrested for prostitution, booking has had an agreement with the vice cops to keep them detained, even if a parent comes," said Chief Deputy Public Defender Susan Roske, who heads the juvenile division. "Any other misdemeanant with family would be released."
In the case of Joy's daughter, documents show that the police had working phone numbers for family members at the time the girl was booked, but they were never called, said Ralph Baker, the deputy public defender on the case.
The girl's detention center paperwork appears to state that the vice officers who brought the girl in specifically requested that her family not be called. "Courtesy hold per vice. No contacts have been made per vice," the document states.
It took two more court dates before Joy was able to take her daughter home on March 29, a week after her arrest. The girl is now confined to her home as a condition of her release.
"If the police can put you in custody without any attorney or contacting anybody, that's a threat," Baker said. "They're intentionally violating people's rights. There's got to be a better way to deal with this."
Roske said the practice -- detaining teens accused of prostitution based on nothing more than a police officer's say-so -- came to light as the long-understaffed juvenile public defender's office has staffed up over the past year or so.
"Now that we are getting more public defenders, we are starting to be aware of this problem that we weren't aware of before," she said.
Prosecutors and police defend the practice as necessary both to protect the girls, who they say are victims, and to punish the real criminals, the pimps who keep them in virtual slavery.
"Our concern is, are they (juvenile offenders) a danger to themselves or a danger to the community?" said Chief Deputy District Attorney Teresa Lowry, who heads the juvenile prosecutors.
In the case of teen prostitutes, "they're clearly a danger to themselves," she said. "Physical assault, beatings, sexual abuse, venereal diseases, pregnancy, psychological damage -- the risks are tremendous."
Typically, youths picked up for misdemeanors aren't held, but the law allows them to be held for their own protection, Lowry said.
In addition, detaining the girls "allows the cops to come talk to them so we can pursue prosecution of the adult offender," she said.
That, public defenders charge, is the real purpose of the detentions, and commendable as it may be to prosecute pimps, it doesn't justify weeks in a cell for their victims.
"We see these vice officers victimizing these girls all over again just like the pimps," Roske said. "They sweet-talk them, they give them all this attention, and then they discard them afterward, just like the pimps."
The girls are being used for their potential testimony, not protected for their own safety, Roske said.
"If they're victims, why are they being locked up in custody in a cell with chains on?" she said. "That's not how you treat a victim."
Teen prostitution has been on the rise for years in the Las Vegas Valley, officials say. According to the juvenile detention center, 189 youths were brought in by vice officers from Jan. 1 to Nov. 9 of last year. Some were brought in more than once, for a total of 203 detentions.
The average length of a single stay for the youths was almost three weeks: 20.3 days, according to an analysis of the booking statistics.
The longest stay was 78 days, but that girl and another who was jailed for 75 days had been arrested while on probation, said Juvenile Probation Supervisor Charla Viera, who oversees booking at the detention center.
The 189 youths ranged in age from 13 to 17; six were 13 years old, 19 were 14, 35 were 15, 48 were 16 and 80 were 17.
Of the youths, 64 were local, while 125 were from outside the jurisdiction of Metro Police. According to police statistics, about half of all out-of-jurisdiction juveniles picked up by vice come from California.
Metro's vice officers say they struggle with the task of enforcing the law against prostitution in a way that is humane -- but effective -- for the minors involved.
"From my perspective, the best course of action is in the benefit of the child," said Sgt. Gil Shannon, who supervises the Stop Turning Out Child Prostitutes, or STOP, program.
The program consists of five detectives, who between them interview every single juvenile picked up for prostitution within a half-hour of the time the girls are booked into detention. The STOP detectives' mission is to help the girls get out of prostitution for good and build cases against their pimps. Police say the program is effective.
"Our success rate is very high with juveniles, and I stand behind doing what works," Shannon said.
Shannon said the program succeeds at ensuring that 80 percent to 90 percent of the girls are not picked up again as juveniles, although he said they are no longer tracked once they turn 18.
"We used to have a revolving door," he said. "That's what most jurisdictions have."
Part of the winning formula is long detentions, he said. "In my experience, when you release a child too soon or don't detain them at all, they go right back to a life of prostitution," Shannon said.
The vice officers have long had an agreement with the detention center to automatically detain juveniles arrested for prostitution-related offenses on a "vice hold."
Other juveniles brought in to booking must be shown to require detention based on a detailed assessment of the risks not detaining them might pose. Normally, to be detained, the youth must be accused of a violent felony or be considered a flight risk.
The juvenile justice department has for the past year been working to detain fewer youths accused of crimes, seeking alternatives such as home monitoring or treatment programs instead. The idea behind the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative is to prevent children from being traumatized unnecessarily and to use government resources efficiently.
But in the case of juveniles accused of prostitution-related offenses, long detentions are necessary, Shannon said.
The detentions "allow detectives to break the physical or psychological bond put on the child by the pimp," he said. The investigators bond with the girls, earning their trust over a period of time. Meanwhile, the length of the detention allows time for the case against the pimp to be investigated, he said.
Parents may not be notified right away, Shannon said, because often the parents' telephone numbers the girls give detectives are really those of the pimp or another of his girls. To avoid letting the victimizer know where the girl is, detectives won't call the numbers until they've been confirmed, he said.
The STOP detectives interview the girls without reading them their rights in order to glean information that can't be used against the girls, only their pimps. Police say there is a "Chinese wall" between the STOP investigators and other detectives who may pursue criminal charges against the girls.
But the defenders say information sometimes crosses the wall, betraying the girls' trust. The whole arrangement, the defenders say, is just an elaborate way of circumventing the girls' rights.
There are legal means in place for detaining witnesses who are reluctant to testify but have important information, Roske, the public defender, said. A judge can issue a material witness warrant based on prosecutors' presentation of evidence that it is necessary.
But according to booking statistics, only 18 of the detentions tracked last year were based on material witness orders. That means less than 10 percent of the girls were detained based on a judge's order.
Roske said the detentions, however well intentioned, must be done by legal means.
"We have girls who go to court and plead guilty, but they still detain them until they testify," she said. "To me that's coercive. Do they have a choice?"
Part of the problem, she said, is the gender bias of the juvenile system. "There's a paternalistic idea that we need to protect girls," she said. "We see girls put in corrective placement for lesser offenses than boys are.
"If a boy runs away from home, we don't say, oh my gosh, he might be in danger. We lock up boys because they're a danger to the community; we lock up girls because they're a danger to themselves."
To Joy, whose daughter was in detention and out of reach for a week, that doesn't seem fair.
"When my son got in trouble when he was 13, they called me right away," she said. "My daughter, just because she's picked up for prostitution she's got no rights?"
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