Current Initiatives

PART pursues initiatives that will enable more women to quit prostituting to survive. It advocates for laws that no longer favor the typically male customer and trafficker over the woman who is prostituted.

PART pursues programs that would divert women from jail and prison systems into rehabilitative programs that can restore their lives and keep families intact. It seeks to create programs that offer supportive housing while survivors’ lives are in transition, and laws that permit access to jobs as women turn their lives around. PART staff and leaders also work on efforts to educate the community at large about prostitution, including the cost – human and financial – of not providing restorative alternatives.

These initiatives are underway in 2011:

Midwest’s first felony prostitution court

Working with Chief Criminal Court Judge Paul Biebel, PART is the non-profit lead for the new Cook County felony prostitution court, a first for the Midwest. Opened in January 2011, the WINGS Court offers women rehab options instead of focusing on incarceration. PART staff and leaders worked with Judge Biebel since early 2009, helping form the court planning committee and involving service providers who would work with women assigned to the court. PART continues to work with court officials in evaluating and developing the WINGS Court.

Organizing prostitution survivors

PART works with women who recently left the sex trade. Most of the women who get involved are now in their 30s, 40s and 50s. They survived a sex trade that roped in many of them while still in their teens. With street prostitution still the focus of law enforcement efforts, more poor women of color are charged and imprisoned for prostitution. By the time these women are paroled to halfway houses, most have spent years mired in street-level prostitution – coping with homelessness, substance addictions, abused by pimps and customers. Most are mothers, though many have children now grown or no longer in their daily care.

Senior Community Organizer Drea Hall runs outreach at programs serving survivors and women ex-offenders, reaching more than 50 women a month. A leadership committee of 10 to 15 survivors meets at least quarterly to plan street outreach and other initiatives.

Assist End Demand Illinois

PART is a partner in End Demand Illinois, an anti-trafficking campaign directed by the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE). The campaign has enacted two significant pieces of legislation in its first two years, one affecting minors arrested for prostitution and the other allowing trafficking victims to clear their records. PART’s policy lead, Daria Mueller, is the Springfield-based leader advocating with legislators for these state laws. Senior Community Organizer Drea Hall assists the campaign through her shelter outreach and organizing of women survivors.

First Offender Probation

PART staff educates law enforcement agencies as well as survivors about this alternative sentencing option, available because of a 2007 law proposed and advocated by PART. It allows judges to order probation for adults who complete rehab after being charged the first time with felony prostitution. Authorities in Cook County file 95 percent of the felony prostitution charges in Illinois. This is a measure aimed at job access and recidivism. Enactment would help correct a sentencing disparity that results in disproportionate felony-level convictions of prostitutes over the customers or pimps whose money supports the offense. Prostitution survivors active in PART help distribute palm cards during street outreach held two to three times a year in Chicago.

Public awareness

PART will continue efforts to promote community understanding and public awareness of the resources available – and the resources still needed – to help survivors of prostitution. This includes panel discussions and screenings the 2006 documentary, Turning a Corner. Updated in fall 2008, the 56-minute film is a collaborative effort between PART, its survivor/leaders, and Beyondmedia Education of Chicago. In five years, PART has hosted more than 45 full screenings, reaching more than 2,200 people in Chicago, Evanston, Maywood, Springfield, and Washington D.C. A 13-minute version is also used for classroom trainings. The film was cited by Time Out Chicago magazine as one of the two best U.S. documentaries released in 2006.