By Linda A Smith Samantha Healy Vardaman Melissa A Snow

The National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: America’s Prostituted Children 55“Why should these little girls trust you? These girls have so little trust because nearly every adult intheir lives has been untrustworthy, and her pimp tells her that if she gets picked up by law enforcementthen she will go to jail. And that is often what happens. So, as far as this child sees it, the only adult whohas told her the truth is the pimp.” 150 — Linda Smith, Founder and President of Shared Hope InternationalJuvenile justice agencies reported a distressing effect of the Interstate Compact for Juveniles on there-offense rate. 151 In Las Vegas, 139 juveniles from other jurisdictions were arrested in Las Vegas andadjudicated through the juvenile prostitution court over 19 months in 2006 to 2007. Nine juveniles(6.5%) re-offended in Las Vegas. Three of those juveniles were placed at WestCare, a non-secure facilityin Las Vegas, when they re-offended. Six of the juveniles were returned to other jurisdictions and theysubsequently returned to Las Vegas to re-offend. Ten percent (nine) of local juveniles re-offended in LasVegas. Authorities in Las Vegas reported wishing they could detain the out-of-state offenders in Nevadarather than return them to their home states which often release the youth promptly to a family memberor non-secure facility from which many run away. One Dallas prosecutor explained that prostitutedyouth represent the highest recidivism rate of any population in juvenile detention, with many victimschronically returning to detention through “a revolving door.” 152A promising practice for identifying and appropriately placing victims of domestic minor sex traffickingwas found in Dallas, Texas. Though several victims of DMST have been taken to juvenile detention, theChild Exploitation/Human Trafficking/High Risk Victims Unit with the Dallas Police Department hasimplemented a coordinated effort with the Letot Center, a juvenile justice facility that is also licensed bythe state child protective services agency, to divert child sex trafficking victims at this facility. The resulthas been a majority of DMST victims being taken directly to Letot, bypassing juvenile detention. 153Nonetheless, this option still involves the juvenile justice system as the only secure facility to keepexploited youth from running away.Harsher SentencesJuveniles charged with prostitution are frequently given harsher sentences than minors arrested on othermisdemeanor charges. For example, in Las Vegas, the majority of juveniles arrested for prostitutionare kept in a detention center pre-adjudication, even though only 13% of these juveniles are repeatoffenders. 154 Additionally, 40% of the juvenile victims who were re-trafficked and arrested for prostitutiona second time in Clark County, Nevada, were sentenced to time in a secure juvenile detention facility. 155For all age groups, the dispositions and detention of domestic minor sex trafficking victims are out ofproportion to those of minors held on other misdemeanor charges. 156150Prostituted Children in the United States: Identifying and Responding to America’s Trafficked Youth, Seg. 4. Prod. Shared HopeInternational and Onanon Productions. DVD. Washington, D.C.: Shared Hope International, 2008.151Interstate Compact for Juveniles, as amended. http://www.csg.org/programs/ncic/ documents/InterstateCompactforJuveniles.pdf.Accessed on July 3, 2008.152Hay, Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Assessment Report — Dallas, Texas, pg. 112.153Id. at pg. 29.154Kennedy and Pucci, Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Assessment Report — Las Vegas, Nevada, pg. 27.155Id. at pg. 59.156Id. at pg. 79.