California voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative November 6 to crack down on human trafficking and its related sexploitation of children and adults.

The state can start in the Los Angeles County foster care system, home to 59% of the 174 juveniles arrested on prostitution-related charges in 2010, according to county Probation Department statistics. County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who proposed forming a sex trafficking task force, said that “pimps are using child sex workers to recruit fellow foster care children at the DCFS Emergency Response Command Post and group homes across the county.” 

But the effort may be constrained by the very law passed to address it.

Proposition 35 might end up redirecting responsibility for teenage prostitution from the criminal justice system to the county’s foster care system, which is not equipped to deal with the challenge. County Department of Children’s Services Director Philip Browning told the Los Angeles Times that his agency is “really unprepared at this point” to handle the new workload.

Prop. 35 gets tough with pimps, procurers and other principals in the sex trade, but decriminalizes prostitution for minors. The unintended consequences of the unique law, which is being challenged in court on civil liberties grounds, have yet to be realized. 

At least one youth professional was skeptical of the claim that foster care children were more vulnerable than others to sex trafficking. Lois Lee, founder of Children of the Night, said her personal experience with kids who end up in her 24-bed L.A. shelter for child sex workers is that they are mostly in the guardianship of their parents, not the county. According to the organization’s 2011 annual report, 49 of 72 children in its care had parents for legal guardians.

Lee estimates there are 100,000 children nationally working as prostitutes.

The county task force to address the issue of sex trafficking of minors within the foster care system was approved Tuesday and will include the Probation Department, District Attorney’s Office, Sheriff’s Department, Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Association, Los Angeles Police Department and the Department of Mental Health.

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

Most L.A. County Youths Held for Prostitution Come from Foster Care (by Abby Sewell, Los Angeles Times)

2011 Annual Report (Children of the Night) (pdf)