16 day campaign 2003
The county’s reentry programs are very much works in progress, but they have begun to move from the drawing board to reality. In so doing, they provide hope to those in need, encouragement to nonprofits that have done this work for decades with little support or acknowledgment, and a model for other local governments that are likewise trying to smooth the path for former offenders’ safe and successful return to society.
The second is minors caught up in sex work. Girls and boys under 18 who sell themselves for sex have for too long been treated as criminals — arrested and punished the same as if they were adults — while those who traffic them too often escape justice altogether. Sheriff Jim McDonnell and the Board of Supervisors, led by Don Knabe, have embraced a movement that treats juveniles in the sex trade as trafficking victims rather than criminal prostitutes, while focusing enforcement efforts on those who profit from the heartless abuse of children.
On Tuesday, those two laudable county efforts came together. Unfortunately, they did so in a manner so ill-considered that it takes the county a lamentable step backward.
The Board of Supervisors unanimously banned anyone convicted of a human trafficking offense from ever getting a county job or contract.