16 MOTHER JONES |^ SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019
OUTFRONTare squarely focused on rehabilitation. Social workers bring
cupcakes for girls’ birthdays.
Pratt often attends their high school graduations and gives
Walmart or grocery store gift cards to girls who are trying to
get back on their feet after having every aspect of their lives
controlled by a pimp. “What can we do for you?” is a common
question from Pratt. If girls fulfill the conditions Pratt sets—
going to school, getting a job, staying out of trouble—their
criminal records may be wiped clean.
Pratt created the court in 2012 based on the premise that
children who have been sold for sex aren’t like other juve-
nile defendants, and that the trauma of their experiences
should be taken into account when considering their cases.
A growing body of research supports this approach. Kids
are more likely to engage in high-risk behavior if they’ve ex-
perienced the types of trauma prevalent among victims of
sex trafficking. “Their decision-making is in survival mode,”
says Cathy Zimmerman, a professor at the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who studies
gender-based violence. “You do what you
have to to survive.”
Slowly, state legislators and advocates are
pushing legal reforms and diversionary pro-
grams that reflect the understanding that kids
shouldn’t face a lifetime of consequences
for decisions they made while their brains
were still developing. Overall, the number of
girls and boys in the juvenile justice system
is decreasing. But even though girls make
up less than a third of the nation’s roughly
800,000 juvenile arrests each year, they are
the fastest-growing share of these arrests.
Despite this evolving approach to juvenile
justice, children and teens who are trafficked
are often still treated as perpetrators, not vic-
tims. Twenty-seven states criminalize juveniles for prostitu-
tion, even though they cannot legally consent to sex. Some
young sex trafficking victims are locked up for years for other
crimes, including violence against their abusers. The best-
known example is Cyntoia Brown, who received a life sen-
tence for first-degree murder in 2006 after she killed the man
who had solicited her for sex when she was 16. In 2019, fol-
lowing a national campaign, she was granted clemency by
then–Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam. Judges need to stop “seeing
these kids as bad girls and understand that these are victims
of child sexual abuse,” says Yasmin Vafa, executive director of
Rights4Girls, a human rights organization focused on ending
gender-based violence. “We have a long way to go.”
An exception to this criminalizing impulse is the star
Court, where girls are diverted from traditional juvenile
courts to be sentenced or, if they’re already serving a sen-
tence, to access the counseling and other resources that
Judge Pratt’s court offers. The girls’ hearings, which happen
as frequently as every month, usually start with a casual,
off-the-record check-in with Pratt. Girls are accompanied
by a lawyer and often a host of social workers and repre-
sentatives from the support programs that work with thecourt. Pratt, who plays a hybrid role of judge, mentor, and
therapist, sees herself as one of the few people in the system
whom the girls can trust—“someone who’s honest, straight-
forward, consistent.”
It seems to be working: 555 children and teens have been
through star Court since its inception. Between 2014 and
2017, three-quarters of participants were not rearrested on
prostitution-related charges in Los Angeles County after
completing the program. In the past five years, about 70
percent of girls who went through the program graduated
from high school on time. Pratt has consulted on at least a
dozen programs like hers across the country, from Houston
to Philadelphia. “When the girls come to us, there’s been a
lot of instability in their lives,” says Judge Marian Gaston,
who has overseen a similar program in San Diego since 2018.
“Once you have that foundation of trust and respect and
genuine care, then you can do the real work.”
Not everyone holds these courts in high esteem. Crit-
ics argue that these diversionary programs
reach victimized girls too late and that
resources should focus on what pushes
girls into sexual exploitation in the first
place. Daniel Macallair, executive direc-
tor of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal
Justice, says the discretion that judges have
in special court programs, combined with
courts’ historical tendency to treat girls
more harshly than boys, could lead to unfair
results. “There’s a tendency to see girls as
needing more protection, so in the name of
helping them, we could end up subjecting
them to more restrictive treatment,” he says.
Judge Pratt is aware of this criticism.
“There is a faction out there who very
strongly believe that these kids are victims
and that there is never an appropriate time to have them at
juvenile hall, regardless of what else is going on with them,”
she says. “I don’t necessarily agree with that. I think they have
a good point, but there are a lot of factors.” While girls who
come before her are usually placed with a family member
or in a residential treatment facility, she won’t hesitate to
put a girl in juvenile hall if she thinks the girl needs a more
restrictive environment.
On the morning of Brittney’s hearing, I visit Pratt in her
office as she reviews her docket for the day. She expects to
see 10 young women, but girls often pop in unannounced
to check in or just say hello. One of the girls on the list
is Erin, a 16-year-old who was arrested for theft five times
before she came under Pratt’s supervision two years ago. In
the courtroom, Erin (a pseudonym) excitedly tells the judge
about her new job at Goodwill and her latest report card:
two As and two Bs. Pratt makes some small talk about thrift
store donations inspired by Tidying Up With Marie Kondo,
Netflix’s hit show about organizing, before announcing that
Erin’s record will be cleared. “I’m very, very proud of you.
Can I give you a hug?” Pratt asks. She steps down from the
bench, and they embrace. —Olivia ExstrumJudges need to
stop “seeing these
kids as bad girls
and understand
that these are
victims of child
sexual abuse.”