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Just Exits: Achieving Justice: The Prosecutor’s Role

The criminal justice system can serve as both an on-ramp to and an off-ramp from sex trafficking and exploitation. As gatekeepers within the criminal justice system, prosecutors are uniquely positioned to identify sexually exploited women and girls, make fair charging decisions, facilitate criminal record relief, and link survivors with services and support. In these ways, prosecutors can clear the way to a different life path and achieve justice for survivors. 

The presenters bring their lived and professional experience to this presentation, which emphasizes prosecutors’ duties to achieve justice over convictions and to proactively remedy wrongful convictions. Presenters discuss strategies for engaging survivors, avoiding wrongful criminalization, and providing access to just criminal record relief.

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Just Exits: Assessing Culpability: Context Before Conviction

Human traffickers assert force, fraud, and coercion against victims in order to profit from commercial sex or forced labor or services. Offenders use a variety of tactics designed to ensure that victims will do what they are told without resistance, questioning, or disclosure to law enforcement. This physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual control too often allows traffickers to escape accountability.  This presentation is designed to improve responses to trafficking and exploitation while ensuring that victims are not inappropriately charged with crimes they are forced to commit.

 

Collaboration is key to any response to trafficking and exploitation, but imperative where the complexity of victim-offender dynamics is not easily understood or revealed.  This presentation provides law enforcement and prosecutors with strategies to uncover the reality of the victim’s involvement in the trafficking organization or within the exploitation dynamic. Presenters provide a framework for assessing the culpability of individuals who may initially be identified as both victims and defendants. They also provide suggestions to assist prosecutors in making ethical and appropriate immunity and charging decisions as well as designing appropriate dispositions.

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Just Exits: Being Trafficked: What You Need to Know About “the Life”

The criminal justice system can serve as both an on ramp to and an off ramp from sexual exploitation. To minimize on ramps and maximize off ramps, we must first understand the complex nature of sex trafficking and exploitation. Traffickers prey upon vulnerabilities that are often historic and systemic in nature.  They use a variety of tactics designed to ensure that victims will do what they are told without resistance, questioning, or disclosure to law enforcement. This physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual control over victims too often allows traffickers to escape accountability.  This presentation is designed to improve our understanding of what it is like to be sexually exploited and to illustrate how we can improve our response to victims, who often do not see the criminal justice system as a viable off ramp from “the Life”.

The presenters bring their lived and professional experience to this presentation, which will focus on factors that impact entry into “the Life”, the realities of sexual exploitation and trafficking, and the factors that impede or delay exits.  The presentation will provide criminal justice professionals with tools for identifying individuals vulnerable to exploitation, limiting on-ramps, and providing viable off-ramps to achieve justice for survivors.

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Opioids and Drug Delivery Resulting in Death

The opioid epidemic has devastated communities across the United States, resulting in hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the past two decades. In response, state and local prosecutors have taken a multifaceted approach to the crisis: diverting defendants with substance abuse issues from traditional prosecution, educating  communities about the dangers of opioid addiction; and increasingly, seeking to hold drug traffickers and dealers accountable for the deaths they cause. This webinar will spotlight one office’s efforts to tackle the opioid crisis. Tonya Lupinacci of the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office in Norristown, PA will discuss strategies that are broadly applicable to jurisdictions across the country, with a special emphasis on prosecuting Drug Delivery Resulting in Death and similar crimes. The session will focus on the evidence necessary for building these cases, theories of offender liability, and effective presentation of evidence at trial.

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First, Do No Harm: Trauma Informed Interviewing During the Covid-19 Pandemic

This presentation identifies barriers to successful crime victim/witness interviews and explore techniques for overcoming those barriers, with a special emphasis on virtual interviews that are compliant with COVID-19 social distancing measures. The presenters discuss the limitations of a traditional fact-gathering approach and introduce alternative techniques to minimize re-traumatization and enhance our ability to re-create the reality of the crime at trial. An emphasis is placed on strategies for integrating a trauma-informed response from the first contact with a victim through the conclusion of the case, with realistic goals for interviews and virtual meetings at every stage of the process.

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Overcoming the Consent Defense: Prosecuting Known Offenders

This presentation will address the challenges inherent in prosecuting known offenders and alcohol-facilitated sexual assault, with an emphasis on overcoming the consent defense. The presentation will examine offender characteristics, motivations, and behaviors as well as the impact of the offender’s actions on the victim. The presenter will suggest strategies for overcoming common misconceptions at trial, including the importance of establishing a compelling trial theme, introducing evidence of the defendant’s predatory behavior, presenting corroborating evidence to support witness credibility, and recreating the reality of the crime at trial.

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Alcohol-Facilitated Sexual Assault: Who Needs Force When You Have Alcohol? Part 2 of 2

Alcohol is the most common weapon used to facilitate sexual assault. Offenders use alcohol because it renders victims vulnerable, affects memory, and impairs judgment and physical ability. Its unique toxicological effects, widespread use, and ease of consumption make it ideal for offenders who commit sexual assaults. This two-part presentation will explore common issues and challenges related to the investigation and prosecution of sexual assault cases where alcohol is present. More specifically, it will focus on identifying corroborating evidence, interviewing victims, basic toxicology, the effect of societal attitudes about alcohol on determinations of victim credibility, and trial strategies. In addition, this presentation will promote a victim-centered response that incorporates offender-focused strategies for an effective trauma-informed investigation and prosecution. Throughout the discussion, the presenters will discuss how strategies may be implicated and altered by social distancing measures currently in place in response to COVID-19.

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Alcohol-Facilitated Sexual Assault: Who Needs Force When You Have Alcohol? Part 1 of 2

Alcohol is the most common weapon used to facilitate sexual assault. Offenders use alcohol because it renders victims vulnerable, affects memory, and impairs judgment and physical ability. Its unique toxicological effects, widespread use, and ease of consumption make it ideal for offenders who commit sexual assaults. This two-part presentation will explore common issues and challenges related to the investigation and prosecution of sexual assault cases where alcohol is present. More specifically, it will focus on identifying corroborating evidence, interviewing victims, basic toxicology, the effect of societal attitudes about alcohol on determinations of victim credibility, and trial strategies. In addition, this presentation will promote a victim-centered response that incorporates offender-focused strategies for an effective trauma-informed investigation and prosecution. Throughout the discussion, the presenters will discuss how strategies may be implicated and altered by social distancing measures currently in place in response to COVID-19.