Human trafficking of adults is not “serious”?

The Public Safety Committees of both houses of the California Legislature have long been known as graveyards. Strong criminal justice bills are buried there. A bill regarding human trafficking, SB 14, emerged from the Senate Public Safety Committee last week, but the extent to which it had to be watered down to survive is an appalling commentary on the present state of the California Legislature.

The base offense is defined in section 236.1(a) of the Cal. Penal Code. “A person who deprives or violates the personal liberty of another with the intent to obtain forced labor or services, is guilty of human trafficking ….” In other words, we are talking about actual slavery in the twenty-first century. Who could possibly be against throwing the book at present-day slavers?

The base crime is punishable by 5, 8, or 12 years in state prison. If the services in question are sexual, it goes up to 8, 14, or 20.

A second variation of the crime, in subdivision (c), involves minors. “A person who causes, induces, or persuades, or attempts to cause, induce, or persuade, a person who is a minor at the time of commission of the offense to engage in a commercial sex act, with the intent to effect or maintain a violation of [various prostitution and pornography crimes] is guilty of human trafficking.” Notice that force and deprivation of liberty are not elements on this variation. Consent is not a defense.

The base offense of subdivision (c) is punished the same as subdivision (a), but if the offense does involve “force, fear, fraud, deceit, coercion, violence, duress, menace, or threat of unlawful injury to the victim or to another person,” then it’s 15-to-life.

California has two lists of felonies dubbed “serious” and “violent.” Both lists are underinclusive. There are many violent felonies not on the “violent” list. Most felonies are serious. If they aren’t they shouldn’t be felonies. But the “serious felonies” list is much less than the total.

Various consequences attach to a crime being on these lists, including limitations on plea bargaining, sentence enhancements for prior convictions, limits on good-time credits in prison, and most controversially the Three Strikes Law.

California’s Three Strikes Law now imposes a 25-to-life term for repeating felons with two priors when all three of the felonies are on the serious or violent lists. We still hear people attacking the law with examples of defendants whose current offense is petty theft with a prior, even though that hasn’t been the law for 11 years now.

Human trafficking is one of the more egregious examples of the underinclusiveness of the lists. It was defined as a separate crime after those lists were written, and the bill that defined it did not add it to the lists. No one could genuinely doubt that the crime is serious. Keeping a person prisoner and forcing labor is also violent. It certainly is not a property crime or any of the other non-violent types of crimes.

So SB 14 was introduced to add human trafficking to both lists. That should have been uncontroversial, and the bill should have sailed through. Right? Not in California. The introduced bill had nine sponsors, seven Republicans and two Democrats. No go.

The author had to amend it so that human trafficking was added only to the “serious” list and not the “violent” list. Nope, not watered down enough.

After two more amendments, the bill was further watered down so that trafficking of a minor under subdivision (c) is serious but trafficking of an adult under subdivision (a) is not. The bill then picked up a bunch of Democrat co-sponsors and sailed out of the Public Safety Committee on a unanimous vote.

If the bill passes, pimping a 17-year, 11-month-old girl who is fully willing will be a serious felony, while enslaving one who blew out her 18 candles yesterday and forcing her into prostitution will not be. That is the bizarre world of the present California Legislature.