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The primary goals of Cross Roads Diversion are manifold: provide an alternative to incarceration for
individuals arrested for misdemeanor sex work/prostitution; increase such individuals access to social
services; and empower sex workers to leave the sex industry. New Orleans Task Force has identified
prostitution as a victimless crime frequently propelled by the external forces of poverty. Long lasting
support and access to social services are essential for the success and wellbeing of the program
participants.
The Task Force intends to measure the success of the initiative through: (1) voluntary continued
participation in the program even after they have graduated from the program; (2) whether participants
were able to complete the program without sanctions such as addition or extension of requirements and
sessions due to failure to appear for appointments and referrals; (3) rate in which successful participants
are rearrested 6-12 months after completing the program compared to the rate in which participants who
either declined participation or failed to complete the program are rearrested 6-12 months after they
declined participation or failed out of the program.
With regard to the first metric, over half of Cross Roads graduates (51%) have continued a relationship
with Women With A Vision (WWAV). In other words, they are continuing to maintain contact with their
case managers at WWAV and continuing to attend different sessions. We hope to increase the number of
women returning to WWAV upon graduation for continued support and services as our pilot program
continues.
4. Have you remained consistent with your policy reform and implementation plan? Please
explain if you have deviated from your original project plan.
We have remained fairly consistent with the program eligibility and requirements as laid out and agreed
upon by Task Force members in our Memorandum of Understanding.
Our Memorandum of Understanding states that the following persons will be eligible for Crossroads
Diversion. All persons
a. Arrested for misdemeanor state and/or municipal prostitution charge(s);
b. Not currently on probation or parole;
c. Have a local address at the time of booking.
Individuals with prior nonviolent misdemeanor or nonviolent felony conviction(s) are also eligible. If an
individual has a violent misdemeanor or violent felony conviction(s) within the last 5 years, their
eligibility will be assessed on a case-by-case basis by the District Attorneys Office and/or the City
Attorney in collaboration with the Judge and the public defender.
The only change we have made under program requirement is that we have not required participants to
drug test. The primary reason we have not required mandatory drug testing of participants is that drug
testing is expensive ($15-$25 per drug test) and we did not want to put additional economic and
financial pressures on our participants many of whom are already living in poverty. May of them cannot
even afford bus fare to attend classes and sessions. We have spend a portion of our grant funding to
provide bus tokens to participants so that they may attend meetings and sessions.
The remainder of implementation plan has remained the same.
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5. Have you commenced your actual pilot reform project? What is the commencement date? If
you have not commenced your pilot reform project, why not?
Yes, our pilot reform project began June 1st 2014
6. Have you determined the requirements of completion and eligibility of the pilot, please
describe below. How will you determine the length of your pilot program? Please explain the
logistics and administration of the pilot. Please attach the relevant signed copies of the memorandum
of understanding, project outlines, agreements, contracts or plans of action.
See answer to #5 above for program eligibility criteria.
After enrollment, participants must attend weekly in person counseling sessions for a minimum of six
weeks and maximum of 12. I have attached our Memorandum of Understanding (Attachment A) which
lays out eligibility for the pilot and requirements for completion.
7. How many individuals will participate or are projected to benefit from the pilot?
On average, approximately 6 new participants have qualified for and entered the program. At that rate,
given our one year pilot, we expect to serve anywhere between 65-85 participants.
The number of individuals arrested for prostitution is contingent on the activities of the New Orleans
Police Department. The number of individuals arrested for prostitution has varied month to month. For
example, in June and July of last yearthe first two months of the pilotwe had a total of 24 women
who qualified and participated in the program (12 women for June and 12 for July). This past
November and December, we only enrolled two women for those two months. Arresting patterns for
prostitution is dependent on weather, NOPD priorities, and what tourism generating activity (i.e. Super
Bowl, Mardi Gras) is occurring in New Orleans.
8. How will individuals become aware of the option to participate in the pilot program? Please
attach all necessary brochures, outlines, and information.
The public defender in each of the four sections of Orleans Parish Municipal Court identifies
individuals who have been arrested for prostitution at First Appearances/Arraignment, which is the
first time these individuals appear before a judge upon arrest. Once qualified participants are
identified, a member of the Orleans Public Defenders conducts a brief intake with the potential
participants in court. If they meet the qualifications of the program and the assistant district attorney
is in agreement that they meet program qualifications, the public defender and the assistant district
attorney jointly move for immediate release for the eligible participant so that she may report to
Women With A Vision for a more in-depth psycho-social assessment and individualized service plan.
The released participant must return to court on a date provided by the court with verification that
she has reported to Women With A Vision for assessment and that she is participating in the program.
The initial intake form is attached as Attachment B.
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9. How do you plan to track participants involved in the pilot program? Who will be in charge of
obtaining and tracking this information? Do you plan to create a tracking system using Access or
Excel? Does your jurisdiction have a specific data tracking system that you can utilize? Have you
hired a data analyst or evaluator?
To date, Women With A Vision is currently keeping data on program participants on an Excel
spreadsheet. We have received additional funding from ABA to purchase a comprehensive case
management system from Social Solutions. As soon as we received the additional grant funding, Social
Solutions will install the software and train the staff of Women With A Vision how to use the program.
Once the case management system is in place, we will be able to more easily pull reports and analyze
macro data on the program as a whole.
10. Have you identified mechanisms to track and measure the effectiveness of your reform? Have
you met with the Project Evaluator, Inga James? How are you tracking the success of your
reform overall and specific projects or programs that you have since carried out? Do you have
a formalized evaluation plan for your pilot project? If so, please attach your evaluation plan to
this report and briefly describe the process below. If you are still working on your evaluation plan,
when do you hope to have it completed? How are you implementing the reform and producing
outcome measures?
We are in the process of creating an evaluation of the program. One component of the evaluation will be
conducting exit interviews with participants who have successfully completed the program and with
those who were not able to complete the program to better understand what aspects of the program have
worked for some and not for other. We intend to conduct the evaluation of the program ourselves taking
into consideration the goals of the program: harm reduction, access to services, voluntary engagement of
continued services, and punctual attendance in court.
We hope to have an evaluation plan in place in May.
11. What are your key milestone dates/deadlines leading up to the conclusion of your sites reform
and evaluation? Please include upcoming specific task force meeting dates, launch dates, evaluation
commencement dates, promotion of project activities (including press, luncheons, launches),
dissemination plans, pilot conclusion dates, and post-data collection processes and plans. Please
explain your current status in completing your reform initiative and detailing your project timeline.
There are two things we hope to accomplish: (1) implement Social Solutions case management system
for better data collection and reporting; and (2) gain external access to the Orleans Parish Municipal
Court case management system so that all task force members can better communicate and coordinate
with one another about participants of the program. As to number 2, we are in the process of finalizing
our proposal to ABA for additional grant funding.
The pilot will end May 30, 2015; however, we believe the program will continue without pause. The
end day of the pilot will give us an opportunity to evaluate the program and make any changes as needed
to make the program more accessible and better administered.
12. Have you gotten other criminal justice stakeholders to buy in to your reform and assist with
the implementation process, or have you collaborated with existing projects and initiatives in
your jurisdiction or in other jurisdictions doing similar work? If so, please list who and how
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they have contributed. Please also include any consulting services you have sought or received from
entities or individuals both within and outside your jurisdiction. Please also include whether you
have requested or added any entity representatives to serve on your task force.
Beyond the current members of the Task Force, we have not needed to partner with any other criminal
justice stakeholders to implement our pilot program. The City Council have been very interested in the
program and did invite Chief Judge Charbonnet and Executive Director of Women With A Vision Deon
Haywood to speak to them about Cross Roads at City Councils Criminal Justice Committee Meeting. A
short media piece about this presentation is attached as Attachment C.
Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman has shown some interest in collaborating with Women With A
Vision following our July 2014 Luncheon presentation about Cross Roads. Deputy Chief Director Jee
Park of Orleans Public Defenders organized meeting between Sheriff Gusman and Executive Director of
Women With A Vision Deon Haywood to discuss ways to coordinate and partner in re-entry
programming for women in jail.
Chief Director Jee Park of Orleans Public Defender organized another meeting between Women With A
Vision and Eden House, another program that supports sex workers. Eden House is a long-term
program aiming to get women out of sex work. Women who live in Eden House and participate in their
2-year counseling program need not be court involved. Women With A Vision and Eden House met to
discuss ways to better collaborate with one another and information share about their different
programming.
13. Have you met any new challenges in accomplishing your task force goals or project
deliverables? If so, have they been overcome? What were the lessons learned?
We have encountered couple challenges in implementing our reform. First, all members of the Task
Force must consistently adhere to the agreed-upon eligibility requirements. On several occasions, the
assistant district attorney in court has refused to allow an otherwise eligible participant from
participating in the program.
Second, the Orleans Public Defenders and Women With A Vision need access to the Municipal Courts
case management system to assess whether an arrestee is eligible for the program. Without ready access
to the case management system, Task Force organizations are not able to verify prior criminal record
history to accurately gauge eligibility.
Finally, both Women With A Vision and Orleans Public Defenders have pulled in staff members with
other responsibilities to administer and operate the program. Essentially, these staff members are
performing tasks outside of their job description in order to run the pilot. Both organizations need
sustained funding to fund two full-time staff positions in our respective offices to run Cross Roads.
Orleans Public Defenders needs an intake specialist and Women With A Vision needs a case manager.
14. At this point in the project, do you have any recommendations for eliminating or modifying
any steps in the projects replication?
At this time, we do not have any such recommendations, but we anticipate some after a full evaluation
of the program.
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15. To date, what amount of grant funds (if any) do you have remaining? Do you have plans to
spend the remaining grant funds? Please explain. Please also attach a simplified version of your
project budget upon submission of this report.
At this time, we intend to spend the remainder of grant funding for bus tokens for participants, printing
of the Cross Roads brochure and workbooks/daily diaries for the participants where they can
memorialize and document their progress through the program.
16. Please identify supplemental funding and technical assistance needs below.
additional funds, please be very specific about your needs.
If requesting
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15, 2015)
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7 (16%)
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39 (81%)
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11 (17.8%)
17 (27%)
4 rearrested
13 still out on capias
32 (53%)
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5. Please attach your program eligibility, and program requirements, to this report.
Attached to this report are the following: (1) Condition for Participation form, Exhibit B; and (2)
Programs Q&A to Participants, Exhibit C.
The Conditions for Participation form is reviewed by the CrossRoads Diversion screener with each
screened and eligible participant. Every participant enrolling into the program must sign the form and a
copy is provided to the Court, DA and public defender. The second page of the form also tells the
participant by when they need to meet with a case manager from Women With A Vision and when they
need to return to Court confirming their enrollment and participation in the program.
The Programs Q&A is an additional document that is provided to potentially eligible participants to
give them more information about the program. It answers some basic questions about the program.
6. How are prospective participants made aware of your program? Have you announced your
pilot to the local public? Please attach any brochures or marketing materials relating to your
program. Every person arrested for prostitution and brought to Municipal Court for first
appearance/arraignment is screened for eligibility. An administrative assistant from the public
defenders office will review the courts daily docket to see whether anyone has been arrested for
prostitution. If someone is on the docket with a prostitution arrest, the administrative assistant notifies
the CrossRoads screener, who also is employed by the public defenders office. The screener will then
meet with the arrestee to determine eligibility. If eligible, the screener will notify the public defender,
assistant district attorney and the court.
Brochure of the program is attached as Exhibit D.
7. Are you partnering with any outside organizations to implement your reform effort? If so, who
are you partnering with and why? We have partnered with Women With a Vision. They provide case
management and services. I have attached a sample case plan from Women With A Vision as Exhibit E.
8. Have you finalized the pilot programs evaluation plan? If not, when do you plan to have the
evaluation plan finalized? Who has or will prepare this evaluation plan for you? If you have a
finalized version of your evaluation plan, please attach it to this report (if all task force members
have approved it). We have yet to finalize our pilot programs evaluation plan. We have collected
much of the data we need for the evaluation and will be putting together a plan this fall.
9. Are you confident in the current procedures as it relates to organizing the pilot programs client
information/data and the ability to retrieve that data and information as necessary for analysis of
the pilot program? Yes.
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10. When do you plan to commence the analysis of your pilots data, i.e. implement your
evaluation plan? When do you plan to submit your final evaluation report to RJIP? Wed like to
submit a final evaluation report toward the end of this calendar year.
11. As it stands today, what does your pilot programs data demonstrate? Any updates? As
demonstrated above, 87% of participants have graduated successfully from the program and of those
graduates, 48% continue to seek services from Women With A Vision and engage with Women With A
Vision on a voluntary basis. The latter number is indicative of the positive impact Women With A
Vision is having on the participants.
12. Please provide a brief summary of your current remaining funds and your financial plans
moving forward. As of June 13, 2015, we have $ 2,539.88 remaining. We intend to use the remaining
funds for bus tokens for participants and printing of the brochure and other program materials.
13. Do you need any specific technical assistance or funding to implement your pilot or evaluate?
If so, please explain below. In order to launch the pilot, public defenders office and Women With A
Vision had to designate two staff members for its implementation. These two staff members have other
responsibilities and tasks at the respective organizations and have simply been asked to assist. The
success of this program will depend on whether additional grant funding can be located to fund two
separate positions, one at the public defenders office and the other at Women With A Vision, so that
staff currently coordinating the program can resume their other responsibilities
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