KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Knoxville city leaders are continuing to support an outreach program aimed to divert sex workers from jail and instead connect them with mental health services.
It's called the Knoxville Early Diversion Program (KEDP), and it's a partnership between Knoxville Police and Helen Ross McNabb.
Earlier this week, the Knoxville City Council voted unanimously to give $74,500 to continue the program.
A federal grant launched the program in 2013.
Helen Ross McNabb says it's helped 38 women, reduced their arrests by 88 percent, and now 12 women are no longer sex workers. It also says it provided long-term housing for five homeless people in the program.
The program reaches sex workers through sting operations, ride-alongs and field calls, according to the City Council minutes, and these interactions are used to find candidates for the program. According to the minutes, some of the services offered include mental health and substance abuse treatment, including detox, residential treatment, intensive outpatient treatment and 12-step meetings.
The minutes say there is a "warm handoff" from law enforcement to KEDP staff to evaluate which services candidates may need. The minutes say KEDP and KPD engage in "persistent pursuit," which is a process of repeated contact and engagement with the people they identify to help encourage them to enroll in the program.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says Tennessee is the state responding best to the human trafficking problem. According to the agency's annual report, it opened 98 cases involving human trafficking from 2017 to 2018, and 75 of them involved minors.
"It is not uncommon for us to work with a victim who has been arrested multiple times for a variety of things," said Natalie Ivey, the director of advocacy and outreach for the Community Coalition Against Human Trafficking.
She says jail time makes it hard to break the cycle.
"It kind of reinforces what the trafficker is telling them, which is you're worthless, nobody wants to help you," Ivey said.
She says victims often know their trafficker.
"In fact the most common form of human trafficking in East Tennesse is familial, which means family members and so the way that the person is controlling the victim is very difficult to detect," Ivey said.
She says any effort to help victims is worth it.
"They can't break out of the cycle if they don't know that there's an alternative, they don't know that there's help to be offered," Ivey said.