Taking Stock: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the New York State Judicial Committee on Women in the Courts

Jill Laurie Goodman

Introduction

On April, 5, 2011, the New York State Judicial Committee on Women in the Courts celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with a symposium, co-sponsored by the New York University Review of Law and Social Change. The Symposium was a gala event. It was attended by a long list of distinguished judges, lawyers, court administrators, advocates, and activists.

Anniversaries, though are times not only for celebration, but for reflection.  In keeping with the reflective tradition, the April 5th Symposium looked both backwards and forwards as it took stock of progress, stasis, and unfinished agendas twenty-five years after the New York Task Force on Women in the Courts issued its report and the New York State Committee on Women in the Courts was first appointed.

This introduction will set the stage for the rest of the volume by providing a brief history of the Committee and a summary of the Symposium events.

View Full Text (PDF)

In Our Own Backyards: The Need For a Coordinated Judicial Response to Human Trafficking

Hon. Toko Serita

Introduction

In a relatively short period of time, New York State has put itself at the vanguard of the battle against human trafficking. New York has passed several laws criminalizing sex and labor trafficking, recognized that anyone younger than eighteen years of age arrested on prostitution charges is a “sexually exploited child” and a “victim of a severe form of trafficking,” and, most recently, provided a way for sex trafficking victims to vacate their prostitution convictions.

In the years since these laws took effect, I have observed that our understanding of the dynamics of domestic and foreign sex trafficking, both locally and domestically, has improved. The trafficking cases that are seen in the Human Trafficking Intervention Court (HTIC),over which I preside provide a glimpse of this expanded understanding. These cases discredit the popular notion that modern day slavery and the sexual enslavement of girls, women, and foreign undocumented persons do not occur “in our own backyards.” And yet, despite this improved understanding, defendants arrested on prostitution charges are not generally recognized as victims, but are charged as criminals. The criminal justice system has been unable to adequately identify those defendants that might be victims of trafficking. To date, there has been very little scholarship analyzing either New York’s human trafficking laws or the role prostitution diversion courts play in identifying trafficking victims and providing alternatives to incarceration. This article addresses the different types of trafficking cases that are intercepted through the criminal justice system, the current state of sex trafficking law in New York, and, finally, the role of the HTIC in identifying and providing solutions for trafficking victims. It also addresses the necessity of creating a coordinated judicial response to this human rights problem, and recommends ways that this can be accomplished.

View Full Text (PDF)