A bill that would declare child sex-trafficking a serious felony and toughen sentences for the crime would seem like an easy sell to most politicians. But not in Sacramento this week.
California’s ruling Democrats have been working for years to reduce criminal penalties under the banner of social justice, hearkening to reformers who say the criminal justice system is stacked against the poor and racial minorities. On Wednesday, however, some Democratic lawmakers went a step too far for Gov. Gavin Newsom and newly named Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas.
After six Democrats refused to vote the Republican child sex trafficking bill, SB 14, out of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, Newsom and Rivas intervened, and on Thursday, under pressure, the committee changed course and revived the bill.
It was a rare rebuke from a governor with presidential aspirations and a signal that Democratic leaders in California must be wary about being labeled as “soft on crime.”
“This almost never happens, and when it does, it almost always happens in private,” said Dan Schnur, who teaches politics at UC-Berkeley and USC and was an aide to former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. “It’s incredibly unusual to see this kind of force employed not only by the speaker but by the governor.
“Newsom has been around long enough to realize that the last time Democrats got painted as soft on crime many years ago it caused them tremendous political damage.”
The vote came as a new film, “Sound of Freedom,” about a real-life federal agent who worked to rescue kids from forced-prostitution rings, has drawn attention to the crime and become among the most popular movies in the country.
Newsom said little publicly about his intervention, only telling reporters he spoke to the bill’s author, Sen. Shannon Grove, a Bakersfield Republican, “which is indicative of my desire to see what we can do.” He added that it’s an issue “I care deeply about” since his days as a San Francisco supervisor and mayor and that his administration put “$25 additional million in the budget last year in this space.”
The bill, sponsored by 3Strands Global Foundation, a California nonprofit that fights child sex trafficking, would add the crime to the state’s list of “serious” felonies, toughening sentences including counting a conviction as a “strike” under the state’s Three Strikes law that can lead to life imprisonment for repeat offenders. It also would make it more difficult for offenders to negotiate a plea bargain for lesser charges and penalties.
3Strands argued that California leads the country in reported trafficking cases and that human trafficking is among the world’s fastest growing criminal enterprises, estimated to be a $150 billion-a-year global industry.
Critics include the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which argued that harsh sentencing measures such as Three Strikes do little to deter crime or alleviate victim suffering while raising the state’s prison costs.
Grove and other Republicans, including Sen. Brian Dahle, Newsom’s re-election opponent last year, had introduced similar bills in the past that failed to advance in the legislature.
But SB 14 passed out of the state Senate with unanimous, bipartisan support. In the Assembly Public Safety Committee, however, Democratic Assembly members Mia Bonta — wife of Attorney General Rob Bonta — Isaac Bryan, Reginald Jones-Sawyer, Liz Ortega, Miguel Santiago and Rick Zbur refused to vote on it. With only Republicans Tom Lackey and Juan Alanis in support, it failed to advance.
A victim yelled “horrible” after the vote and broke down in tears, according to KCRA-TV Capitol reporter Ashley Zavala.
On Thursday, the same committee quickly passed the bill 6-0, with Jones-Sawyer, Ortega, Santiago and Zbur joining Lackey and Alanis. Ortega, who represents the Hayward area, publicly apologized for her earlier decision not to support the bill.
“On Tuesday, I made a bad decision,” Ortega said on Twitter. “Voting against legislation targeting really bad people who traffick children was wrong. I regret doing that and I am going to help get this important legislation passed into law.”
Bonta and Bryan, however, declined to vote for the bill. Bryan on Thursday retweeted a post from ACLU California Action criticizing SB 14 as “the wrong policy approach.” The ACLU argued “trafficking is already a crime that is punishable by as much as 15 years to life” and that trafficking victims “are criminalized and prosecuted under proposals like this one.”
Republicans have been sharply critical of Democratic criminal justice reforms, looking to regain traction with voters who favor Democrats over them by a roughly 2-to-1 margin in statewide party registration.
In addition to initially killing the sex trafficking bill, the state GOP noted that committee Democrats also snuffed several Republican bills to toughen penalties for the deadly drug fentanyl, that the state’s latest annual report shows crime rates rising, and that Newsom declined to oppose release of a Charles Manson killer.
Schnur said while Newsom won’t be running away from criminal justice reforms, he’s showing he has his limits.
“This is not a lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key governor by any stretch of the imagination,” Schnur said. “But he clearly recognizes that the party can appear to be unresponsive to voters’ concerns about the rising crime rates.”