CHICAGO — The woman leans back in the chair, her head flopping from side to side, her bloodshot eyes rolling back. High on heroin and cocaine, she struggles to keep her eyes open. There are lesions on her face, scars of hepatitis B. In a serrated voice, she tells the social workers she is ready to leave the street.
"I'm tired. I'm just so tired and scared," says the woman, 26. "I know the next car I jump in may be the last."
Just an hour earlier on this rainy Thursday night, she was arrested on a Chicago street for prostitution for the 13th time in five years. But instead of going straight to a police lockup, she sits in a windowless room at the Cook County sheriff's office as three social workers lay out her choices: stay on the street and risk her life, or get help right now.
"You don't have to go out there again. We're going to find you some place to stay tonight," said Brenda Myers-Powell, one of two counselors for the Cook County sheriff's prostitution intervention team.
The "traffic response team" offers shelter, drug abuse counseling, child care and even jobs to prostitutes after their arrests. "Our goal is very simple: to try to reach a woman at her most vulnerable point and show her the way out," said Dorenda Dixon, the program's coordinator.
The intervention program is the brainchild of the Department of Women's Justice Services, which for a decade has worked with female inmates in the Cook County Jail. The department says that over the years, more than 40% of the women in the jail have worked as prostitutes. So instead of locking up prostitutes again and again, the department is trying to help women deal with the problems that led them to sell their bodies in the first place.
The intervention program is in its infancy and off to a modest start. In its first test as part of a prostitution roundup in November, only one of eight women picked up agreed to join the program. She still attends weekly meetings with staff, is getting help with child care and has re-enrolled in college.
On a second roundup tonight, the 26-year-old is one of two women offered assistance to escape prostitution. The Tribune agreed not to name either woman.
Dressed casually in her long-sleeved shirt, pants and sneakers, she seems intrigued at the idea of leaving the street. She talks of her fear of dying, telling the workers that a friend was recently found dead in a park.
