Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a invoice into regulation Wednesday that will increase the penalty for some offenders who solicit 16- and 17-year-olds for intercourse.
The brand new regulation will permit prosecutors to cost suspects who’re at the very least three years older than the minor they solicit for intercourse with a felony as an alternative of a misdemeanor on a primary offense — usually referred to as a “wobbler” since prosecutors have discretion. The supply targets older “johns” and avoids charging all youthful offenders with a felony.
All minors below 16 and people 18 who’re victims of human trafficking are already thought-about wobbler circumstances below present regulation.
The invoice, AB 379, bumped into controversy within the spring when Democrats pressured amendments to Assemblymember Maggy Krell’s (D-Sacramento) invoice in committee, arguing that permitting prosecutors to decide on whether or not to cost an offender with a felony or a misdemeanor on a primary offense may probably hurt victims.
Newsom joined with a refrain of Republican and public pushback to the change, an unusual transfer earlier than a invoice hits his desk. “The regulation ought to deal with all intercourse predators who solicit minors the identical — as a felony, whatever the meant sufferer’s age,” Newsom stated in a press release. “Full cease.”
Democrats had different considerations a few provision of the brand new regulation that will make it a misdemeanor to loiter with the intent to buy business intercourse, arguing that it may probably be used to focus on minorities and the poor.
“When legal guidelines are imprecise, they’re ripe for profiling,” Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins (D-San Diego) stated when the invoice handed the Meeting in Could, after legislators struck a deal so as to add the three-year stipulation.
The brand new regulation additionally creates a survivors help fund, to be backed by elevated fines for offenders and hoteliers who don’t report intercourse trafficking on their premises.
