Sen. Shannon Grove‘s widely followed bill to include sex trafficking of minors in the list of crimes that are defined as serious under California law was voted down Tuesday in an Assembly committee.
Senate Bill 14 would have included sex trafficking of a minor under California’s Three Strikes law requiring a sentence of 25 years to life.
“After passing the Senate with a unanimous, bipartisan vote, I had hoped Democrats on the Assembly Public Safety Committee, led by Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, would agree to make sex trafficking of a minor a serious felony,” said Grove, a Republican who represents the Bakersfield area in the Central Valley.
“Instead of using prison overcrowding as a means to protect men who are perpetrating this high crime shouldn’t we be protecting the daughters who are victims of these crimes?” Grove asked.
Former Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Sharmin Block, who helped draft the bill, testified that recent kidnappings of Black girls in the Bay Area showed the need for an immediate increase in trafficking penalties.
Jones-Sawyer left the door open for Grove to come back with a reworked version in a process called “reconsideration.”
“Since the bill was granted reconsideration, I will continue to work with the committee and fight for Californians who are outraged by their decision,” Grove said.
The measure was coauthored by 34 members of the Legislature and supported by a coalition of human trafficking survivors, advocates, local, national and international organizations.