By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

CHARGES

Charges for which women will be held • Aggravated murder • Murder • Voluntary manslaughter • Negligent homicide • Aggravated vehicular homicide • Felonious assault • Aggravated assault • Assault on a police officer • Kidnapping • Abduction • Child stealing • Criminal child enticement • Extortion • Rape • Sexual battery • Corruption of a minor • Gross sexual imposition • Felonious sexual penetration • Aggravated arson • Arson • Robbery • Aggravated burglary • Burglary • Breaking and entering • Safecracking • Inciting to violence • Aggravated rioting • Rioting • Inducing panic • Endangering children • Domestic violence • Intimidation • Intimidation of a victim or witness • Escape • Conveying weapons or drugs into detention • Conspiracy (involving any of these offenses) • Attempt (involving any of these offenses) • Complicity (involving any of these offenses) • Carrying concealed weapons • Firearms on premises • Firearms under disability • Possession of a dangerous ordnance • Corrupting another with drugs • Trafficking (sales or manufacture) • Trafficking in harmful intoxicants

Concern about the Hamilton County jail's ban on holding female suspects accused of nonviolent crimes prompted officials Thursday to look for alternatives for those they say cause most of the crowding - accused prostitutes.

Cincinnati police commanders, worried about the impact of making the jail a revolving door for prostitutes, met Thursday with members of the Local Corrections Planning Board. Chairman Mike Walton said the group, made up of law enforcement officers, judges, court employees and social service workers, agreed to:

• Ask the county for money, probably less than $100,000, to hire two "motivational interviewers" to talk to prostitutes in the jail and find those who would benefit from treatment, either for substance abuse, mental health issues or both, and get them into that treatment.

"It's kind of a new concept," Walton said. "And I think the best kind of person for this ... might be somebody who's been through it, somebody who's been addicted."

• Ask Sheriff Simon Leis, who set the order against keeping women overnight for anything but certain violent and serious felonies, to relax that policy in cases of prostitutes with significant criminal histories, such as robbing their clients. Walton and several others plan to meet next week to start setting criteria.

• To set up a task force of five or six officials who will focus only on prostitution and look into using 36 beds available at the First Step Home and Talbert House agencies as residential placement for prostitutes.

Walton also said he hopes to soon get a grant of about $75,000 from the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati, which the board will use to start planning a comprehensive county program for prostitutes.

The group will look around, he said, at the best programs elsewhere but might focus on The SAGE Project Inc. in San Francisco, a program started by a former prostitute. SAGE stands for Standing Against Global Exploitation. The group's first-time offender program provides early intervention and peer support for women trying to get out of prostitution and uses fees paid by arrested johns to fund the services.

The grant has not been approved, but Walton expects it to be.

Cincinnati officers alone made more than 1,000 prostitution arrests last year,said Capt. Vince Demasi, investigations commander. For years, he has been saying prostitutes come with so many mental health and drug abuse problems that they needed more help than incarceration. Thursday, he said he was happy people listened.

"Substance abuse is 98 percent of the problem," he said. "They're addicted to crack, and they're doing prostitution to get the money for the drugs they want."

Those factors make the women a difficult population to deal with in jail, Leis has said, because they often have to be housed separately from other prisoners and need more services.

He, too, has been pleading for help for years. He said the current main jail facility downtown was crowded the day it opened in 1985. And that was before females became such a growing jail population - up 30 percent in Hamilton County over the past decade. Total inmates have jumped about 5 percent in that same time period.

Leis sent a teletype to the county's police agencies April 15, telling them the jail would no longer take females unless they're charged with any of a list of 45 violent and serious felonies from aggravated murder to kidnapping, aggravated assault and carrying concealed weapons. Any other women arrested would be fingerprinted, photographed, given a court date and released.

Leis, who is running unopposed for a fifth term, reiterated Thursday through spokesman Steve Barnett that the answer is simple: He needs more jail space. But Walton said the group did not discuss that.

In Madisonville, when Citizens on Patrol members see women they suspect are prostitutes, they usually don't call the police anymore. Even before the new policy, they knew the women wouldn't spend much time behind bars.

Instead, said member Patricia Markley, they watch or follow her for a little while. If the woman turns around to look at them, they ask her if she's OK. They call for help if she doesn't appear to be.

Email jprendergast@enquirer.com