Benedict Center Executive Director Jeanne Geraci
Designed to help women in prostitution and/or sex trafficking lead healthier lives by providing them with support, counseling and connections to resources, the Benedict Center’s Sisters Program works with the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) and prosecutors to divert women from possible jail time to the Sisters Program drop-in centers. “What we’re hearing from law enforcement more and more is that we can’t arrest our way out of this problem,” explains Benedict Center Executive Director Jeanne Geraci. “We have had decades of using traditional law enforcement and arresting women, but that does very little to address the underlying reasons why they are there in the first place.” Off the Cuff spoke with Geraci about the Sisters Program and its challenges.
How does the Sisters Program work?
Currently we have a drop-in center on the near North Side and the near South Side located in neighborhoods that are most affected by street prostitution. We have a street outreach team that literally goes to where the women are to offer them assistance and to invite them to a drop-in center. At the drop-in center, we help women with their basic needs, crisis management and give them a safe ongoing source of support. And our hope is, using a harm reduction approach, to help them step by step to build a healthier and safer life. One of the really exciting developments is the formalization of our prostitution diversion program with the Milwaukee Police Department and we’re focusing on rolling out the protocol in District 2, which is on the near South Side. Police can refer women to our program rather than arresting them. It’s a really big shift in how we, as a city, address the issue of street prostitution.
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Is it a peer support program?
Peer support is a huge part of what happens at Sisters Program. It’s that building of a community for women who are largely isolated and stigmatized. We have a history of hiring women with lived experience for our street outreach program and we also have a Sisters leadership program. The voice of women in the program not only shapes the program, but also the advocacy we do.
What are the biggest challenges of implementing the Sisters Program?
In terms of providing the direct services to the women—street outreach, the drop-in center, case management, crisis management—I would say the greatest challenge is the lack of resources available in the community. When women are ready to come off the streets the things that women need most are residential drug treatment and housing. And there is really a shortage of both of those in our community. And it’s heartbreaking when women finally have enough trust and enough hope that something could be different and we start calling out for resources only to find that it’s a two-month waiting list for the residential treatment or an indefinite wait list for housing. On the diversion side, in terms of convincing the community that we can’t arrest ourselves out of this problem, that it makes more sense to connect women to support and treatment, the challenge there is just overcoming old ways of thinking and a lot of misconceptions about who the women are and why they’re there.
What has been the success of the program and how do you define success?
I think that the main measure of success is that the women engaged in street prostitution that we designed the program for, find value in the program that’s demonstrated by their engagement and staying engaged and bravely making progress in their lives. So, when we see women being able to take those steps towards safety, towards health, towards recovery—that, to us, is the greatest measure of success.
The Benedict Center is located at 1849 N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Suite 101.To learn more about the Center’s Sisters Program, call 414-585-9994 (North Branch) or 414-346-4406 (South Branch) or visit benedictcenter.org.
