Read the whole story at Boston.com…

Program targets sex trade
City fights increase in teen prostitutes
By Katheleen Conti

In a six-week period late last summer, Chelsea police arrested 32 prostitutes – a high number even for a city where prostitution has threatened the quality of life for years.

“It was alarming we had that many girls in such a small period,” said Chelsea Police Captain Keith Houghton.

Of those, Houghton said, the 10 women most frequently arrested have been nabbed a total of 195 times – one of them 40 times alone.

Now police, in a partnership with the youth organization Roca, are hoping to put a wedge in the prostitution revolving door with the Restorative Justice Project, an aggressive alternative sentencing program funded by a two-year $200,000 grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Still in the conceptual stages, the program would be similar to Roca’s ex isting efforts with 14- to 24-year-olds involved in gangs or other high-risk street crime, said Susan Ulrich, who is working on the Restorative Justice Project at Roca.

Using a method they call relentless street working, Roca staff approach young gang members or drug dealers, for example, and talk to them frequently about the organization’s services and ways to get help.

“They may not believe they need services; they may be quite content being on the streets or being gang-involved. But we tell them they can do something different in the world,” Ulrich said. “When young people want to change and when they’re tired of doing the same thing over and over, and they’re tired of going to jail or being on the street, they think, ‘I have to start to do something different.’ “