Sex trafficking could be reclassified as a violent felony in California under proposed legislation filed by a Republican assemblyman.
“Everything wrong about California criminal law is laid out in our statutes pertaining to human trafficking: currently, trafficking children for sexual purposes is not considered a violent felony,” Assemblyman Joe Patterson (R-Rocklin) said in a release. “These perpetrators need to be held accountable and AB 229 will do just that.”
A hearing is set for March 14 in the Assembly’s Committee on Public Safety, Patterson’s spokeswoman Christina Paxton told The Epoch Times.
The bill aims to make it a violent felony to commit sex trafficking and qualify it as a strike offense under California’s Three Strikes Law, which imposes a state prison term of 25 years to life for those who are convicted of a violent or serious felony after already having two prior convictions for these offenses. Some examples of such crimes include murder, arson, rape, and robbery….