by Sarah Terry-Cobo

This is Part 6 of an eight-part, four-day Oakland Local investigative series on youth sex trafficking.

The Oakland Police Department believes it must arrest girls involved in prostitution to get them off the streets for their own safety. Without a safe residential treatment facility, officers say, juvenile hall presents a better alternative than leaving them on the streets.

"We used to just warn them and let them stay out on the streets," said Vice Unit Investigator Jim Saleda during one of the department's operations. "I learned my lesson when I found the body of one of the girls a week later, mutilated in Mosswood Park."

Some fierce advocates in the Bay Area are working to change laws that punish young victims, in addition to providing services to exploited young women...