CS/HB 145 - Florida Safe Harbor Act

• Establishes comprehensive legislative framework treating sexually exploited children as dependent victims rather than delinquents, with four primary goals: ensuring safety, providing dependency services, severing bonds with traffickers, and enabling prosecution of perpetrators.

• Requires law enforcement to deliver children with probable cause of sexual exploitation to short-term safe houses (if available) rather than traditional custody, and creates rebuttable presumptions favoring safe-house placement at shelter hearings and disposition hearings.

• Creates definition of "safe house" as secure residential facilities with 24-hour supervision, requiring gender-specific quarters and staff trained in trauma-informed care for sexually exploited children age 6 and older; mandates annual legislative reporting on safe-house placements.

• Increases civil penalty for soliciting prostitution from $500 to $5,000, with $4,500 of each penalty directed to fund safe houses through the Department of Children and Family Services.

• Provides presumption against filing delinquency petitions for children alleged to have violated prostitution laws (s. 796.07(2)(f)) unless previously adjudicated delinquent, and makes sexually exploited children eligible for victim compensation regardless of prior unlawful activity.