Our Services
A HOLISTIC APPROACH
HOW WE SERVE
Criminal Record Relief
Our team of attorneys and legal advocates provide non-judgmental, trauma-informed legal services focused on addressing the harmful effects of criminalization on our clients’ lives.
We provide assistance expunging or shielding our clients’ criminal records, and, for those clients who have convictions related to having been trafficked, we can assist in vacating, or, setting aside, certain criminal convictions under Maryland’s trafficking-specific criminal record relief law. We also have funds available to pay for fingerprinting services to ensure that our attorneys are addressing the entirety of our clients’ criminal records, including arrests that may have taken place in another state.
For HTPP clients with criminal records in states other than Maryland, we coordinate with numerous trusted partners across the country, such as the Survivor Reentry Project.
Other Civil Legal Needs
Through our partnership with Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service, HTPP clients are also eligible for free legal assistance with divorce/custody cases, consumer debt matters, tax controversies, name and gender marker changes, among other civil legal needs. If eligible, they will be connected with MVLS’s volunteer attorneys for assistance.
Services for All
Services are provided regardless of race, nationality, ethnicity, age, religion, disability status, sex assigned at birth, gender identity, gender presentation, immigration status, and/or sexual orientation.
Training and Technical Assistance for Service Providers
The HTPP also provides training and technical assistance to service providers on the collateral consequences of criminalization on trafficking survivors and people in the sex trades, the availability of criminal record relief in Maryland, as well as on working with people who have experienced trauma.
Who We Serve
The HTPP primarily serves anyone across the gender spectrum who has:
- Experienced sex and/or labor trafficking; or,
- Traded sex for any reason, including those who trade sex by choice, out of circumstance, or due to coercion.
For clients who meet the above parameters, the HTPP offers legal representation in criminal record relief matters, such as assistance with expungement, shielding and vacatur, as well as the range of services that MVLS provides, such as credit and debt counseling, divorce/custody, name and gender marker changes, tax disputes, and other civil legal matters.
As a program that also focuses on trafficking prevention, we also provide criminal record relief services to individuals who have been subjected to a combination of violence, trauma, and/or other systemic inequities that put them at increased risk of exploitation, including interpersonal violence, sexual assault, housing instability, substance use, and/or discrimination based on race, sexual orientation and/or gender identity.