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Presence of Children at Commercial Sex Transactions

Michael Shively — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:19:55 +0000

One of the more disturbing aspects of commercial sex transactions encountered in our review of reverse sting operations is the presence of children. We found cases in 38 U.S. cities and counties in which infants or young children were present in vehicles or hotel rooms where men had arranged to buy sex. Recent examples include a December, 2012 case in which the Albuquerque Police Department conducted a reverse sting resulting in the arrest of men who had arranged to buy sex in a hotel room. One of the men was charged with felony child abuse for leaving three “very young children” in the parking lot in a cold car without jackets and without a heater, while he went to buy sex in the hotel. Also in December 2012, a man was arrested in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for soliciting oral sex from an undercover police officer while his two-year-old daughter was in the car. In January, 2013 a women brought her four year old child along while selling sex in a hotel room, arranged through Backpage ads. Other cases include a bus driver in Detroit seeking to buy sex from an undercover police woman while four special needs students from five to nine years of age sat behind him on the bus, and a registered sex offender with a two-year-old child in his vehicle trying to buy sex in Norfolk, Connecticut.

Another form of child involvement occurs when boys purchase sex from prostituted persons, or when it is purchased for them. For example, a 2013 case in Jonesborough, Tennessee involved a man purchasing sex from a prostituted woman for his 12 year old son. It is not unusual for reverse stings to result in the apprehension of 15 to 17 year old boys attempting to buy sex.

Sample References:

Smaller Communities Adopting Big City Tactics on Prostitution

Michael Shively — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 09:48:37 +0000

Prostitution and sex trafficking are not strictly urban problems, and with the advent of web-based solicitation and wireless technology, are becoming even more decentralized. Police “reverse sting” operations using female decoys to arrest male buyers of sex have been found in communities with populations of less than 1,000. The average size of cities that have conducted reverse stings is under 55,000. Community complaints were found to drive most police activity in response to prostitution.

Communities using anti-demand tactics: A 2011 study by Abt Associates, conducted for the National Institute of Justice, examined police operations and other initiatives that target men who buy sex from women engaged in prostitution. The study has identified over 900 cities and counties in the U.S. that conducted reverse stings and, in many cases, additional interventions targeting male buyers. Reverse stings and other tactics were found to have been used in all 50 states and in communities of all sizes. Over 75 towns with populations under 10,000 have conducted reverse sting operations (including one town, Jefferson, WV, with a population of less than 600), and over 460 communities with populations under 75,000 have targeted sex buyers in that manner.

Community Complaints Drive Police Response to Prostitution Demand

Michael Shively — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 09:02:31 +0000

One of the issues that frequently arises in debates about whether prostitution should be legalized, decriminalized, or remain prohibited is the assertion that it is victimless. The argument against prohibition is built upon the essentially libertarian idea that government should not intervene in commercial sex if it is between consenting adults. The argument for prohibition is that commercial sex is inherently (or at least usually) harmful to the people directly involved, and also to others who do not directly engage in either buying or selling sex.

We just go out when we receive enough complaints from the neighborhood. Always in prostitution, you’ll have areas where prostitution will pop up near crack houses, and for us putting female [officers] out, we’re trying to get the males to stop from coming into that area.

Chief Ken Swindle, Tuscaloosa, Florida Police Department, 2006

While the intent of our 2011 National Assessment research was not to settle debates about whether prostitution is or is not inherently harmful (harm is assumed by those engaged in the initiatives we examined), the study was able to gather information that is relevant to the discussion. During our initial interviews for that project, we were struck by how often (that is, virtually always) we were told by police officers and other respondents that community complaints are what drives when and where police conduct prostitution operations. The complaints are not simply expressions of moral outrage, although they can certainly be involved. Instead, we heard numerous descriptions of tangible harm to individuals, communities, and businesses, including claims that prostitution was accompanied by verbal and physical fighting near people’s homes and businesses, and within hotels and apartments; sex occurring in public areas such as doorways, alleys, and parked cars; and condoms and syringes on sidewalks, doorsteps, and yards. There are frequent complaints of women and girls being solicited and sometimes threatened by johns while walking to work or school. A less frequent but serious problem mentioned in several communities (e.g., San Diego, California; Worcester, Massachusetts) was from women whose cultural heritage meant they could face serious repercussions if they were seen being solicited by a john, even if the women or girls did nothing to provoke it and did not respond to it.

The kids who get out of school around 82nd (Avenue) are propositioned. [Prostitutes and johns] have sex in parking lots; we find condoms and needles; pimps fight against each other. When you think of how 82nd Avenue’s been associated with these crimes, we want to get away from that.

JR Ujifusa, Multnomah County, Oregon Deputy District Attorney, 2010

In response to such information acquired through interviews, we examined news archives to determine how frequently complaints were reported as a reason for police operations on prostitution. From the news reports and interviews together, we found that resident and business complaints led to reverse stings in at least 72% of the 920 U.S. cities and counties studied. This figure probably underestimates the overall percentage. While we saw evidence in news reports of complaints about prostitution in over 65% of the sites, about 95% of police interviewed said that reverse stings were often conducted in response to complaints. The percentage derived from news reports is likely to under-represent the level of police activity responsive to community complaints, since police do not always issue press releases on undercover prostitution operations, nor do they always say in news releases whether complaints elicited the operations, and news outlets do not always see fit to report on what caused reverse stings to be conducted.