A comprehensive new study into the sex trade in eight U. Released Wednesday, the page study developed by the Urban Institute and funded by the Justice Department, examines the underground commercial sex economy in Atlanta; Dallas; Washington, D. The study is the result of more than interviews with pimps, sex traffickers, prostitutes and child pornographers, law enforcement officials and attorneys.
Researchers acknowledged in their findings that reliable data and statistics were hard to find for the underground industry. In fact, the purpose of the study was to rectify the lack of raw data available to policymakers, researchers said in their introduction.
Other information, including how pimps run their operations or why some prostitutes chose to remain in the industrry, was based on interviews conducted between and Nearly people convicted of prostitution or trafficking in prostitution were interviewed, according to the report.
The study did not attempt to differentiate between people who were coerced into the sex industry and those who were involved voluntarily. Instead, it attempts to document the underground business of sex trafficking; estimate the size of the commercial sex economy in the eight cities studied; and determine how sex traffickers operate.
Sano, the Seattle police captain, believes the number of prostitution-related crimes jumped due to changes implemented years ago in how police record and identify such crimes. In , Washington legislators became the first in the nation to pass a state law criminalizing human trafficking. The state, in recent years, has also gotten tougher on those who coerce or force underage girls into prostitution, as well as their customers.
