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ABSTRACT
The contribution of this article is to examine gang-organized sex trafficking by placing human trafficking research in conversation with gang research. Human trafficking researchers have not systematically focused on gangs in the US, and gang researchers in the US have not studied sex trafficking connected to gangs. For both reasons, there is a significant lack of primary data on traffickers - especially those in gangs - and significant misperceptions about both have driven the predominant and ineffective policy of apprehension and prosecution. This study investigated the prevalence of organized (gang-directed) versus disorganized (entrepreneurial) activity reported by gangs involved in San Diego’s underground sex economy (UGSE). Regression analysis was used to examine whether organized gangs were more likely than disorganized gangs to direct coordinated sex trafficking operations. The study finds a significant, positive association between gang organization and gang-directed sex trafficking, but it also finds that the majority of sex trafficking in San Diego is disorganized. Accordingly, we argue for a reorientation of current efforts under the United States’ federal policy framework (commonly referred to as the 4-P Framework) away from Prosecution, and toward Prevention - comprehensive, multi-agency approaches which have been shown to have the greatest impact on reducing violent crime. Since Prevention has been underutilized in the United States, our final contribution is to explore why Prevention has received less attention than Prosecution and Protection, and explore the principles and paradigms on which a preventive approach to gang-involved sex trafficking can be based.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplemental material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23322705.2024.2327948
Notes
1 A few recent studies include gangs in a larger dataset of domestic sex traffickers in the US (see Dank, et al., Citation2014b; Roe-Sepowitz et al., Citation2017), and at least one study of international crime and trafficking on a global scale (see Webb & Dobrev, Citation2011).
2 Of these, 37 individuals were law enforcement (LE) classified gang members. An additional 41 individuals (44%) who were not LE classified and self-identified their gang membership during the interview.
3 Within this category, three individuals identified as Filipino, 1 as Vietnamese, and 1 as “Asian”.
4 An additive measure was used instead of the standardized measure to get an “absolute” sense of complexity (on a 0–7 scale) rather than a relative indicator.
5 Notable examples include the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Comprehensive Community-Wide Gang Model, Boston’s Operation Ceasefire, and Philadelphia’s Youth Violence Reduction Partnership (YVRP).
6 For instance, the quantitative analysis is unable to determine whether gangs evolved Taxation structures for other reasons and were consequently better equipped to engage in Directed Facilitation, if this institution came about in response to the potential market, or if they both responded to a third, omitted variable.
7 This operationalization does not recognize a distinction between written versus unwritten rules. This is because the consequences for transgression are reported to be just as severe in gangs where there is an “understanding” rather than a “rulebook”