Why are You Here? Modeling Illicit Massage Business Location Characteristics with Machine Learning

ABSTRACT

Illicit massage businesses are a venue for sex and labor trafficking in the United States. Though many of their locations are made publicly available through online advertising, little is known about why they choose to locate where they do. In this work, we use inferential modeling to better understand the spatial distribution of illicit massage businesses within the U.S. Based on addresses web-scraped weekly from online advertisements over 6 months, we modeled illicit massage business prevalence at the census tract and county levels. We used publicly available data to characterize census tracts and counties, finding that the state in which they are located, distance to international airports, rent and income levels, racial composition, and religious presence all had significant relationships to illicit massage business presence. Illicit massage businesses operating with unethical labor practices and/or forced sexual services are not in line with just, peaceful, and inclusive societal goals, and the burdens of this industry disproportionately fall on women. While we emphasize that not all illicit massage businesses are settings of human trafficking, better understanding this industry is a key step toward better regulating it and protecting those harmed within it.

KEYWORDS:

• Illicit massage business
• inferential modeling
• spatial attributes

Acknowledgments

This work was partially funded by University of Michigan through Rackham Merit Fellows program. We thank Dr. Tom Logan (University of Canterbury) for his work on the web scraper development that greatly aided this work. This support is gratefully acknowledged. The findings and opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the funding agencies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website

Notes

¹ The term “sexually oriented business” has a long and complex history of legal definitions and varies by context (Lasker, 2002). Common definitions include: adult bookstores, adult theaters, facilities that feature nude or topless dancing, facilities with sexually oriented live entertainment, massage parlors, adult motels, escort services, nude modeling studios, adult video stores, sex shops, peep shows, and mainstream stores with back rooms including sexually oriented material (Kelly & Cooper, 2000; Owens, 1997).

² Sex trafficking offenses in the study comprised of “compelled prostitution” and “trafficking of persons”, defined in the Texas Penal Code 9.43A.05 and 5.20A.02, respectively.

³ “Erotic massage parlor” is the term used by the website from which we collected the data (RubMaps). For the purposes of this study, it is interchangeable with the term, “illicit massage business” or “illicit massage parlor.”