Consulting Legal Experts in the Real and Virtual World: Pimps’ and Johns’ Cultural Schemas about Strategies to Avoid Arrest and Conviction

ABSTRACT

This study addressed the cultural schemas about legal issues associated with on line solicited prostitution from those embedded in the subculture. Qualitative analysis of conversations in a specialized legal website forum, coupled with interview data from 43 pimps, revealed that participants held similar realistic cultural schemas of law enforcement’s priorities and operations, and risk reduction strategies. Evasive strategies emphasized the importance of covert communication in interactions and the use of trustworthy connections (virtual verification websites and non-traceable technology) when engaging in on-line solicited prostitution. Findings have direct implication for strategies aimed at ending demand by targeting johns and pimps.

Acknowledgements

We thank the following research assistants for transcribing interviews and coding data: Michelle D. Mioduszewski, Hillary Livingston, and Brenna Van Maren. We also thank the Graduate School and the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at LUC for providing some of the funding for a research assistant.

Notes

¹ Since 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s Child Exploitation Task Force has coordinated eight multiday undercover operations targeting child sex trafficking operations. Dubbed Operation Cross Country, the FBI credits these efforts with the recovery of 3,600 children and convictions of 1,450 offenders, for which 14 life terms of incarceration were imposed and $3.1 million in assets seized (FBI 2014). In addition, after three years of criticism for facilitating prostitution and sexual exploitation, including a lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Illinois, Craigslist (an on-line classified website) closed its Adult Services section in the United States in September 2010 and worldwide in December 2010 (Latonero 2011). Backpage, another on-line classified website, currently is being sued in the U.S. District Court in Boston for its alleged role in promoting sex trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of children (Hudson 2015).

² We use these terms interchangeably throughout the article to avoid adopting either the perspective of participants in the illicit sex trade that their behavior is a service that should be legalized or the perspective of criminal justice officials that their behavior is wrongful and should be stigmatized and criminalized.

³ Research also has examined how discussion forums on the Internet facilitate the sharing of norms and information about risk of formal sanctions from the criminal justice system for a variety of illegal behavior, including pedophilia (e.g., Durkin and Bryant 1999; Quayle and Taylor 2002; Holt, Blevins, and Burkert 2010), digital piracy (e.g., Holt and Copes 2010), computer hacking (e.g., Holt 2007), and theft (e.g., Copes 2003; Mann and Sutton 1998).

⁴ One participant primarily drove and protected sex workers, but had been socialized and taught by family members since the age of 12. He provided information about the family operated business, and given the time in the illicit sex trade had well-developed schema about police operations and strategies to reduce the chance of detection.

⁵ During initial interviews, three respondents were provided with referral slips, and informed that they would receive $20 for referrals of additional pimps who completed the interview. The three initial seeds represented a white driver involved in a sex trafficking operation, a black pimp who entered through family socialization, and a Latino pimp who was a gang member. Of the 43 respondents, six interviewees participated through a formal referral of a prior interviewee. Referral money was paid in person through arranging a mutually convenient time to meet at a public location. In addition, a former black sex worker in the business for 25 years referred three black pimps.

⁶ The researcher learned that meet and greet conversations were used by pimps to solicit workers, and occasionally was propositioned after the interview, as the pimps did not believe fully that the interview was solely for research purposes. These propositions were soundly, but politely, rejected.

⁷ The posts of three posters who were widely discredited on all of their messages were removed from the qualitative analysis. These posters, two clients and one provider, generally presented very creative and incorrect interpretations of the constitution or regulatory laws, and attempted to suggest loopholes in these laws that would support a legal justification for engaging in prostitution activities. The three removed persons posted a total of 52 messages (including responses to the discredited responses), and received a total of 83 responses that discredited their original messages.

⁸ Sugardaddy is slang reference to describe a man who provides financial support to a younger companion with the man getting sexual access in return for the support. Several websites currently facilitate the development of such relationships including: sugardaddie.com, sugardaddieforme.com, sugardaddietoday, and seekingarrangement.

⁹ Two pimps, however, did describe the touch and feel test and believed that it was protection against being detected, as real cops could not do the touch and feel. They mentored their prostitutes to have the client expose himself first. For example, ID 39 alleged: “The way you work it to avoid being detected is if the uh, customer is coming, he has to expose himself first, otherwise uh, if she exposes herself first then she can be arrested. … If she goes and takes down her blouse or lifts up her skirt or anything and he’s a cop then you can be arrested. … Once he exposes himself …, it’s saying I am not a police officer.”

Additional information

Funding

Data for this project was funded through Georgia State University’s Cities Initiative that seeks to foster research to understand the complex issues facing urban centers and the development of innovative solutions.

Notes on contributors

Loretta J. Stalans

LORETTA J. STALANS is Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology with a dual appointment in Social Psychology at Loyola University Chicago. Her research interests include decision-making about norm violations, public views about sanction decisions, and violent offending.

Mary A. Finn

MARY A. FINN is Professor and Director of the School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University. Her research interests include violence against women and public policy responses to such violence.