Self-Narratives of Persistent Pimps and Those Anticipating Desistance: Emotions, Conventional Work, and Moral Profitability Calculus

ABSTRACT

Identity, values, and emotional processes underlying desistance and persistence in the illicit sex trade have received little empirical attention. An analysis of qualitative interviews of 49 active pimps or drivers managing sex workers showed that persisting pimps and those leading double lives assigned different meanings to their participation in legitimate employment. Persisters valued legitimate work as a strategy to evade arrest, whereas pimps with “double lives” emphasized legitimate work as providing long-term financial security and enhanced social identity. Analysis yielded contextualized understanding of their self-narratives (e.g.) that underlie reflections upon who they are and who they want to become, and the moral contemplations and emotional processes involved in stigma management.

KEYWORDS:

• Desistance
• life course theories
• employment
• sex work
• pimping

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Pimp, in this paper, is not used as a pejorative term, but a legal term, and is not based on the self-identity of the interviewees. The term, pimp, is consistent with state crimes of pandering, pimping, or promotion of prostitution.

2. Our research is informed through a mixed method approach. As Brent and Kraska (2010) noted, “This approach requires that our field abandon the incompatibility thesis and dismissive thinking. Our research objectives, and not methodological preference, should guide method selection – whether qualitative, quantitative, or both.” (p. 427). Pragmatism is the typical philosophy of science associated with mixed methods, and it challenges the beliefs that qualitative and quantitative are incompatible. In the current research, the qualitative description of non-coercive pimps provides the needed contextual details to understand the strategies they employed and their background, and to have more confidence in their reports. The statistical tools allowed a more systematic way to see the patterns among the socialization concepts and coercion. In this study, we utilized conversational open-ended qualitative interviews to avoid making assumptions about how pimps run their business, and informed participants that we would ask follow-up questions so that we fully understood their perspective. The researchers had no prior or current experience in the illicit sex trade, and had or have no firm opinions about the appropriate policies for the illicit sex trade. As interdisciplinary researchers in the fields of criminal justice and social psychology who appreciate both qualitative and quantitative research, we wanted to learn as much as possible about the pimps’ views, life history, and their business from their perspective.