Commercial Sexual Exploitation Victims Treated as Offenders: Examining the Gendered Risk Factors of Incarcerated Youth Charged with Prostitution

ABSTRACT

Minors under the age of 18 involved in prostitution, or commercial sex acts, are defined as victims by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. However, state and local justice systems continued to arrest and incarcerate minors for prostitution after the passage of the TVPA despite widespread agreement that youth involved in commercial sexual exploitation are victims, not offenders. Most youth charged with prostitution have an extensive history of victimization experiences and detaining them often exacerbates their problems, delays appropriate therapeutic responses, interrupts their education, exposes them to youth who commit more serious offenses, and increases justice system costs. The purpose of this study is to describe the characteristics and risk factors (e.g., victimization histories, drug/alcohol use, gang involvement, home type) of justice-involved youth charged with prostitution in the United States. Given that males and females have different pathways to crime/arrest, this study will also test for gender differences in these risk factors using a nationally representative sample of incarcerated youth (Survey of Youth in Residential Placement; Sedlak, 2003). Results indicate this population of incarcerated youth have several risk factors, including extensive victimization experiences during childhood, and that these experiences vary by gender. I conclude with the implications of this research and give several policy and future research recommendation.

KEYWORDS:

• Juvenile offenders
• victimization
• gender differences
• domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST)
• juvenile justice

Acknowledgments

This research uses data from the Survey of Youth in Residential Placement (SYRP), a study directed by Andrea J. Sedlak, Ph.D., Vice President, and Associate Director of Human Services Research at Westat, and funded by grant 2001–JR–BX–K001 from Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Additional Westat staff who made key contributions to the study included Carol Bruce, Ph.D., David Cantor, Ph.D., John Hartge, John Brown, Alfred Bishop, Gary Shapiro, Sheila Krawchuk, Karla McPherson, Ph.D., Monica Basena, Kristin Madden, and Ying Long, as well as many other Westat staff, too numerous to name here. The National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) also assisted Westat during the SYRP design, recruitment, and preliminary analyses. Contributing NCCD staff included Madeline Wordes, Ph.D., Eileen Poe-Yamagata, M.S., and Christopher J. Hartney. Data is available at through the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data at https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34304.v1

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. There is no such thing as a “youth sex worker” or “child prostitute.” Even if they are NOT under the control of a trafficker, the minor is 1) vulnerable due to age; and 2) still being exploited by adults for sexual gratification (Adams et al., 2010). A person under 18 should not be referenced as “working” in relation to sex, as this masks the coercion and manipulation minors routinely experience in the sex trade. All state and federal laws have caught up to the times by defining minors under 18 trading sex with adults as “exploited people” (Polaris Project, 2014). Under federal law, whether someone is a sex trafficking victim is determined by age, not only the presence of a trafficker because minors cannot equally contend with the pressures of homelessness, hunger, economic desperation, and manipulation by older adults (Mitchell et al., 2010; Reid et al., 2019).

2. The U.S. Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act (2014) and the U.S. Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (2015) strengthened the TVPA’s stance by marking an expansion of the definition of “child abuse” to include human trafficking, which encompasses people who are commercially exploited via sex acts or labor.

3. Commercial sex is defined as any sex act in which anything of value is given or received (e.g., money, food, clothing, shelter, drugs). Commercial sexual includes various acts, such as engaging in prostitution, pornography, stripping, or live/streamed sex shows. Anyone under the age of 18 who engaged in commercial sex is considered a victim of CSE or domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) under federal law.

4. ACEs refer to 10 experiences including 6 types of abuse/neglect, and 4 experiences beyond what is considered abuse or victimization (i.e., household substance abuse, household mental illness, parental separation/divorce, and household member with a history of jail/imprisonment; Felitti et al., 1998).

5. Though not all studies are consistent on this risk factor, as Mitchell et al. (2010) found that most juveniles “involved in prostitution” were not homeless.

6. Polyvictimization is the experience of distinct types of victimizations, such as physical and sexual abuse (Finkelhor et al., 2007, 2005). In fact, many children who identify as victims of single type of abuse are actually polyvictims (Finkelhor et al., 2009, 2011). For example, Herrenkohl and Herrenkohl (2009) found that among victimized youths, only 25% reported experiencing just one type of victimization, suggesting that polyvictimization may be the norm among youths exposed to violence, rather than the exception.

7. I chose to include the previous two variables as separate measures because there was considerable variation in the responses to the molested as a child and youth had forced sex questions among the full SYRP sample, even though 5.7% indicated yes for both (n = 5,069). For example, some youth indicated they had been molested as a child but did not have forced sex (n = 3,888, or 4.4%), while others indicated they had forced sex but were not molested (n = 1,498, or 1.7%).

8. The question read: “At the time you were (first taken into custody for the crime(s) that led to your stay here/taken into custody for your present stay) who were you living with? You may choose more than one answer.”