Youth Involvement in the Sex Trade: A National Study

Date

2016

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Center for Court Innovation

Abstract

This study was animated by the goal of gaining a representative portrait of the lives and needs of youth who are involved in exchanging sex for money, food, housing, drugs, or other goods. The study was overseen by the Center for Court Innovation in collaboration with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Researchers from John Jay developed the youth interview instrument and led the fieldwork in the Atlantic City site, and researchers from the Center for Court Innovation contracted with experienced ethnographers to lead the fieldwork in the five other sites and conducted the multi-site analysis presented in this report. The six research sites were selected to represent a geographically diverse set of locations that, at the outset of the project, were deemed likely to possess a relatively sizable population of youth in the sex trade. Final site selection was informed by official prostitution arrest statistics collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; call volume from a national human trafficking hotline maintained by the Polaris Project; and key informant interviews regarding perceived national “hub sites” for the sex trafficking of underage individuals. The feasibility of implementing the study methodology was also considered in final site selection. The four principal elements of the study methodology are summarized below.

Description

Keywords

juveniles, sex trade, domestic minor sex trafficking, response, research

Citation

Swaner, R., Labriola, M., Rempel, M., Walker, A., & Spadafore, J. (2016). Youth Involvement in the Sex Trade: A National Study. New York: Center for Court Innovation.

DOI