413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

Kansas City, Missouri
Sixteen individuals were interviewed about the local underground commercial sex economy in Kansas
City, Missouri. Representatives from the following agencies were interviewed: Kansas City Police
Department (KCPD), the FBI, the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI, formerly ICE), the US
Attorney’s Office for Western Missouri, the US Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and the Federal Public
Defender’s Office.
Unlike the other study sites, the underground commercial sex economy in Kansas City is not particularly
diverse and consists mainly of street and Internet prostitution (see table 4.5). The majority of street
prostitution consists of drug-addicted individuals; however, there are individuals who work both the
street and Internet who are not drug-addicted. The main facilitators in the economy tend to be street and
Internet pimps who recruit women and girls from similar disadvantaged backgrounds as their own.
Because of the city’s central location and the pair of major highways passing through (I-70 and I-35),
authorities have long recognized that Kansas City is a major hub for drug trafficking. The KCPD
hypothesized that for the same reason, the city is also an important location on sex trafficking circuits. In
particular, authorities have seen cases connected to St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis. Although
massage parlors no longer seem to be present in Kansas City, they did exist in the city and were operated
by Chinese nationals who wired proceeds to China. There seems to be little gang involvement in the UCSE
market, which KCPD attributed to limited gang activity in the city.
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