413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

Similar to other study sites, prices are different than prices. The typical street pricing structure—which is
consistent from San Diego city to Northern San Diego County—is $40 for a hand job, $60 to $80 for oral
sex, and $80 to $120 for sex. For dates arranged online, $120 to $140 is charged per half-hour and $200
is charged per hour. Most individuals will only accept cash and an average of eight to ten clients are seen
in a day. Despite the relative consistency of prices over the last couple of years, the downturn in the
economy has forced some sex workers to drop their prices and offer $80 or $100 “specials”:
[They would typically make] $500–1,000 a day … Well, the recession or rather the
economy has affected that. Even when I first started working …in January of 2010 the
going rate, for instance, [oral sex] was $6080 and sex was $100 or so. This is for a street
walker, not for an in-call or an out-call. Now, in 2011, just one year later guys were asking
me for full sex for $40 and [oral sex] for $20. They are much more willing to negotiate
down. And it is a free market economy, if they are not getting the money they are
obviously going to get out of the car and go to the next guy. (San Diego Law Enforcement
Official)
Despite the thousands of dollars that are made in a week, there are operational costs associated with the
business. These costs include hotels/motels, food, rental cars, gas, clothes, and hair and nails expenses. In
one case, a pimp paid a hotel $24,000. Pimps often “pamper” the women and girls that work for them by
buying them designer purses and weekly manicures and pedicures. This would help boost their selfesteem,
but was a tactic used by pimps to prepare the women and girls for their next date as well as
manipulate them to continue to work for them.
Women and girls who worked for pimps were sometimes required to meet a quota between $500 to
$1,000 every night. Pimp-controlled women and girls are forced to hand all earnings over to their pimp.
Some might get a daily allowance of $80 to $100 to cover their hotel room and food for the day. It was up
to the women and girls to budget accordingly. For those who do not get an allowance, they are at the
mercy of the pimp, even when it comes to being fed:
We had one girl that we arrested that all she begged for was to get a cheeseburger and so
we actually ended up driving over to McDonald’s and getting her a cheeseburger, but yet
she’s carrying around a couple hundred dollars in her pocket … it’s not her money. (San
Diego Law Enforcement Official)
Of the eight study sites, San Diego has uncovered the most amount of gang involvement in the
underground commercial sex economy. Unlike other study sites, there is less generational, long-term
pimping and larger number of African American males ages 16 to 22 who “fall into” the lifestyle or get
involved through friends. Law enforcement found that the majority of these young men are ganginvolved,
specifically with the Bloods and Crips, and use their networks in school and in the community to
recruit girls, often their classmates:
On the street, that is where you are going to find 95 percent of your underage girls. This is
because it is the younger pimps that are going out and getting them anyway so you will
find a lot of pimps that are either still in high school, of high school age or just out of high
school. They are involved in the gangs and they are the ones going and recruiting the
girls. They are recruiting the girls straight out of school. They either know them or they go
to a place where the girls hang out, they go to the malls, beaches, anywhere you think the
young girls are going to congregate. (Federal Law Enforcement Official)
Stakeholders do not believe that these pimps are pedophiles just because they are pimping juveniles.
Rather they are opportunists and view their underage female classmates as their way to make money with
minimal risk. Since these young males are often gang involved, this is one of the reasons why gang
involvement in the UCSE has proliferated over the years.
Law enforcement has encountered more Bloods pimping girls than Crips. According to one San Diego law
enforcement agency, only 25 percent of the persons that they arrested for pimping were documented gang
members. However, they believed the statistic should be closer to 80 percent, since many young men wear
gang colors, are involved in violent acts, and make statements that they are gang members. Because they
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