413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

watching her, sometimes shouting out instructions on the phone to each other, and you
can see that he is making a phone call, her phone rings, she disconnects, he disconnects.
Other times you’ll see just the girl working, where the pimp isn’t on site, but he is on the
telephone with her from a bar, a restaurant, a casino, or the hotel room. (Seattle Law
Enforcement Official)
Stakeholders acknowledge that men and boys are involved in the sex trade; however, they know very little
about how that part of the market is structured. As one local law enforcement official explained, “We were
never able to break into the 16 percent of the population of boys that were being commercially sexually
exploited. Eighty-four percent of the victims are girls, so we blew it, we missed out on 16 percent of the
population. That is a very secret society, it is so hard to get into that, and it is sad because we know that
they are out there being victimized too.”
Similar to other study sites, prices charged on the street (per sex act), are different than the prices charged
online (per time period). The typical pricing structure on the street is $30 to $40 for manual stimulation,
$50 to $60 for oral sex, and from $75 to $100 for “full service.” For dates arranged online, an average of
$125 to $150 is charged per half-hour and $175 to $200 is charged per hour. The women who arrange
dates online will often “upsell” and charge johns extra for the “girlfriend experience,” which often involves
kissing and groping.
Street prices have stayed relatively stable over the last several decades since the prices of drugs,
particularly crack cocaine, have remained consistent. An individual can still buy a rock of crack cocaine
for $20 to $30. Dates arranged on the street usually consist of car dates and average 15 minutes. Price
negotiation is more common on the street as opposed to the Internet:
You can negotiate on the street, you’ve got that face-to-face and you can say, how much it
is for straight sex, how much for half and half, how much for just oral sex They give you
a price and you say, “Oh man, I’ve only got $60 on me” and depending on the girl, how
desperate they are, they may take $10 for oral sex. On the other hand when you order a
girl off of the Internet, a girl will say my time is my time, $150 for a half-hour, $200 for
an hour, whatever and that’s non-negotiable and then when they show up you can
negotiate extras. (Seattle Law Enforcement Official)
Despite the downturn in the economy in most parts of the country (and in most cities included in this
study), Seattle is home to some of the largest and most profitable businesses. As one federal law
enforcement officer stated, “But they used to say, as Boeing goes, Seattle goes. Boeing’s making record
orders. Microsoft’s doing pretty damn well. Costco’s doing very well. Amazon’s doing well. So as a whole,
there's a lot of, pretty much all the major Seattle-based companies, those are doing [well]. They will have
people who are making good money that are getting paid.”
When asked if drugs, guns, and human trafficking were connected, one law enforcement official stated,
“They are somewhat interconnected, but the entrepreneurs are realizing that they can still make a lot of
money selling drugs and guns but they can make as much money with less risk in prostitution.”
Up until the last five to ten years, the pimps in the Seattle area primarily became involved in the UCSE
through family members and other members of their community. They followed the rules of pimping and
worked independently. This was considered by many, including stakeholders, as “old school pimping.” It
was not until recently that gang involvement in the UCSE started to proliferate and changed the landscape
of pimping in Seattle:
More often than not, in the last few years, there’s more gangsters turned pimp, than
original pimps. Very rarely do we see old school pimps anymore, or what the girls would
call gentleman pimps. And there are set rules to the old school gentleman pimps, they
don’t mess with any gang associations, whereas the gangsters they don’t have those rules,
they don’t have that discipline, and there’s no respect among them as far as stealing one
pimp’s girl, losing yours, and they are a little more heavy handed, you know they hustle,
they’re into supplementing, they, they supplement their activities with other illicit
activities whether they use the girls on not heft, drugs, boosting property, guns. (Seattle
Law Enforcement Official)
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