413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

6. For offenders, the prevalence of online child pornography communities reinforces
and normalizes child pornography offenses. Many of the offenders interviewed were
members of online child pornography communities. These communities allow them to be around
like-minded individuals, share child pornography content, and discuss their fantasies, which may
or may not involve first-hand contact with children. Online child pornography communities also
allow individuals to communicate with one another under a cloak of anonymity.
7. Due to resource limitations, the least technologically savvy offenders are most likely
to be detected. Both stakeholders and inmates incarcerated on child pornography charges
described a variation in collecting behavior and networking levels across Internet child
pornography offenders. While some offenders are technologically sophisticated, sharing strategies
to evade law enforcement within structured trading networks, other offenders described
themselves as “point and click,” using rudimentary methods to download, store, and share child
pornography.
Policy and Practice Implications
The current findings expand our knowledge about the size and structure of the underground commercial
sex economy. Further, the findings have implications for policy and practice:
All states and DC should mandate training to ensure that law enforcement is equipped with the
knowledge necessary to identify and pursue cases of human trafficking.
All states and DC should develop human trafficking task forces or bodies to help coordinate law
enforcement strategies statewide.
All states should include fraud and coercion in their definitions of sex trafficking, and enact
statutes that invite broad interpretations of fraud and coercion that include subtle, non-physical
forms used to manipulate victims.
All states and DC should allow law enforcement to use wiretaps to investigate human trafficking
offenses.
Federal law should require that trafficking hotlines are posted on websites hosting service
advertisements, including Craigslist.com and Backpage.com. All states and DC should similarly
mandate that local newspapers hosting classified advertisements post trafficking hotline
information.
Additional resources should be made available to local and state law enforcement agencies to
maintain consistent and visible law enforcement attention to sex trafficking and pursue
investigations.
Cities and counties should address sex trafficking as a complex problem that requires a
systemwide response, and schools, law enforcement, and social service agencies must work
collaboratively to combat sex trafficking in their communities. Prevention campaigns must ensure
that both boys and girls are educated about the role of force, fraud, coercion, and exploitation in
sex trafficking.
In coordination with prosecutors, law enforcement trainings should focus on both victim and
offender interview techniques to identify signs of fraud and coercion. Local and federal
prosecutors, law enforcement, and judges should be trained on the evidence necessary to prove
fraud and coercion according to the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act standards and the
legal standards of state human trafficking laws.
Investigative techniques used to uncover organized crime, drug trafficking, and gangs should be
adopted to better uncover the level of organized crime within all forms of the UCSE. Crosstraining
of narcotics, gang, and prostitution/sex trafficking investigators should be developed and
promoted.
Steps should be taken to increase law enforcement racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, and recruit
individuals with fluency in languages spoken by suspected offenders and victims in the local
UCSE.
Authorities in countries where child pornography is being produced, traded, and downloaded,
and where sex tourism is occurring, not only need to cooperate with one another but also need to
make this issue a priority. One way to accomplish this is by developing and enforcing memoranda
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