413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

Perceptions of Business-Related Risk
Respondents varied in their perceptions of the risks involved in pimping and respondents who interpreted
their work as risky expressed different fears. Concerns about arrest and prosecution were commonly
shared, but respondents also feared for the safety of employees and their personal well-being. Figure 5.6
illustrates what respondents reported as the greatest risk(s) of working in the UCSE.
Figure 5.6 Riskiest Outcome
Fears of Arrest
I was oblivious. I was like, I’m Mr. PI—top of the world. Can’t nobody touch me. They
touched me. (D7)
As Figure 5.6 demonstrates, arrest was the most prevalent fear expressed by respondents. One
interviewee reported, “Getting arrested was the main thing. That was the only thing I was worried about,
really” (D16). A woman charged with sex trafficking, who partnered with her significant other, explained
her greatest fear while pimping: “That everything that happened would happen. We had a disagreement
about one of the girls because I was questioning her age. One of the other girls said something to me. He
said he checked her ID. Then a month later, this happened (referring to arrest and incarceration)” (H7).
As a result of fears surrounding detection and arrest, interviewees attempted to mitigate risk by
proactively identifying law enforcement stings prior to committing a transaction that could incriminate
them. Strategies to identify undercover police officers varied. One respondent explained, “You ask if they
are the police. You see if they look too clean” (C5). Another respondent felt visual identification was not
difficult. He stated, “You know the police—their body language and their movement” (D3).
Other respondents noted that police sometimes acted inappropriately during sting operations. One pimp
trained his employees to describe customer actions aloud. The respondent believed that doing so could
render useless any vocal recording of a sting where a police officer acted inappropriately:
Lots of things the police can’t do or they’re not supposed to do. Maybe they’re not
supposed to touch you, but that never stopped nobody from going to jail … Every time
they make arrest, they have to record it as a solicitation. The recorder could be—with
technology it could be a micro-recorder—you could get butt naked with it on … If the
officer were to touch you, they can’t see that, so you would have to say, “Why are you
touching my coochie” Or something like that. Putting it out there verbally. If that’s the
police, that’s going to kill their case. (D8)
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