413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

times, one security per girl. At some point we got to that way because of pimps. We’d take
women from pimps and they were mad. I went through a security agency. They did
background checks and everything. They didn’t know at first what they were hired to do.
Then one day I took them out to eat. I explained to them why I wanted to hire them. They
worked for me for a week, making sure the perimeter of everything was ok. At first, they
didn’t want to do it. But I said it’s going to happen anyway. Might as well get paid $200 a
day and protect a girl, or get $25 a day with another job. (H8)
Despite the process described above, hiring through a security company or other formal hiring agencies
was not a common practice cited among respondents. While the roles of non-sex worker employees
varied, one commonality across respondents was that additional employees were usually family members
or friends of the pimp.
Sex Worker Employees
Working with at least one employee who engages in sex work is, of course, a requisite for a pimp to enter
the UCSE. Sex workers engaged in commercial sex acts, but also fulfilled a host of other business
responsibilities, which varied across respondents. As noted above, some pimps took full control of
advertisement and scheduling, while others expected that the bulk of business responsibilities would be
completed by employees.
The number of individuals employed by each pimp varied across respondents. While the size of each
interviewees’ business changed over time, 28 respondents reported the average number of employees
involved in their businesses (see table 6.1). Among those 28, the median number was five employees. One
respondent stated that he employed 15 women over the course of a few years. Another respondent
expressed his preference for only one employee at a time, citing concerns regarding the additional costs of
multiple employees: “I usually had one. You make good money with one. That is because you’re spending
more money when you have more people. … Plus, females are hard to get along with when they’re living
together” (D13).
Different business models could dictate or influence the number of employees a pimp managed at one
time. One respondent explained his preference: “Four girls at one time. The way I’m doing it, it’s not a
commercial thing where I have 20 bitches. Everything a bitch gets, it’s coming to me. It’s pimping for real.
They give me it” (B3). According to the respondent, pimps with a higher number of employees were less
able to exert direct control over employees and collect all proceeds.
Table 6.1 Average Number of Employees per Business
Base City
Average Number
of Employees
Atlanta (n = 5) 4, 5, 5, 5, 9
Dallas (n = 5) 3, 3, 5, 9, 36
Denver (n = 4) 4, 4, 4, 7
Kansas City (n = 1) 10
Miami (n = 3) 12, 13, 18
San Diego (n = 8) 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6
Seattle (n = 2) 2, 3
Turnover rates could be high, as pimps reported that women frequently came and went. Among 49
respondents who estimated the total number of employees they worked with over the course of their
involvement in the sex market, the median number was 20. One respondent explained:
Girls would always come and go. Besides the four that stayed with me, girls would come
and go, all the time. Work for a weekend and then head back to the boyfriend after saying
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