413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

Rules
One bad girl can knock your whole stable loose. Get rid of the bad apple. If I needed to
hit them, I didn’t need them. (G3)
Pimps exerted control over their businesses by imposing rules on employees. Sixty-one percent of
respondents reported requiring their employees to follow certain rules. Often, respondents described
these rules as an effort to promote employee safety and well-being, while other pimps explained rules as a
means to gain control over employees and coerce them into sex work. While pimps shared different
policies on rule-making and enforcement, some common rules were shared across respondents. The most
common rules among respondents related to the use of alcohol or drugs, allowed clientele,
communications with other pimps, and required earnings. Table 6.3 presents the prevalence of rules as
reported by our study respondents.
Drugs and Alcohol
Rule
Table 6.3 Common Rules
Frequency
Drug and Alcohol Use 27.4% (n = 20)
Clientele 20.5% (n = 15)
Communications with Pimps 19.2% (n = 14)
Quotas 17.8% (n = 13)
Past literature on pimps and their attitudes regarding employee drug use has offered mixed findings.
Pimp-encouraged and pimp-facilitated drug use has been seen as a “[substitution] for violence as the
means of coercing compliance from workers” (May et al. 2000, 8). Researchers have also found that some
pimps do actively exploit and encourage sex workers’ drug addictions in order to create dependency upon
the pimp and increase the pimp’s control over actions (May et al. 2000; Raymond et al. 2001).
Respondents in this study did not corroborate extant literature suggesting that pimps tend to target
women who are dependent on drugs (see Raphael and Myers-Powell 2009, 2010; Raymond et al. 2001;
Wilson and Dalton 2007). To the contrary, respondents reported avoiding employees with drug
addictions.
Other researchers have found that not all pimps encourage drug use. Williamson and Cluse-Tolar (2002)
argue that only lower hierarchy pimps, called “tennis shoes pimps,” allow themselves or their sex workers
to abuse drugs, while more successful pimps do not allow their sex workers to engage in drug use.
Findings from this study also suggest differing approaches among pimps; however, more respondents
restricted drug use than encouraged or exploited drug dependencies or use. While six percent of
respondents reported that they either encouraged or were complicit with employee use of drugs and
alcohol, 27 percent of respondents prohibited or set limitations on the use and abuse of substances.
The small percentage of respondents who encouraged drug use explained the utility of substance abuse to
facilitate sex work. One pimp explained, “I’m going to tell you something—most hookers that I had, they
used cocaine. So I guess when you’re on cocaine, outside looking in, you want to constantly be doing
something. When they get on that cocaine, they like ‘C’mon Daddy, let’s get some money. I want to wear
my new hook up.’ They want to get pretty and I’m like ‘Damn, you really want to do this’” (D13). Another
respondent explained that drugs could calm tensions when conflicts between employees occurred: “It
doesn’t escalate to a point that it gets physical, mostly verbal. Just be quiet, shut up, sit down, drink this,
take a little bit of this” (E15). As the quotes demonstrate, drugs were provided to employees to encourage
profit and manage employee conflict.
Other pimps did not actively encourage drug use, but allowed employees to get high. One respondent who
also dealt drugs supplied his employees with drugs when they wanted them. He reported that his
employees would use “Powder, pills, ecstasy, violet—it’s a new drug, like ecstasy” (G12). Other
respondents reported that they also engaged in drug use. One pimp explained, “[My employees had] drug
habits. [Ecstasy] pills, weed, cocaine. The majority was cocaine. I was doing it. They came around and
tried it. I thought it was their choice, so it was like, go ahead. I always had some on me. They might go out
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