413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

Chapter 7
Business Practices and Operational Tools of
Pimping
Introduction
Due to the business-like nature of the underground commercial sex economy, pimps and traffickers
engage in conventional business practices, such as advertising, renting business locations, the
transportation of workers, communication, internal business structure organization, and financial
transactions and recordkeeping (Bales and Lize 2005; Raphael and Myers-Powell 2010). Understandably,
it is these business characteristics that can aid law enforcement in potentially bringing down underground
commercial sex trades. Bales and Lize (2005) refer to pimps’ and traffickers’ financial and commercial
transaction records as the “Achilles’ heel” of prostitution and trafficking offenders. Despite these
observations, not much is known at present about the day-to-day occurrences in underground commercial
sex markets. While research based on the experiences and perspectives of law enforcement, service
providers, sex workers, and formerly trafficked persons has revealed the nature of sex-for-money
transactions on an individual basis, few studies have shown how these transactions fit into larger sex
markets.
Pimps in this study rarely expressed a formalized business plan that drove business practices, though
some respondents felt guided by certain strategies or principles. When asked if they had a business plan,
respondents spoke to general hopes and aspirations. Most commonly, the strategy was to simply make
money:
I don’t believe I really had a business model in that sense, but I always had a plan. What I
did was make a plan and execute it as cleanly as possible. My main goal was always to
make one million dollars. I always had that sort of goal to aim for. It’d be one million
dollars, then 100 million dollars, then a billion … I never got there, obviously, but I got to
a million, in about the first six months. (A4)
Other respondents shared the intention to “go legitimate” and invest money into creating a legal business
structure to support their work. One offender explained that he pimped to have fun in the short term:
That was to just have fun while I was young. Experience it, just to get the things I wanted
like materialistic stuff like laptops, big screen TVs, clothes, provide for my daughter, kids
and stuff. If it was to get where I was able to just quit, or right now I got locked up, I
wanted to just get out and go back to getting a job. Finishing school. (E16)
Other respondents felt their business plan was even less intentional. A respondent reported that he relied
on learned experience to inform his actions as a business manager: “I didn’t have a strategy, I was going
off of live and learn. Living off experience, trial, and error” (B3). Another pimp felt he prescribed to no
intentional business model, stating simply, “I was just getting high and having sex” (C8).
Despite a lack of formal business plans, pimps cultivated networks and business-related relationships,
repeated practices to maintain and grow their market reach, and followed pricing plans (albeit flexible) to
determine profits. Similarly, pimps routinely invested money back into business operations. As a result,
pimps developed commercial entities within the underground sex market that functioned as competing
businesses.
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