413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

In addition, we conducted interviews with police, postal inspectors, prosecutors, Internal Revenue Service
agents, government officials, and public defenders involved in the investigation and prosecution of human
trafficking, pimping and pandering, child pornography, and prostitution cases in all eight sites. These
interviews concentrated on the research questions, particularly on how the UCSE operates and the
network ties within the UCSE. Finally, in addition to these stakeholders, we also interviewed national
subject matter experts from Polaris Project, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography, Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity
Section, and the US Postal Service.
The in-depth stakeholder interviews provided us with information on (1) characteristics of UCSE
offenders; (2) details of UCSE investigations and arrests; (3) evidence of illegal transactions and assets
seized; (4) knowledge of USCE criminal networks; and (5) UCSE network connections to illegal drugs and
weapons economies. They also provided us with a contextual understanding of the local underground
commercial sex economy; how much money is generated in the UCSE; how the UCSE impacts sex
trafficking—both the demand and network characteristics of offenders involved in the UCSE. Lastly, in
order to develop an offender database for interviewing purposes (see the following section for more
details), stakeholders were also asked to provide the names of individuals who were convicted of a UCSErelated
crime and were currently incarcerated.
Across the eight study sites, we conducted 119 in-depth interviews. The interview breakdown is as follows:
62 local law enforcement officers
33 federal law enforcement officers (Federal Bureau of Investigations and Homeland Security
Investigations agents)
6 postal inspectors
6 county or state prosecutors
6 federal prosecutors
3 Internal Revenue Service agents
2 government policy advisors
1 public defender
Most interviews were conducted in person 22 and lasted between one and two hours. The interviews were
voice recorded with the permission of the interview participant. Interviewers took detailed notes in the
cases where interviewees did not agree to be voice recorded. The interviews were semi-structured to
encourage respondents to provide open-ended responses. Appendices E–J includes copies of interview
consent forms and interview protocols for all interviewees.
Offender Interview Process
While official interviews with law enforcement and other stakeholders provide details about human
trafficking, child pornography, and prostitution that emerge through investigation, we felt that it was
critical to document the perspectives of the underground commercial sex market facilitators to fully
understand the nature of the UCSE. These interviews would help us address all the research questions
and, in particular, help us understand the characteristics of human trafficking operations, the amount of
money in the UCSE, the UCSE’s impact on trafficking, the ties between traffickers, and UCSE offenders’
characteristics. We originally proposed to conduct 30 interviews (traffickers/pimps = 10, sex workers =
10, child pornographers = 10) with individuals convicted of UCSE-related crimes in each of the eight sites
(n = 240); however, as will be explained below, we discovered that goal was not feasible early on in the
project.
The process of gaining approval to interview incarcerated individuals in federal and state prisons was a
long and fairly arduous process. Before we could reach out to the Bureau of Prisons and each site’s State
Department of Corrections, we needed to draft an interview protocol and create a database of incarcerated
22 In a few cases, interviews could not be arranged while we were on site due to scheduling constraints of the interviewees. These
interviews were subsequently conducted over the phone.
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