413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

The Makeup and Conditions of the Street-Based Sex Market
In cities across the country, more individuals came to the streets to sell sex in the mid- to late- 1980s and
throughout the 1990s—the years that crack cocaine use was becoming widespread. Many of these newer
sex workers were notably younger and drug-addicted.
Although individuals have, over the years, entered street-based sex work at young ages, 72 many sex
workers noted that the new sex workers in the 1990s and 2000s were younger—some as young as thirteen
years old. An individual in Washington, DC who had been trading sex since the 1980s described this
trend:
Over time, now, [and] in 1990s and 2000s, the girls are like 16 and 17 years old. There
weren’t that many young girls when I first started. The older girls tried to get the younger
girls off the block back in the day. They’d try to get [them] to school. But in 1990s, the
girls started coming out to the stroll at a much younger age. There were only four to five
young girls when I started. Today, there are so many young girls. (L5)
Other individuals described older sex workers’ efforts to urge younger sex workers to leave the streets.
This was true of a 43-year-old sex worker from Dallas who, when asked how young the sex workers on the
street were in the 1990s, responded: “Oh goodness gracious. There was one that I tried to take under my
wing and tell her that she needed to get out. She was 14. And I told her baby, you are in the wrong place”
(M3).
Many speculated that crack use and dependence caused this surge in sex workers and that it continues to
bring new sex workers into the trade in cities across the country. A respondent from Washington, DC, who
began working in the 1980s, explained, “At one point in time, in the mid-1980s to the 1990s, I thought
there was a surge of prostitution going on. New faces were always popping up. It was because of the drugs.
The crack epidemic played a huge role in the prostitution in the city” (L4). A 49-year-old individual who
worked in Denver described the market in the late 1990s similarly: “From 1998 to 2000, there were more
girls out there, all addicted as well” (J10). When asked to consider those selling sex in the 2000s, a 43-
year-old from Dallas similarly noted the youth and drug dependence of sex workers on the street:
Interviewer: So you said that most girls are doing this for the drugs
Respondent: For the drugs.
Interviewer: Did you ever see any girls who were not doing drugs
Respondent: Nope.
Interviewer: Never saw it
Respondent: Nope.
Interviewer: And even when you were working with the young … girls, you think that
they were on drugs
Respondent: They were on drugs. Most of them smoke crack or … weed. Most of them
were crackheads. (M4)
Beyond substance use, respondents identified other reasons for the increase in sex workers (and
especially younger sex workers) they observed on the street. One noted that young, transgender
individuals sought acceptance—a trend that has persisted over time: “Especially with the trans
population, the girls are getting younger, because of the non-acceptance in the homes” (L8).
Younger individuals may have been drawn into the work by pimps, or at least spent some time working
for pimps. Scholars have found that pimp-controlled sex workers tend to be younger than non-pimpcontrolled
sex workers when they first trade sex (Norton-Hawk 2004). Sex workers who worked in cities
72 As was detailed above, individuals interviewed for this study began their sex work as early as age 11.
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