Prostitution and Human Trafficking: A Shift in Community Understanding, Law Enforcement Culture, and Enforcement Practices

• In Event: Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation: What Do We Know, What Should We Do?

Abstract

For the past several decades, law enforcement agencies have demonstrated a rather stagnant approach to policing prostitution that focuses heavily on criminalizing sellers of sex, rather than buyers. In response to a growing understanding that prostitution is a system that can involve a great deal of exploitation, including human trafficking at the extreme, in 2014, the Houston Police Department’s (HPD) Vice Unit began to shift their emphasis in prostitution enforcement to focus on the demand for commercial sex. Using data from all of the HPD prostitution incident reports from 2014 and 2015 (n=3,190), this study explores patterns in prostitution arrests for buying, selling, and compelling prostitution. Additionally, this study identified common indicators of human trafficking noted in prostitution incident reports, providing recommendations for increased identification of potential human trafficking cases.

Author

• Rebecca Pfeffer, University of Houston - Downtown