Retired Pimps’ Reflections on Quitting

• In Event: Quitting the Sex Trade: Pimps and Sex Workers and their Various Forms of Exiting

Abstract

Some pimps quit work because they are tired, some feel guilty, some move on to other work and others age-out. All of these pimps qualify as 'retired' as they do not plan on returning. Much of the desistance literature focuses on how offenders express their ‘good’ and ‘bad’ selves with an emphasis on quitters being driven to find their ‘good’ selves through neutralization or other narrative devices (Maruna, 2009; Paternoster & Bushway, 2009). Not all of the pimps in this study are desisters as they were not making a conscious effort to quit. However, many of them, even the desisters, challenge the ‘good/bad me’ dichotomy. Some pimps remember being hustlers, ladies’ men, financially successful, running a business in a dangerous setting, and other states associated with what I call the ‘bad ass me.’ These types of accounts present an alternative quitter identity, which challenges some notions about the ‘good/me’ dichotomy. 85 pimps were interviewed in situ in housing projects in Harlem.

Authors

• Amber Horning Ruf, University of Massachusetts, Lowell

• Sara Jordeno, Marymount Manhattan College