Annapolis is a city of almost 40,000 residents located along the Chesapeake Bay, just south of Baltimore. It is the capital of Maryland and county seat of Anne Arundel County. It is home to the U.S. Naval Academy. Prostitution and child sex trafficking have been well documented problems in the city for at least five decades. Recent examples include a case in which a former reality television star was arrested in Annapolis on sex trafficking charges for using his large social media following to recruit women to work for him in prostitution.  Among the crimes related to the local sex trade have been at least one prostitution-related homicide (a 2008 case involving a shooting homicide of an alleged pimp and wounding of a prostituted woman).

To combat consumer-level demand that drives all prostitution and sex trafficking, the city is known to have conducted reverse stings periodically since 1991, and substantial complaints from businesses and residents play a role in police conducting anti-prostitution operations. City and county law enforcement agencies have conducted both street-level and web-based reverse stings, and have publicized the identities of those arrested. One operation, a street-level reverse sting occurring in October 2012, resulted in the arrest of three sex buyers. The city has also had neighborhood groups active in collaborating to combat demand and some efforts at public education targeting the buying of sex as the source of prostitution and sex trafficking.