Atlantic City is a resort community with about 38,000 residents, located on New Jersey’s Atlantic coast. It is a major tourism destination, known for its many casinos, nightclubs, beaches, and a boardwalk. Atlantic City has had a well-known, longstanding, and robust commercial sex market. The market was historically street-level and hotel-based, and has more recently (since the mid-2000s) been augmented by web-facilitated prostitution and sex trafficking.

Consumer level demand provides the revenue stream for all prostitution and sex trafficking, and has therefore been targeted by local law enforcement agencies as a strategy for prevention and response. The first known use of reverse stings in Atlantic City occurred in 1979. More recently, police arrested six men in a street-based reverse sting in June 2012, and seven were arrested in April 2013. Police supplement reverse stings by releasing identities of arrestees to the news media, and seizing vehicles of individuals arrested for prostitution-related offenses.

In November 2020, the AC City Council President suggested that publicly shaming those who solicit prostituted persons by displaying their mugshots on the Boardwalk digital displays or imposing hefty fines on operators of illegal housing units — prime locations for both drug dealing and prostitution — would send a message that Atlantic City will no longer turn a blind eye to people brazenly flouting the law.