Clinton is a city of under 8,000 residents in Laurens County, South Carolina. Located in upstate South Carolina about 60 miles northwest of Columbia, it is part of the Greenville–Mauldin–Easley Metropolitan Statistical Area. Prostitution and connected robberies have been documented in the city. To address these problems, sex buyer arrests and identity disclosure have occurred in the city.

In May 2010, a former Clinton Police Department officer pleaded guilty to charges that he solicited sex from a woman so he wouldn’t file a drug charge against her, according to the attorney general’s office. In 2008, the man was called to a Clinton home on a civil disturbance call, where he saw drugs and marijuana inside, and then accepted oral sex from the woman in exchange for not charging her with drug possession. He was sentenced to eight years in prison suspended to six months in prison and four years probation. His identity was released to the press. It is unclear whether he lost employment because of the incident.

In June 2018, an investigation into the death of a Laurens woman whose body was found by the side of a Mountville road led to a man being arrested for soliciting prostitution and other crimes. The woman’s body was found on the side of Beaverdam Church Road in Mountville when a farmer saw her body while he was driving his tractor down the road. The initial autopsy report ruled out foul play, but the official cause of death was still unknown pending the toxicology report. While investigating the circumstances of her death, officers learned the woman had gotten into a vehicle with an unknown person at a gas station at the intersection of Highway 76 and Torrington Road in Clinton. After posting photos of the person on Facebook, deputies received tips and identified the man, a Clinton resident. Officers found the man and later arrested him, charging him with obstruction of justice, drug conspiracy, and soliciting prostitution. Warrants alleged that the day before the body was discovered, the man solicited the woman for sex and paid her $25. He was charged with obstructing justice because he allegedly hindered officers in recovering the woman’s body by removing her body from a vehicle and placing her on the side of the road without notifying law enforcement. The man’s identity was disclosed to the press.