Monroe County is located in eastern Pennsylvania, roughly 50 miles southeast of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, and has about 169,000 residents. Some cities in this county that have worked on addressing demand include Stroudsburg and Mount Pocono. Prostitution activity, often arranged online and occurring within local businesses and hotels, has been reported in the county for years. The activity generates community complaints to police, and associated crimes include the commercial sexual exploitation of minors. In October 2022, detectives tracked down a sex trafficker based in Florida after he posted a prostitution ad online, and found one of his trafficking victims at a hotel in Tannersville. Officials said the trafficker abused the women and forced them to engage in prostitution in multiple states, from Florida to Pennsylvania and New York. He was convicted and sentenced to spend 33 years in prison on federal sex trafficking charges.

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. Demand reduction tactics used within the county include reverse stings and the disclosure of sex buyer identities. For example, in March 2015, the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office announced the completion of multiple web-based reverse stings targeting sex buyers in the area of Stroudsburg. Conducted between January and March, the investigations targeted online advertisements suggesting prostitution. According to reports, law enforcement both placed and responded to listings, and arranged to meet the men and women who responded at a nearby hotel. The hotel reportedly offered to “host” the sting, and allowed law enforcement to install surveillance equipment to collect evidence during the  operation. Six sex buyers were arrested as a result; some of those arrested allegedly attempted to exchange drugs for sex. All of the offender’s names, ages, hometowns and arrest photos were released to the public.

In January 2017, detectives from Monroe and Wayne counties, along with state police, Bethlehem Township police, and Colonial Regional Police conducted an operation that led to the arrest of 3 alleged sex traffickers and 9 sex buyers. The sex buyers were lured to the hotel by detectives posting a fake ad on Backpage.com. They were arrested and charged with patronizing a prostitute. Their arrest photos, names, ages, and hometowns were also released to the press. In July 2017, a prostitution sting run out of a hotel in Smithfield Township led to multiple arrests. Two people faced human trafficking charges, and several sex buyers were also arrested.

In July 2017, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office conducted an effort to deter sex buyers that was based on the web-based reverse sting model, but rather than pursuing the objective of arresting sex buyers, the objective of the brief effort was to verbally deter them from future attempts to buy sex locally. Detectives began by posting two online ads for sex; responding calls started immediately and the phone rang continuously for hours in their office in Stroudsburg. The male callers, responding to online ads on Backpage.com, were routed to one of three detectives with the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office running the unique operation called “Jamming for Johns.” Unlike the typical reverse sting, this one operated as a public awareness campaign. About 120 men called over eight hours, and received a warning that paying for sex is a crime that also fuels sex trafficking and the opioid crisis. The people delivering the message were Monroe County detectives who identified themselves as such. They then told the prospective buyers that if they had shown up to buy sex, they would have been arrested, charged with a crime, and had their name and picture published locally in various media outlets. The officers kept a log of every caller’s number, in case they arose in future investigations or stings. Another detective reached out to women who had ads on Backpage.com, posing as an interested buyer and then passing the phone to the executive director of Truth for Women, a nonprofit group that helps victims of sex trafficking. If the woman didn’t hang up, they were offered help through the therapeutic home for sex trafficking survivors, and provided the phone number to the national sex trafficking hotline (1-888-373-7888).