Oxford is a city of about 26,000 residents and is the county seat of Lafayette County, Mississippi. The city is located roughly 75 miles southeast of Memphis, Tennessee. Prostitution and sex trafficking are well documented problems in Oxford. For example, in 2014 an investigation into prostitution and sex trafficking was initiated, and involved Oxford Police working with the FBI, the Attorney General’s Office, and the Oxford-Lafayette Metro Narcotics unit. In early 2015, a specific operation instigated by that investigation was led by the Oxford Police Department and resulted in four arrests for prostitution. In January 2018, the United States Department of Justice announced the conviction of two men on charges of sex trafficking, with the city of Oxford the destination site of the criminal enterprise. In federal court, the two men admitted to transporting prostituted persons from Memphis, Tennessee to Oxford, Mississippi in order to engage in prostitution. One admitted to trafficking the women through fraud and coercion by controlling the money they earned from prostitution. In June 2019, the Oxford Police Department received complaints that two males were attempting to solicit prostitution at a local hotel. Investigators confirmed that two men were soliciting individuals for prostitution with another individual. They were both arrested and transported to the Lafayette County Detention Center, and both charged with promoting prostitution and given a bond of $15,000 by a Justice Court Judge.

Among the tactics used to address such problems are those focused on combatting consumer-level demand, which provides the revenue driving all prostitution and sex trafficking. For example, in August 2017, thirteen men were arrested in a web-based reverse sting. The operation was conducted by the Oxford Police Department, the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, State Attorney General’s Office, Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI in the town of Oxford. During the two-day sting, 13 sex buyers were arrested and their identities were disclosed.