Pearl is a city of roughly 25,000 residents, located just east of Jackson in Rankin County, Mississippi.

In recent years, the Pearl Police Department has ramped up efforts to curtail prostitution in the city. In addition to conducting stings targeting prostituted women and pimps/traffickers, the PPD has conducted at least one web-based operation targeting sex buyers. In August 2014, officers reported the arrest of 15 men and women on solicitation charges following a “two-day prostitution sting.” Among the arrestees was a john who arrived to meet the decoy “armed with a knife and an empty wallet” and a 33-year-old john who “came to the hotel because he thought he was meeting a young girl” for commercial sex. Police did not disclose the logistics of the operation, but did release the identities of each of the offenders.