Plainfield is a New Jersey city of about 55,000 residents, located in the greater New York City metropolitan area about 10 miles west of Newark near Edison and New Brunswick. Cases of child sex trafficking in residential areas have been documented, prostituted persons have been murdered in the community, and prostitution has generated numerous complaints to local police.

In response to such problems, the Plainfield Police Department has conducted several street-level reverse stings in the city and has released to the media the identities of arrested sex buyers. One 2011 reversal, for example, sent a police decoy undercover along city streets and resulted in the arrests of 17 men in a 12-hour period.