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Chelsea is a densely populated city of about 40,000 residents, located across the Mystic River from Boston in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, near Everett and Revere. Commercial sex activity, conducted both at street level and within local businesses, has been reported in the community for at least two decades, and has generated complaints from city residents. Cases of sex trafficking, […]
Chattanooga is a city of approximately 181,000 residents, located in Hamilton County in southeastern Tennessee. Prostitution has been well-documented as a problem in the city for decades. There have also been many verified cases of other serious crimes driven by the commercial sex market, such as sex trafficking and the targeted assault and murder of […]
Cedar Rapids is a city of approximately 133,000 residents, located in Linn County in eastern Iowa. Federal and local law enforcement have fought pervasive sex trafficking and prostitution in the area for decades. Included in the array of tactics used to combat such crimes have been those addressing consumer-level demand for prostitution. The first known […]
Canton is a city of 70,000 in eastern Ohio’s Stark County. Prostitution and sex trafficking of both adults and minors have posed problems in the city for several decades. This activity and the problems and ancillary crimes it generates result in complaints to law enforcement agencies from residents and businesses. Among the more serious crimes […]
Calumet City is a suburb south of Chicago with a population of 35,000. The city is in Cook County and is along the state border across from Hammond, Indiana. The Calumet City Police Department has conducted street-level reverse stings using undercover female officers since 1997. The stings occurred about two or three times per year. Since […]
Burnsville is a city of approximately 64,000 residents, located just south of Minneapolis in Dakota County, Minnesota. To reduce prostitution activity in the city, the Burnsville Police Department has conducted web-based and street-level reverse stings since 2007. Reverse stings have been conducted 3-4 times per year, according to BPD representatives interviewed for the National Assessment […]
Buffalo is the second largest city in New York, with approximately 260,000 residents. It is the county seat of Erie County. Prostitution at street level, facilitated online, and occurring within adult-oriented businesses has caused persistent and formidable problems within the city for decades. Residents on the East Side and West Side, in particular, have complained […]
Broward County has a population of about 2,000,000 residents and is located on the southeastern coast of Florida. Its county seat and largest city is Fort Lauderdale. Prostitution and sex trafficking have been persistent and well-documented problems in the county for decades. Prostitution-related homicides have also occurred in the county. Among the ways in which […]
Brockton is a city of approximately 96,000 residents, located about one half hour southeast of Boston near East and West Bridgewater in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. Prostitution and sex trafficking are longstanding, well-documented problems in the city. Among the problems associated with city’s local commercial sex market are a serial rapist targeting Brockton’s prostituted women in the early 2000s and multiple cases of homicide of prostituted […]
Bridgeport is a city of approximately 148,000 residents, an hour’s drive north of New York, near Fairfield, Connecticut. It is the largest city in the state, with a robust and well-documented commercial sex market. Media reports of street and in-house prostitution in the city date back to the 1880s. Local law enforcement and federal agents […]
Demand Forum is powered by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) and directed by Dr. Michael Shively, NCOSE's Senior Advisor on Research and Data Analysis. It was originally developed by Dr. Shively and Abt Associates with grant support from the National Institute of Justice. In January 2020 the website transferred to NCOSE. In January 2021, work began on a new grant from NIJ (#2020-75-CX-0011) to update and expand the content presented on Demand Forum.
