Mt. Vernon is the county seat and largest city (population about 35,000) in Skagit County, located in northern Washington state. It is situated directly north of Seattle, along the Interstate 5 corridor. The city of Mt. Vernon has had street prostitution and indoor prostitution occurring in hotels and storefront brothels (such as nail salons), as […]
Lane County is located in Western Oregon, along the Interstate 5 corridor. Roughly half of its population of about 383,000 resides in the county seat of Eugene, the second largest city in Oregon. Commercial sex is well documented in the central city, and in the surrounding towns and unincorporated areas. Among the more serious problems […]
North Myrtle Beach is a city of about 19,000 residents, located approximately 100 miles north of Charleston in Horry County, South Carolina. Prostitution and sex trafficking activity have been well-documented in the city and surrounding communities, and in unincorporated areas of Horry county. This activity and the problems and ancillary crimes it generates result in […]
Tumwater is a city of about 26,000 residents in Washington state, within Thurston County. It is located just south of Olympia, the state’s capitol and the seat of Thurston County. Prostitution and sex trafficking activity have been well-documented in the city and surrounding communities. This activity and the problems and ancillary crimes it generates results […]
Thurston County, Washington has close to 300,000 residents and is located roughly 30 miles south of Seattle, past Tacoma, at the southern end of Puget Sound and along the Interstate 5 corridor. The county seat and its largest city is Olympia, the state capital, and includes smaller cities such as Tumwater, as well as smaller […]
DuBois is a city of roughly 7,500 residents in west central Pennsylvania. It is the most populous community in Clearfield County, PA, and is located about 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Prostitution activity has been documented in the city for at least 40 years. This activity and its ancillary crimes has resulted in complaints to […]
Wilkes Barre is a city of about 45,000 residents in central Pennsylvania that was a stop on a domestic sex trafficking circuit in the 1970s and 1980s. The “pimp circuit,” as it was then called, ran along highway corridors in central Pennsylvania (e.g., Allentown, Reading, Harrisburg, Scranton) and upstate New York (Schenectady, Albany, Buffalo). Like […]
Luzerne County is located in central Pennsylvania, and the city of Wilkes Barre is the county seat and population center. Other relatively populous communities within the county include Hazleton, Kingston, Nanticoke, and Pittston. The region has well-documented history of sex trafficking and prostitution activity. The county contained towns that were stops on a domestic sex […]
Butte has a population of about 34,000 residents and is the county seat of Silver Bow County, MT. Prostitution and sex trafficking have been well-documented in the city, surrounding communities, and in unincorporated areas of Silver Bow County. Some accounts from 1910 report that the city’s red-light district operated 24/7 in three shifts, and that […]
North Chicago is a suburb of the Chicago metropolitan area, located in Lake County, Illinois, with a population of about 31,000 residents. Prostitution and sex trafficking in the area have been well-documented, and police have targeted consumer-level demand in their responses. For example, in July and August 2016, four men were arrested and charged with […]
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.
