Winona County is a county of just under 50,000 residents, located in southeastern Minnesota. Prostitution and sex trafficking are well-documented problems in the community, and have generated complaints to law enforcement. In addition to overseeing or assisting with city-level anti-prostitution efforts in Winona, county local law enforcement agencies have conducted at least two reverse stings. […]
Whitehall is a city of approximately 20,000 residents, located in the southeastern suburbs of Columbus in Franklin County, Ohio. Local residents and law enforcement have reported problems with prostitution activity in the community for at least two decades. At least one case involving the sex trafficking of minors has been documented in Whitehall. In August […]
Ashland is a city of approximately 20,000 residents, located in north-central Ohio’s Ashland County, near Mansfield. Consumer level demand provides the revenue stream for all prostitution and sex trafficking, and has therefore been targeted by local law enforcement agencies as a strategy for prevention and response. In their efforts to deter sex buyers and reduce the […]
Skokie is a village of approximately 66,000 residents, located in the northern suburbs of Chicago near Evanston and Wilmette in Cook County, Illinois. Incidents of prostitution and sex trafficking have been reported in the community for several years, and have generated serious complaints to police. In January 2007, for example, an adult male trafficker was arrested at […]
Muskegon Heights is a small city of close to 10,000 residents, situated northwest of Grand Rapids near Muskegon and Norton Shores in Muskegon County, Michigan. Prostitution has posed chronic and visible problems in the community for several years. In 2012, for example, two adults and one juvenile female were convicted of kidnapping a woman involved […]
Calvert County is a county of just under 90,000 residents, located southeast of Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Virginia, in southern coastal Maryland. In late April 2015, deputies with the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office, supported by officers from the St. Mary’s and Charles County Sheriff’s Offices and the Southern Maryland Information Center, conducted the county’s first […]
Owatonna is a small city of approximately 26,000 residents, located south of the Twin Cities and west of Rochester in Minnesota’s Steele County, at the juncture of Interstate 35 and U.S. Highways 14 and 218. In late March 2015, regional task force officers with the South Central Drug Investigative Unit conducted a reverse sting in Owatonna that […]
Fort Collins is a city of roughly 169,000 residents, situated 65 miles north of Denver in Larimer County, CO. For at least two decades, instances of prostitution, particularly those arranged online and conducted within city hotels and adult-oriented businesses, have been reported throughout the county. Numerous cases of prostitution, solicitation of prostitution, commercial sexual exploitation, […]
Port Orchard is a city of approximately 15,000 residents, situated in western Washington near Bremerton, WA. It is the county seat of Kitsap County, WA. Cases of prostitution and sex trafficking have been documented in the city; in January 2014, for example, a Port Orchard resident was sentenced to 50 years in prison for human […]
Santa Barbara is a city of approximately 88,000 residents, located on the Pacific coast of Santa Barbara County, California, near Goleta and Montecito. Incidents of prostitution and human trafficking in and around the city have been reported for years. For example, in 2010, the Santa Barbara Police Department, responding to reports of a kidnapping, discovered […]
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.
