Portland is the largest city in Maine with a population of about 67,000, and is located on the state’s southeast Atlantic coast. For decades, police have been aware of prostitution occurring in the city and residents have complained to police about it. Many local cases of sex trafficking of adults and children have been […]
Pomona is a city of approximately 150,000 residents in Los Angeles County, CA, located in the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles. Instances of prostitution and sex trafficking have been ongoing problems in the city and surrounding areas for decades. For example, street based prostitution along the “Holt Corridor,” (a major thoroughfare in Pomona) is an […]
Polk County is an area that contains over 750,000 residents, and is located in central Florida. It contains the cities of Auburndale, Lakeland, Winter Haven, Inwood, Lake Wales and Davenport. Prostitution has been identified by police and others as a local concern, and there have been cases of sex trafficking, child endangerment, and prostitution-related child sexual […]
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in Pennsylvania, with approximately 300,000 residents. It serves as the government seat of Allegheny County. For decades, the city has experienced a wide array of problems associated with commercial sex, including sex trafficking and violence against prostituted and trafficked persons. For example, in May, 2022, a man faced facing multiple […]
Pinellas County covers parts of the Tampa Bay area and has a population of approximately 959,000 residents. The area has well-documented, persistent problems with prostitution and sex trafficking, as well as homicides and serial murders specifically targeting prostituted persons. Pinellas County was an “early adopter” of anti-demand tactics: St. Petersburg, FL, a city containing over […]
Pierce County, located in the southern Puget Sound region of Washington state, has a population of roughly 921,000 residents. The unincorporated areas of the county as well as the cities within it (such as Tacoma, the county’s major population center) have identified prostitution as a persistent problem, and there have been numerous local cases of […]
Phoenix is the largest commercial hub of and most populous city in Arizona, with approximately 1.625 million residents. It is the sixth largest city in the country, and serves as the county seat of Maricopa County. Situated within a day’s drive from the Mexican border and at the crossroads of several interstate highways, the Phoenix […]
Peoria is a city of about 113,000 residents in central Illinois, west of Bloomington IL along Interstate 74. Law enforcement and public health officials have estimated during the 2010s that there were about 140 prostituted women in Peoria, with an average age of about twenty-three. Numerous problems are associated with the local commercial sex market, […]
Paterson is a city of approximately 158,000 residents, located 20 miles east of Manhattan in Passaic County, New Jersey. Prostitution, both at street-level and within adult-oriented businesses, has been a chronic problem in the city since for at least two decades. Cases of child sex trafficking are well documented in the city as well as prostitution […]
Pawtucket is a Rhode Island city of about 75,000 residents. Prostitution and sex trafficking have been documented problems in the community for decades. For example, in 1994 a woman was arrested for selling her daughter for sex for $10 per night. Brothels throughout Rhode Island advertised sex online, primarily with prostituted or trafficked Asian women. In 2013, […]
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.
