Youth Involved in Prostitution (YIP)

• Date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016817702194
• Published date: 01 June 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Youth Involved in

Prostitution (YIP): Exploring

Possible Changes in Interactions

With Police and Social Service

Agencies and Narratives of

Victimization

Jennifer McMahon-Howard

1

Abstract

Since the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA) legally defined anyone under the

age of 18 who is induced to engage in a commercial sex act as a sex trafficking victim, there has been

a shift in the conceptualization of youth involved in prostitution (YIP). While YIP were historically

viewed and treated as juvenile delinquents, this shift has called for the processing and treatment of

YIP as victims in need of services. Despite these changes, the results of the present study suggest that

there have been little changes in the interactions that YIP have with police and social service

agencies. Also, similar to the participants who were involved in prostitution as minors before the

adoption of the TVPA, those who were involved in prostitution as minors after the TVPA strongly

reject the victim label.

Keywords

youth involved in prostitution (YIP), commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), Victims of

Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA), vocabulary of victimization

Over the past 10–15 years, there has been an increase in the attention given to youth involved in

prostitution (YIP).

1

Much of this attention has come from the social construction of a new social

problem—the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC). CSEC refers to the sexual

exploitation of children for financial gain, which includes child pornography, child prostitution,

child sex trafficking, and child sex tourism (Estes & Weiner, 2001). Due to methodological limita-

tions, there are no statistically valid estimates of the number of CSEC victims in the United States

(see Stransky & Finkelhor, 2012, for a discussion of these limitations).

1

Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jennifer McMahon-Howard, Kennesaw State University, 1000 Chastain Road, Kennesaw, GA 30144, USA.

Email: jmcmaho7@kennesaw.edu

Criminal Justice Review

2017, Vol. 42(2) 119-145

ª2017 Georgia State University

Reprints and permission:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0734016817702194

journals.sagepub.com/home/cjr

While the involvement of children in commercial sexual activities is not a new social problem,

the conceptualization of YIP as victims of CSEC is new. Historically, juveniles involved in prostitu-

tion have been viewed, processed, and treated as juvenile delinquents. Over the past 10–15 years,

however, there has been an effort to create a paradigm shift in the way that society and the criminal

justice system view prostituted youth. Instead of treating youth prostitutes as criminal offenders,

child and victim activists argue that prostituted youth should be viewed and treated as victims of

sexual exploitation (Mitchell, Finkelhor, & Wolak, 2010). The roots of this paradigm shift in the

United States trace back to the successful efforts to pass the Victims of Trafficking and Violence

Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000. In response to growing awareness of the nature and scope of human

trafficking, the TVPA was the first antitrafficking legislation that was designed “to ensure just and

effective punishment of traffickers and to protect their victims” (22 U.S.C. §§ 7101–7110). The

TVPA specifies that one “severe form of trafficking in persons” involves

the recruitment, harboring, tra nsportation, provision, or obtain ing of a person for the purpose of a

commercial sex act [sex trafficking] ...in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or

coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age. (114 Stat.

1470)

Thus, while sex trafficking of adults requires the use of “force, fraud, or coercion,” this is not

required for minors involved in prostitution. Instead, the TVPA classifies all minors involved in

commercial sex, regardless of force, fraud, or coercion, as victims of sex trafficking. While the

original focus of the 2000 TVPA was on internati onal sex trafficking, the Trafficking Vic tims

Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2005 strongly focused on the CSEC that was occurring

in the United States, which significantly contributed to the conceptualization of YIP as sex traffick-

ing victims.

Similar to statutory rape laws that criminalize sexual activity with a minor under the age of

consent, the language of the TVPA classifies minors involved in prostitution as victims, regardless

of the presence of force, fraud, or coercion, because their age makes them incapable of legally

consenting to engage in prostitution (Reid & Jones, 2011). Since the average age of entry into CSEC

is 15 years old (Curtis et al., 2008), this clearly involves minors who cannot legally consent to

engage in sexual activities. In many cases, youth run away from abuse in the home and enter CSEC

via a pimp and/or their peers (Gibbs, Walters, Lutnick, Miller, & Kluckman, 2015).

Although the primary purpose of the TVPA was to combat international human trafficking, it

played a major role in starting a larger discussion about CSEC within the borders of the United

States. Since CSEC became recognized as a “severe form of trafficking in persons” under the TVPA,

child and victim advocates have used this “vocabulary of victimization” (Dunn, 2010) to lobby for

additional legal and social changes for YIP (Adelson, 2008). As activists often use sympathetic

images of victims when raising awareness about crime victimization (Dunn, 2008), the CSEC

activists and “claims-makers” have constructed a public image of the domestic minor sex trafficking

(DMST) victim as a vulnerable child who enters into CSEC as a result of being deceived by pimps

and other recruiters. Of course, there are opponents of the “CSEC paradigm” who argue that the

TVPA “has constructed sex workers under 18 years old as child victims of trafficking who, a priori,

have no agency with which to decide to engage in the exchange of sex for money” (Marcus et al.,

2012, p. 153). These opponents strongly critique the “CSEC paradigm,” which they believe unfairly

labels “pimps” as “criminal traffickers” deserving of harsh punishments. From their review of the

experiences of YIP, these opponents reject the simplistic image of the “child victim and the adult

exploiter.” Instead, they argue that there are a variety of different “market facilitation relationships,”

and some of these relationships provide the most important foundation for the support network of

these “market-involved” youth.

120 Criminal Justice Review 42(2)