Youth Radio: A pimp's "business plan" and radio series on underage sex trafficking

My friends at Youth Radio have just produced a deep, intense, and downright upsetting radio series about underage sex trafficking in Oakland. It aired on NPR's All Things Considered this week and is also available online. In addition to the audio pieces, the reporters are presenting additional Web features including interviews with high school prostitutes, a story about photo studios where underage prostitutes can get help with their "marketing materials," and a pimp's hand-written business plan obtained from the Alameda County District Attorney. Snip above, click through to see the whole document. Youth Radio: Trafficked

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Anonymous

Of course the resolution to this situation is to educate the pimps’ customers a bit, so they no longer objectify women such that they think they require sex at any cost but could get it (sometimes, no guarantees) without a purely money/sex driven relationship, then they’d maybe no longer pay for prostitute services and seek out real relationships (or maybe even do both, because the guy’s girlfriend just ain’t in the mood right now, but he is).

These cops are trying to implement a dysfunctional solution, though: To try and ERADICATE AT ALL COSTS the pimps/prostitutes (because their customers are still there, uneducated, ignorant, and sex-crazed as ever, and more prostitutes, pimps and customers can very easily pop up at any time).

But education is hard…

@adamnvillani
I will say that prostitution probably can be done responsibly if everyone is educated about the whole situation, and we have proper legal structure around it (i.e. “No contracts that put people into a sex slave position”), so we treat prostitution as an actual legitimate occupation, with hiring, firing, and quitting as needed. This way, if a prostitute feels abused by their customers or boss, they can ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING LEGITIMATE ABOUT IT (Wow, what an idea!), or even leave their occupation and go do something else, without having to worry about their former boss going out to murder them or whatever those pimps do.

And to the moral police: We can keep the prostitution operations in unsuspecting buildings, with carefully limited advertising, much like pornography right now (and actually, this might be a better business strategy for existing pornography stores, because you can’t have real sex on the internet).

Personally, I don’t think I’d actually ever engage in such legalized prostitution services, but I still think they have their place.

And wow, what a pertinent ReCaptcha: “cultural scarial”
Thebes

Of course this only happened because prostitution is illegal.

Illegal things attract elements with no moral scruples.

Legal prostitution discourages CHILD prostitution and human trafficking. Legal prostitution discourages pimping and other forms of exploitation.
- Anonymous
  
  Yeah- that’s the ONLY reason this happens. /s
Anonymous

That’s not intended as a business plan. Those are lyrics.
Anonymous

I too heard the NPR report and it was disturbing, to say the least. As it so happened, I was looking for some comedy on Netflix and came across Katt William’s “The Pimp Chronicles, Pt. 1″ and the juxtaposition of the chilling NPR report with the light-hearted, comedic take on “pimpin’” really drove home to me the utter depravity of using “pimpin’” as an entertainment device with the pimp as hero and really made me question our culture.
Stefan Jones

Does no one have any sympathy for this poor young man?

If our schools had done their job his heart-felt, well-intentioned business plan would have been a lot more grammatical and better composed.

Shame on you for ignoring the real tragedy of this story! Clearly some sort of neighborhood writing-skills tutoring program is called for.

That and thorough beating.
Lobster

I agree that the care my bitches more better(?).
- user23
  
  yeah, just about to comment on that. Such a sensitive fellow. Bet he weeps into his pillow every night over all those uncared for bitches out there that he could be pimpin’ more better.
docbombay

I hate pimps. They are some of the worst scum my society (U.S) has. I love hip hop, but I cannot stand the glorification of such people or actions.
I would gladly serve time in prison for permanently crippling anyone who is an actual pimp. Death is too good for them.
But chances are I will never meet an actual pimp in my lily-white suburbs. Still, I will remain vigilant.
- chgoliz
  
  “But chances are I will never meet an actual pimp in my lily-white suburbs.”
  
  You probably already have. Prostitutes and pimps find lots of work in the suburbs too.
  
  Do you think there’s no spousal or child abuse in your suburb, either?
- blueelm
  
  I hate to say it. But there are white prostitutes, and middle class women and men sometimes sell their daughters. Right here. In the USA.
  
  Maybe 500 bucks has already bought a night with one of your neighbor’s little girls.
  
  And maybe she’ll run away. And end up finding a guy who says he loves her and will take care of her…
  
  only to end up standing on Robinson street in OK five years later blowing for 5 bucks in the hopes of buying enough money for rock to numb the pain.
David Pescovitz

Looks like the left side of the page was cut off. I think it says, “Take care my bitches more better.”
Anonymous

Child Slavery/Prostituion stands to outpace drug dealing money wise IN THE US. A pimp with four girls stands to make 6 HUNDRED thousand dollars annually, tax free. If you have a daughter, niece, sister or just give a crap about the human condition, this affects you.
CuttingOgres

“Fast Facts” from their link to 3generations.org:

# 12 to 14 â€“ average entry age of girls into sex slavery in the US
# 5 – girls as young as 5 years old are being controlled by pimps and forced to perform sexual acts
# $1200 â€“ typical earnings by one child on a weekend night
# Quotas â€“ minimum nightly earnings imposed by pimps
# Increasing â€“ child sex slavery in the US
# Risk/Reward Ratio â€“ better for pimping than drug dealing
# â€œBoyfriendingâ€ â€“ most common way for pimps to lure girls into slavery
# Friends â€“ girls are forced to recruit others for their pimps
# Trafficking â€“ legal definition of all minors in the commercial sex industry

I want a baseball bat.
Caroline

I caught part of the report on All Things Considered — interviews with a couple of girls who got out. What got to me was that they were afraid to wear high heels afterwards, because it made them flash back to working the streets. One girl counted it as a triumph when she was able to wear high heels on her 18th birthday, because she had finally been able to reclaim high heels for herself.
Anonymous

I’m actually kind of envious of this guy’s handwriting. His questionable literacy, not so much.
Anonymous

And thus we arrive at the old saying:
http://imm.io/2rnH
user23

beyond the immediate and evidential tragedy of minors being made to have sex with adults (many of whom, I imagine, are perpetrating a violence beyond the simple act of rape they are committing) is the brain-changes caused by this sort of insult to their being.

I wonder what proportion of these pimps have been molested/physically/emotionally abused themselves? I speculate most if not all.

tl;dr – raping children causes (near-permanent) brain damage making for long-term f**ked up adults who pass the abuse on…Twin Peaks style.
- blueelm
  
  At the very least they’re usually exposed to violence happening around them, especially to women they know. Which can have it’s own damaging affect. I would go so far then as do doubt any of them are unabused. I don’t think sociopathy is actually rampant enough to account for the number of people in the business.
adamnvillani

I also heard this on NPR… pretty horrifying stuff.

Open question for BoingBoingers out there: is there any decent way to protect minors from exploitation and protect prostitutes in general from predatory pimps while simultaneously legalizing prostitution between consenting legal adults? Or is this a squaring-the-circle problem? Is prostitution inextricably entwined with exploitation, brainwashing, trafficking, violence, etc., or is there some way to separate it from that?
- user23
  
  legalize sex for sale = removing profit incentive which comes from black/grey market commodities.
  
  Allow sex-workers the right to unionize. Tax sex industry at a percentage equivalent to alcohol/cigarettes…use tax money to subsidize excellent health-care for sex workers, etc.
  
  Viciously, aggressively & swiftly prosecute all sex-trade involving minors or operations outside the law. However, legalization of sex trade for adults will probably never eliminate sex trafficking of minors. Perhaps public shootings of child sex traffickers (and customers) would have some effect? Maybe we should bring back the lions & coliseums.
  
  Also, start public campaign to take sex out of the realm of shame & sin.
  
  However, this is fantasy as long as the current reign of hyper-reactive, barking mad Christians are in majority.
  - ackpht
    
    Clearly, the way to prevent crime is to make everything legal. It’s so simple- why hasn’t someone thought of it before?
    
    We can then absolve ourselves of any responsibility for dealing with parents who aren’t fit to have children, degenerates willing to engage in any sort of abuse or manipulation to make a quick buck, and cowards who can witness an underage girl being beaten by a pimp and not do a damn thing about it.
    
    And the girls can just, you know, fend for themselves, because, you know, there’s no crime.
    - AnthonyC
      
      Clearly a willful misreading of the comment you’re replying to. Legalizing an industry that is not obviously inherently wrong- not the way things like murder are wrong- doesn’t absolve anyone of responsibility for their actions. It just makes it easier to eliminate the abuses, by separating the truly criminal acts- sex slavery, child rape, beating prostitutes- from the merely illegal act of selling sex. If prostitutes could go to the police and have pimps arrested or charged without being tried and punished themselves, it would be harder for pimps to get away with such things. And if there were legal brothels that were kept safe and secure, pimps wouldn’t be necessary in the first place.
      
      I have never paid for sex, and wouldn’t even if it were legal, just as I have never used marijuana and wouldn’t even if it were legal, but I believe both of those things ought to be legal.
- WizarDru
  
  Those are radically different questions, wrapped in a single one. Protecting minors and protecting prostitutes via legalizing prostitution are different concepts.
  
  The best way to protect minors is to raise them without violence, hate or abuse. Most exploited teen prostitutes have a really bad home environment that led them there. I believe you can have legalized prostitution and not have inherent exploitation (at least any more than other professions/situations). Legalizing it makes it inherently less dangerous, by not forcing it to the fringe.
- blueelm
  
  Yes, I think. Eventually. But it all has to happen together. The stigma of prostitution needs to be removed, prostitutes need to be able to work for themselves, society needs to work on its issues with women and its issues with sex, and the kids that are currently getting sucked into this need help getting away from the abuse and poverty that often left them vulnerable to exploitation. These are often very damaged people.
  
  Could it happen? Sure.
  
  Will it? Prolly not.
- Sekino
  
  I agree with the others that legalizing prostitution and regulating it can only help.
  
  I’m sure that like many industries, prostitution is its own little universe and people get to know each other and what goes on. Legalizing it would allow people to report cases of exploitation and violence without fear of prosecution for themselves.
Anonymous

Marketing materials, outreach, and a business plan. Now THAT is the old entrepreneurial spirit!

Pppular culture, corporate entertainment and a myriad of appealingly-hyped consumer products have told us all how living the pimpin’ lifestyle is appealing for years now… the message is blunt, relentless and omnipresent. How could you have possibly missed it? And with such ubiquity, how could its message be wrong? Bitches and hos! Bitches and hos! Yo yo yo!

What a stylish pimp outfit you have! Can I wear it to my office party next week for big laughs?

What endlessly amusing and clever patios in your “rap”, you make prostitution sound like such good fun!

Dress your child like a pimp or prostitute for halloween in this stylin’ Made-in-China outfit, available at your local big-box store! All the cool kids are doing it!

Yes, let us praise the pimpin’ lifestyle in song, dance and spoken word, for one and all to see, from Oakland to Peoria, via the glory of corporate media! And rest easy, knowing that the news of its glory has been taken to heart by so many.
blueelm

Yep. Slave-owning is always easier than working for yourself.