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This study measures the size and structure of the underground commercial sex economy in eight major US cities: San Diego, Seattle, Dallas, Denver, Washington, DC, Kansas City, Atlanta, and Miami. The goals of this study were to derive a more rigorous estimate of the underground commercial sex economy (UCSE) in eight major US cities and to provide an understanding of the structure of this underground economy.

Researchers relied on a multi-method approach using both qualitative and quantitative data to estimate the size of UCSE including:

1. Collecting official data on crime related to the underground weapons and drugs economies
2. Conducting semi-structured interviews with convicted traffickers, pimps, child pornographers, and sex workers at the federal, state, and local levels
3. Conducting semi-structured interviews with local and federal police investigators and prosecutors to inform our analysis of the interrelationship across different types of underground commercial sex activity.

To increase understanding of the prosecution of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth (CSEC) offenders, the Urban Institute, a non-partisan social and economic policy research organization, along with Polaris Project, an anti-human trafficking organization based in the United States and Japan, were awarded a cooperative agreement from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to conduct a 12-month study on CSEC in the United States. The purpose of this research was to conduct a national analysis of federal prosecutions of CSEC-related cases from 1998 through 2005, in order to answer the following four research questions:

• Is the United States enforcing existing federal laws related to CSEC?
• What are key features of successfully prosecuted CSEC cases? What factors predict convictions in cases? What factors predict sentence length?
• Have the U.S. courts increased penalties associated with sexual crimes against children?
• What, if any, are the effects of CSEC legislation on service providers who work with these victims?

Although researchers have begun to piece together a picture of the characteristics of vulnerable individuals, participating industries, and exploitative practices that may lead to labor trafficking, few studies have systematically reviewed labor trafficking cases known to victim service providers and law enforcement officials in the United States. As a result, little is known about the phenomenon of labor trafficking and the illicit networks that support it.

For example, it is not known if those networks that facilitate certain types of labor exploitation also facilitate certain types of labor trafficking. This study seeks to address these gaps in knowledge by providing foundational information about labor trafficking victimization and the illicit networks that facilitate it across a range of industries.

This study was guided by three research questions:

1. What is the nature of the labor trafficking victimization experience in the United States?
2. How are domestic and international labor trafficking syndicates operating in the United States organized? Who are the traffickers, and what is their connection to other illicit networks that help facilitate labor trafficking operations?
3. What are the challenges of law enforcement agents investigating labor trafficking cases identified by victim service providers? Why are so few identified labor trafficking cases investigated by law enforcement and prosecuted?