Examining the displacement practices of johns with on-line data

Abstract

Situational crime prevention has proven successful in reducing crime rates, though critics argue these programs simply displace criminality into different venues. Research exploring the phenomenon of displacement found offenders change their behavior in response to law enforcement intervention, particularly in research on prostitution. Most research on displacement in the sex trade, however, focuses on the sex worker rather than their clients. This limits the amount of knowledge concerning the dynamics of prostitution, and the illegal sex trade as a whole. This study addressed this gap by examining the displacement practices of the customers of prostitutes, also called johns. Using a sample of posts from Web forums for johns in ten U.S. cities, this qualitative analysis found that johns engage in multiple forms of displacement in the real world. In addition, the Internet appears to act as a resource to identify sex workers, thereby enabling tactical displacement. Implications for law enforcement and situational crime prevention theory are also discussed.