Analyzing the Effectiveness of Anti-Child-Sex-Trafficking Policies Targeting Demand versus Supply Using Agent-Based Modeling
which King County law enforcement targeted demand ( 2015 ). The results of the two runs are compared to assess the impact of these contrasting policies on the frequency of child sex trafficking .
According to records from the King County Prosecuting Attorney ’ s Office ( Richey , 2018 ), in 2015 , 46 buyers were arrested and charged for buying sex from children , and 0 children were arrested and charged for prostitution . By contrast , in 2009 , 2 buyers were arrested and charged for trying to purchase sex from a child and 53 children were arrested and charged for prostitution .
Using the King County data , in 2009 , when law enforcement targeted supply , at every time step the police arrested one prostituted child and the police arrested one buyer at time step 1 and another at time step 30 . In 2015 , when law enforcement targeted demand , police arrested no prostituted children , but arrested four buyers after every 5-time step , reflecting monthly reverse-sting operations .
Submodels . The following table lists all model parameters .
Table 1 . Parameter Descriptions Parameter Number-recruited-children Number-johns Number-cops Number-traffickers Arrest-johns Saved-children
Description Number of prostituted minors Number of buyers Number of police departments Number of traffickers Number of buyers being arrested Number of arrested children
Commercial sex transaction : purchase . In each time step , based on the purchase threshold for each buyer , some buyers randomly choose one prostituted child to interact with . As a result of this interaction , the state variables — purchase threshold , desired sale , act , and purchase — get updated .
The number of purchases ranges between 0 and 3 purchases per week . The highest number of buyers ( 66.3 %) makes 1 purchase every 5 weeks . The second highest number of buyers ( 24.7 %) makes 2 purchases per week .
Approximately 5.4 % of buyers make one purchase during the simulation period and 2.2 % of buyers make 3 purchases every week .
If purchase threshold = 10 → buy-target1→ buy sex from a prostituted child with desired sale > 0 at every 5 steps → set purchase + 1 , purchase threshold – 1 , desired sale – 1 , act + 1
If purchase threshold = 104 → buy-target2 → buy sex from a prostituted child with desired sale > 0 -→ set purchase + 2 , purchase threshold – 2 , desired sale
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