The National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction

a criminal to prostitute a child (which involves supplying the child with her primary needs offood, clothes, and shelter) than to commit other crimes such as drug dealing (which require alarge capital investment up front to acquire the contraband). In fact, the profitability of childprostitutes to the pimp has increased as Internet advertising and web-enabled cell phones haveaided pimps in reaching a larger client base; they can schedule more sexual encounters per child.Many pimps increase their profits by working in loose affiliation with each other, sharinginformation about “hot spots” where there is higher demand; the traffickers transport the childrento those locations. Pimps increase their profits by transporting prostituted children to host citiesfor major sporting events and conventions and to cities with consistent tourist populations, suchas Las Vegas. For example, Internet advertisements for child victims of prostitution rose sharplyin February 2009 in advance of the Super Bowl. The various locales where children aretransported for prostitution collectively are known as circuits. Traveling through an establishedcircuit of cities allows pimps to provide children to a fresh set of clients for a short period beforecontinuing to the next city. The transitory nature of the crime also adds to the law enforcementchallenge. Because pimps and their child victims are constantly on the move, it can be difficultfor local law enforcement to begin building a case. It can also be difficult for law enforcement tomake the necessary connections: for example, that the same victim has come into contact withlaw enforcement in cities on opposite sides of the country.Determining the number of child prostitution-related prosecutions simply based on case statisticsis difficult because at both the federal and state levels, certain criminal provisions could beapplied both to cases involving a prostituted child and to cases involving the noncommercialsexual exploitation of a child. For example, at the state level, a customer could be charged withthe statutory rape of a child rather than soliciting sex from a child. Under federal law,transporting a child for any illegal sexual activity, which could be prostitution but also could bemolestation, is a crime. While it is possible to determine the number of prosecutions under agiven statute, that data does not indicate which of the cases involved commercial sex acts;therefore, the statistical data based on prosecutions is unavoidably imprecise.Officials report that prosecutions are very resource-intensive, requiring a large investment ininvestigative, prosecutorial, and victim-service resources. Nevertheless, law enforcementpressure on pimps is increasing. For example, since its inception in 2003, the Innocence LostNational Initiative (ILNI) 63 has located and recovered 918 children, resulting in 369 indictmentsand 554 convictions of traffickers in the federal and state criminal justice systems, disruption of92 criminal enterprises disrupted, and dismantling of 44 criminal enterprises. When prosecutedfederally, pimps face serious charges such as violation of the Mann Act 64 , the Racketeer63 The ILNI is a nationwide initiative among the NCMEC, FBI, DEPARTMENT /Child Exploitation and ObscenitySection (CEOS), and their state and local partners to focus on child victims of domestic commercial sexualexploitation in the United States. As part of the initiative, the FBI created task forces in areas where domesticcommercial sexual exploitation is prevalent and the NCMEC, FBI, and Department through CEOS developedspecialized training courses focused on domestic commercial sexual exploitation prosecution and victim assistance.64 The Mann Act prohibits, among other offenses, knowingly transporting an individual across state lines for thepurposes of prostitution or criminal sexual activity. The act has been amended several times to provide increasedprotection for sexually exploited minors and enhanced penalties for child sex traffickers.33