Estimating the Size and Structure of the Underground Commercial Sex Economy in Eight Major U.S. Cities

The underground commercial sex economy (UCSE) generates millions of dollars annually, yet investigation and data collection remain under resourced. Our study aimed to unveil the scale of the UCSE in eight major US cities. Across cities, the UCSE's worth was estimated between $39.9 and$290 million in 2007, but decreased since 2003 in all but two cities. Interviews with pimps, traffickers, sex workers, child pornographers, and law enforcement revealed the dynamics central to the underground commercial sex trade -- and shaped the policy suggestions to combat it

The Politics of Lynch Violence in the State of Exception: Citizen Rights and Vigilante Justice in Bolivia and Guatemala

In its Latin American context, the term lynching refers to the extrajudicial killing of an alleged criminal by a large group and is often perceived as spontaneous mob violence. Utilizing Giorgio Agamben\u27s notion of the \u27state of exception,\u27 I argue that lynching occurs in particular spaces in which the norms of law and actual practice are decisively separated, and communities are imagined by the state as \u22killable bodies\u22 rather than citizens. In response, lynching is a paradoxical and deeply political act; it serves as both a rejection of the state and a demand for inclusion in the benefits of citizenship. A higher level of citizen security can be realized only through the integration of state level security initiatives with local knowledge and citizen involvement