Revisiting the C in CSE: A Geospatial Analysis of Child Sex Trafficking Reports and Neighborhood Concentrated Disadvantage

Background and Purpose: Commercial sexual exploitation of children, or child sex trafficking, is different from other types of maltreatment because of its unique connection to the economy, however family-level resource scarcity has not been studied as a modifiable driver of CSE. Further, no studies have described the geographic distribution of commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) maltreatment reports or empirically tested the relationship between socioeconomic contexts and CSE of children at the event-level. The purpose of this study is to describe CSE reporting and examine the relationship between CSE reporting and neighborhood-level concentrated disadvantage index (CDI) scores in Los Angeles County, which houses the nation’s largest child welfare system.

Methods: This study used administrative data on 3,205 de-duplicated allegations of CSE reported to child protective services (CPS) in Los Angeles County, California between 2017 and 2021 and 5-year estimates from the 2017 American Community Survey at the Census block-level. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize reporter and child characteristics associated with CSE allegations, and a geomapping was used to visually depict the relationship between CSE reports and CDI scores throughout the county. The association between CDI score and CSE reporting was then examined using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression.

Results: One in four CSE reports were placed by law enforcement personnel. Three-quarters of CSE reports were screened-in for investigation to receive and one in four (26.0%) were substantiated. Roughly one-third (30.7%) of all CSE reports were made on behalf of a child with an open CWS case, while one in ten (10.2%) resulted in a new CWS case being opened and a quarter (25.3%) of all CSE reports listed a closure reason of ‘situation stabilized.’ Less than 5% of the reports indicated that no safety threat had been identified for the referred child or the investigation could not be completed, respectively. The estimated odds of exploitation being reported to CPS in a given Census block were 4 times higher with every one-unit increase in CDI score (95% CI: 3.6-4.6; p<.001).

Conclusions and Implications: This analysis describes the geospatial, reporter and child characteristics associated with countywide CSE maltreatment allegations and is the first empirical study to document an association between CSE maltreatment and the socioeconomic conditions in which it occurs. As discourse has shifted to better account for CSE as a form of child maltreatment, consideration of the income and resources youth and families may obtain as a direct result of CSE has largely died out. These findings highlight the need to consider financial gain and other socioeconomic drivers of CSE from the perspectives of young people and their non-perpetrating families, not solely from the perspective of traffickers. Future research at the intersection of sex trafficking and child protection should examine the effects of programs that address family-level socioeconomic resource scarcity (i.e., housing insecurity, lack of childcare or unmet basic needs) on CSE victimization during adolescence.