Mapping the 'Demand' Side of Prostitution

The town of Kennebunk, Maine, recently made headlines for releasing the identities of men charged with patronizing a Zumba instructor-turned-prostitute named Alexis Wright. Despite all the attention, the strategy of "john shaming" is far from unique. It's just one of several tactics city and county police departments across the country routinely use to target the men who pay for sex, rather than the women who sell it.

Michael Shively of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, research firm Abt Associates has spent the past several years gathering loads of information about strategies that aim to reduce the "demand" side of prostitution. Shively and his colleagues have compiled a database of at least 825 cities that employ at least one of these tactics. The work has produced comprehensive reports for the Department of Justice [PDF] as well as a new website called DEMANDForum that tracks the "anti-demand initiatives" occurring across the United States: