The Red-Light Network: Exploring the Locational Strategies of Illicit Massage Businesses in Houston, Texas

Illicit massage businesses (IMBs) play a considerable role in sex trafficking in the United States. Sometimes referred to as erotic massage parlors or Asian massage parlors, IMBs act as nodes within human and sex trafficking networks across the United States, where exploitation, involuntary servitude, and contemporary slavery are common occurrences. IMBs represent the largest component of the sex industry trend toward “indoor” sex work, in which meeting locations for sex workers and customers are prearranged, so there is no requirement that sex workers be publicly visible for customers to identify them. The lower visibility of contemporary sex work makes it difficult to identify locations where such activity occurs. As a result, research examining spatial, temporal, and economic prevalence of IMBs draws almost entirely on anecdotal evidence, and the accuracy of the analyses is somewhat questionable. This study begins to address this problem in an examination of the IMB industry in Houston, Texas. The research draws on user-generated data from online IMB review sites to identify IMB locations. This research further examines the geographic distribution of IMBs in the city to understand the spatial and situational characteristics most correlated with active IMBs.