Ronald Weitzer

George Washington University | GW · Department of Sociology

The article begins with a discussion of definitional issues regarding human trafficking andmodern slavery and then briefly critiques some popular claims regarding each problem. Examples ofmacro-level research are critically evaluated, followed by a review of micro-level studies that illustrate tremendous variation and complexity in structural arran...

Sex work was not a prominent public issue in the USA a generation ago. Law and law enforcement were fairly settled. Over the past two decades, however, a robust campaign has sought to intensify the stigmatization and criminalization of the participants involved in all types of sex work, which are now conflated with human trafficking. These efforts...

This article explores bar prostitution as a distinct sexual arena. Drawing on fieldwork in six red-light districts in Thailand, the article identifies key structural and interactional features of the bars located in these areas. The analysis draws on an "interaction rituals" framework to elucidate scripted encounters between workers and customers,...

The chapter begins with a description of key features of four branches of the sex industry: pornography, prostitution, commercial stripping, and commercial webcamming. The second half of the chapter presents four paradigms, each of which purports to identify the essential features of sex work. The author argues that one of these models, the polymor...

This chapter compares alternative policy models. Rather than simply declaring one model superior to the others in the abstract, as many analysts do, it is imperative that scholars and policy makers identify what works best in practice in advancing the interests and needs of all stakeholders and participants involved in sex for sale. In assessing th...

This chapter examines selected European prostitution and trafficking policies and law enforcement practices. I first present two analytical approaches relevant to European policy regimes, and conclude that they are severely flawed either because of problematic assumptions or because the data are insufficient to support the conclusions drawn by the...

Over the past two decades, high-profile federal investigations have examined the policies and practices of several American police departments where civil rights violations and police misconduct were deemed serious by the Department of Justice. This paper focuses on four recent investigations: Baltimore, Chicago, Ferguson, and New Orleans. We exami...

Comparative examination of indoor red-light districts in Antwerp, Brussels, and Ghent. Identifies both problems and a set of best practices for similar areas in other cities.

Studies of male sex workers are often confined to the individual level rather than exploring their work environment per se or the larger ecological context in which their business activities are embedded. We know relatively little, for example, about the spatial location of erotic worksites (apart from street-level work) or the interactional dynami...

Stigma is ubiquitous in sex work and is well documented in studies of sex workers. But rarely have scholars examined the vital question of whether, and if so how, stigma can be reduced or eliminated from any type of sex work (commercial stripping, pornography, prostitution, etc.). After a brief review of the issues related to stigma, this Commentar...

Recent police killings of citizens in the United States have attracted massive coverage in the media, large-scale public protests, and demands for reform of police departments throughout the country. This study is based on a content analysis of newspaper coverage of recent high-profile incidents that resulted in a citizen's death in Ferguson, North...

Contributing to the growing body of research on the buyers of commercial sex services, this study explores the socialization of novice clients. Drawing on data from a popular Web-based discussion forum, the article identifies the central questions and concerns of individuals who are on the verge of purchasing sex for the first time. A second dimens...

This chapter examines two nations where prostitution is legal and regulated by the state. The central features of each legal system are described, followed by an analysis of struggles over prostitution policy in the postlegalization period. Recent conflicts in Germany and the Netherlands illustrate the kinds of debates and policy proposals that may...

Drawing on two theses from the race relations literature, this article presents a foundational perspective on core relationships between the police and racial groups in the United States. The theses—group position and minority threat—are described and expanded upon, applied to long-standing group relations with the police, and further illustrated w...

This article examines male street prostitution in Manchester, England, and draws some comparisons to its female counterpart in this city. While the two sectors have some important similarities, we also find significant differences in the physical and social ecology of the places in which they work, in their behavior patterns, and in individuals’ de...

The news media can play a significant role in shaping public perceptions of social problems. One of these, human trafficking, has attracted increasing media attention since the early 2000s. This article builds on earlier work with a content analysis of articles on human trafficking published in the New York Times and the Washington Post during 2012...

Research on modern red-light districts is centered largely on street prostitution zones. Missing from most of the literature are studies that examine red-light districts consisting of clusters of visible indoor businesses that are legal and regulated by the authorities. This paper examines this kind of zone in Ghent, Belgium. A variety of data is u...

This article examines different types of comparative research designs as applied to either prostitution or sex trafficking. I first present several comparative approaches that are found to be deeply flawed either because of the problematic assumptions of the analysts or because the data provided are insufficient to support the conclusions drawn. I...

Research on modern red-light districts is centered largely on street prostitution zones. Missing from most of the literature are studies that examine red-light districts consisting of clusters of visible indoor businesses that are legal and regulated by the authorities. This paper examines this kind of zone in Ghent, Belgium. A variety of data is u...

This article presents a set of findings from the authors’ empirical studies of police relations with different racial and ethnic groups in the United States. The findings pertain to the role of race and ethnicity in policing practices and in citizens’ perceptions of and encounters with the police. The data are derived from multiple levels (national...

Research on modern red-light districts (RLDs) is deficient in some key respects. Centered largely on street prostitution zones and nations where prostitution is illegal, this literature gives insufficient attention to settings where RLDs consist of a cluster of indoor venues that are legal and regulated by the authorities. Using classic Chicago Sch...

Medical marijuana is now available in 23 states, and its growing acceptance has paved the way for the legalization of recreational marijuana. This article examines four recent campaigns to legalize recreational marijuana–two failures and two successes. Using data from newspaper sources, interviews with key players, and other sources, we examine the...

Most studies of police–minority relations in America focus on blacks, usually in comparison with whites. This pattern is particularly puzzling in light of the growing population of Hispanic Americans throughout the US, now outnumbering blacks and consisting of the majority in some major cities. Aside from the need for more empirical research on the...

This article evaluates four popular claims regarding human trafficking's international magnitude, trends, and seriousness relative to other illicit global activities. I find that the claims are neither evidence-based nor verifiable. Second, an argument is made for carefully conducted microlevel research on trafficking. Several such studies are desc...

This article examines city residents' reported experiences with and perceptions of various forms of police misconduct as well as their perspectives on two types of accountability mechanisms: internal and external to the police department. The data are derived from in-depth interviews with adult African American residents of the city. Our findings h...

Views on female prostitution are diverse and often hotly contested, both inside and outside academic circles. Some contend that prostitutes are universally exploited, while others argue that they are workers and should be recognized as such. Yet there is little analysis of the role that service-providing organizations play in this larger debate. Th...

A growing but still limited body of research has examined the views and experiences of clients of sex workers. The current study is based on a content analysis of 2,442 postings on a popular forum where clients review sex workers and discuss their interactions with them. The article explores the reported experiences of a sample of clients who becom...

Research on police—citizen relations is largely centered on how police officers treat citizens, with much less attention given to how citizens behave toward officers or how they may counsel others to behave if they are stopped by an officer. Several studies report that citizens’ demeanor affects the way they are treated by police, but researchers h...

A critical review of recent books on pornography.

Comparison of different policy models in the field of prostitution.

The best recent research on prostitution is ethnographic and centered outside the United States. The books under review are multifaceted, rich, novel contributions to the literature, throwing a spotlight on previouslyhiddenworlds.Eachpresentsamicrocosm

Purpose – We review the literature on the general effects of rap music and discuss in detail those studies that purport to examine how it affects attitudes and behavior related to violence and misogyny.Methodology – Critical review of the popular and scholarly rap music literature.Findings – We describe four critical weaknesses in this literature t...

This chapter outlines major empirical findings about race, ethnicity, and policing at the level of the individual and in contexts that include neighborhoods, cities, and nations. It pays particular attention to imperfections and inaccuracies in the manner in which the “Latino” or “Hispanic” experience has been explored, i.e. the tendency to mask di...

Over the past decade, public policies on prostitution and other types of sex work have been increasingly contested, both in academia and in popular debates. One perspective, the oppression paradigm, is increasingly reflected in media reporting on the sex industry and is steadily being articulated by government officials in the USA, Europe, and else...

Until recently, prostitution was not a prominent public issue in the United States. Law and public policy were relatively settled. The past decade, however, has witnessed a growing debate over the sex trade and the growth of an organized campaign committed to expanding criminalization. A powerful moral crusade has been successful in reshaping Ameri...

Rap music has a reputation for being misogynistic, but surprisingly little research has systematically investigated this dimension of the music. This study assesses the portrayal of women in a representative sample of 403 rap songs. Content analysis identified five gender-related themes in this body of music—themes that contain messages regarding ‘...

This review examines key dimensions of contemporary sex work, particularly prostitution. Most research focuses exclusively on street prostitution and female workers, with much less attention devoted to indoor prostitution, male and transgender workers, customers, and managers. Furthermore, most of the literature examines prostitution where it is il...

Much of the research on police-citizen relations has focused on adults, not youth. Given that adolescents and particularly young males are more likely than adults to have involuntary and adversarial contacts with police officers, it is especially important to investigate their experiences with and perceptions of the police. This article examines th...

Research on police–citizen relations is largely focused on how police officers treat citizens, with much less attention given to how citizens behave toward officers. Several studies report that citizens' demeanor affects the way they are treated by police, but researchers have neglected the larger question of how citizens manage their contacts with...

In the past two decades there has been little critical examination of the prevailing methods of controlling prostitution in the United States. This article examines selected problems in the control of prostitution in the United States and critically assesses three major alternatives to the prevailing policy of criminalization. Alternative approache...

There is now a sizeable literature examining moral panics and moral crusades in various societies, yet the literature is largely centred on the dynamics of panics and the social forces promoting them, while devoting almost no attention to the state. The state may play a key role in the process—either fanning or defusing popular alarm over a problem...

Remarkably little research has been conducted on policing in Israel. This is a major omission in the scholarly literature, given the security situation in the country and the role of policing in the control of the minority, Arab population. One specific deficiency in the literature is the limited research on police officers who come from minority e...

Minority racial and ethnic groups often view themselves as targets of abusive treatment at the hands of the police. Although racial variation in public assessments of the police in the United States has been amply documented in past research, less research has explored the sources of these differences at the intersection of demographic, interaction...

Review of several popular myths regarding prostitution, in comparison to research evidence.

The issue of sex trafficking has become increasingly politicized in recent years, due to the efforts of an influential moral crusade. This article examines the social construction of sex trafficking (and prostitution more generally) in the discourse of leading activists and organizations within the crusade, and concludes that the central claims are...

In recent years, prostitution increasingly has been recast as a form of ‘sex work’, which directs attention to both the work itself and the larger occupational milieu in which it takes place. This article examines several aspects of the work environment, including important variations between different types of workers (on the street and in indoor...

Remarkably little research has been conducted on police relations with citizens in Israel compared with other societies that are deeply divided along ethnic lines. This paper examines the views of Arabs and Jews regarding several key aspects of policing in Israel. The findings indicate, first, that Arabs are consistently more critical of the police...

This article examines the determinants of citizen satisfaction with police. Using data from a recent nationwide survey of Whites, Hispanics, and African Americans, the authors test several hypotheses about how situational and structural factors shape attitudes toward the police. Much has been written about Black-White differences in views of the po...

Police corruption and brutality are serious problems in America. Some types of reform have the potential to curb police misconduct and to increase public confidence in the police.

In no area of the social sciences has ideology contaminated knowledge more pervasively than in writings on the sex industry. Too often in this area, the canons of scientific inquiry are suspended and research deliberately skewed to serve a particular political agenda. Much of this work has been done by writers who regard the sex industry as a despi...

Over the past decade, public policies on prostitution and other types of sex work have been increasingly contested, both in academia and in popular debates. One perspective, the oppression paradigm, is increasingly reflected in media reporting on the sex industry and is steadily being articulated by government officials in the USA, Europe, and else...

The prostitutes’ rights campaign emerged in the early 1970s with the formation of COYOTE in San Francisco and affiliated movement organizations. This study examines the movement's major claims and goals, resource problems, and impact on public opinion, legislation, and law enforcement. The failure to attain key movement goals is explained in terms...

The current controversy surrounding racial profi ling in America has focused renewed attention on the larger issue of racial bias by the police. Yet little is known about the extent of police racial bias and even less about public perceptions of the problem. This article analyzes recent national survey data on citizens' views of, and reported perso...

Many Americans report that they are fearful of crime. One frequently cited source of this fear is the mass media. The media, and local television news in particular, often report on incidents of crime, and do so in a selective and sometimes sensational manner. This paper examines the role of the media in shaping crime fears, in conjunction with bot...

This article examines perceptions of police misconduct in the United States and the factors that influence these perceptions. Using data from a large, nationally representative survey of whites, African Americans, and His-panics, we examine how citizens' views of four types of police misconduct—verbal abuse, excessive force, unwar-ranted stops, and...

While the literature has extensively documented popular discontent with various types of police misconduct, little is known about popular support for corrective measures. Such information, however, would be valuable for public policy and has the potential to enhance public confidence in the police. This article, using data from a recent national su...

Social disorganization theory focuses on the relationship between neighborhood structure, social control, and crime. Recent theoretical and empirical work on the relationship between community characteristics and crime has led to important refinements of social disorganization theory, yet there remain some substantive and methodological deficiencie...

Much of the research on violent crime is situated within an exclusively structural or subcultural framework. Some recent work, however, argues that these unidimensional approaches are inherently limited and that more attention needs to be given to the intersection of structural and cultural determinants of violence. The present study takes up this...

Racial profiling by the police has become an increasingly controversial issue in recent years, but we know little about the extent of the problem and even less about public perceptions of profiling. This article analyzes recent national survey data on citizens' views of racial profiling. We find that both race and personal experience with profiling...

Highly publicized incidents of police misconduct have adverse effects not only on the victims of abuse but also on public perceptions of the police departments implicated in the incident. Yet the magnitude and longevity of such effects have rarely been investigated. This article examines the impact of several celebrated incidents of perceived polic...

Contemporary public policy presupposes that police officers should be racially representative of the areas in which they work in order to foster good police-community relations. This article examines citizen assessments of Black and White officers and preferences regarding the kind of officers they want assigned to their neighborhoods. In-depth int...

One of the most controversial issues in policing concerns allegations of racial bias. This article examines citizens' perceptions of racialized policing in three neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., that vary by racial composition and class position: a middle-class white community, a middle-class black community, and a lower-class black community. In...

Analysis of trends in the handling of citizen complaints against the police in Washington, DC, by tracing the evolution of civilian review boards in the city.

One of the most controversial issues in policing concerns allegations of police abuse of members of minority groups. This article examines African Americans' and whites' perceptions and experiences of three types of police misconduct: unjustified street stops of citizens, verbal abuse, and use of excessive force. The study is based on in-depth inte...

Previous research has shown that Blacks are more likely than Whites to hold unfavorable opinions of criminal justice agencies in America, but the literature has rarely examined whether social class also affects these opinions. Using recent national survey data on perceptions of racial discrimination by the police and the criminal justice system, th...

Many Korean immigrants in the United States have established small retail businesses in black communities. Relations between these merchants and neighborhood residents and customers have been problematic in a number of cities. Using in-depth interview data on a sample of Korean merchants in Washington, D.C., this article examines merchants' racial...

The issue of police reform has become especially salient in Northern Ireland since the announcement of a ceasefire in September 1994. This article examines several major policing problems in this society and the kinds of reforms necessary to normalize policing. Particular emphasis is placed on the need to relax a host of counterinsurgency practices...

The South African Police have an international reputation as a repressive, highly politicized force, lacking accountability to outside bodies. This article examines the role of one such body, the criminal courts, with a focus on cases of police officers accused of unlawful killings. Virtually no research has been done on trials of police officers i...

Northern Ireland's Police Liaison Committees are intended to promote positive relations between the police and the public, to facilitate constructive dialogue regarding policing matters, and to foster solutions to local problems. This study evaluates the committees with the help of data derived from in‐depth interviews with representatives of seven...

Conflicts within dominant groups in racially divided societies over issues of law and order have rarely been studied. This paper examines key cleavages over policing policy and operations among white South African political elites. The conflict grew particularly intense during the 1980s, as a result of the escalation of popular unrest and police re...