Games Pimps Play: Players and Wives-in-Law: A Qualitative Analysis of Street Prostitution

This is a detailed and insightful enthnographic analysis of the underworld of adolescent female prostitution. James Hodgson combines observations of street action and interviews with prostitutes and their pimps to present a candid and shocking overview of a social problem that affects the lives of so many of society's most vulnerable citizens. Hodgson's study clearly exposes the manipulative and predatory victimisation of vulnerable teenage girls - many of them runaways from dysfunctional homes - and debunks the belief that prostitution is a victimless crime. His data also expose the opportunistic, cunning, and sometimes violent strategies of the pimp and corrects a common perception that prostitutes and pimps form symbiotic relationships.