Sex Trafficking In Coffee County, TN

Abstract

In “The Geography of Trafficking in Tennessee 2013,” the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation ranked Coffee County as having had 100+ reported cases of adult and minor sex trafficking. This small rural county was accompanied in Tier 1 by the three largest metropolitan areas of the state: Davidson, Shelby, and Knox counties. Stunned by the amount of reported sex trafficking cases in Coffee County, I decided to investigate these claims. In order to gauge the awareness of sex trafficking in the county, I conducted face-to-face interviews with individuals in the county whose occupations put them in direct contact with at risk individuals. The occupations from which I conducted interviews were the Department of Children’s Services and the local law enforcement. There was a discrepancy between these two organization concerning the presence of sex trafficking in Coffee County.