After reviewing 159 sex trafficking cases that were investigated by Las Vegas police in 2014, researchers found that nearly three quarters of them did not result in prosecution.
Resultsof the study were released this week by the Metropolitan Police Department and Arizona State University.
One of the biggest issues with prosecution is getting the victims to cooperate with police, the study found that less than a quarter of the identified victims cooperated with law enforcement.
The cases in the study included 190 victims, the majority of which were minors. About a fifth of the victims were lured to town from out of state, and about a third of the pimps came from out of state. In many cases, traffickers used escort websites and social media to recruit victims.