For the past century, if not longer, the United States has gone through periodic panics about sex trafficking. Often, this has resulted in the expansion of policing. But, as sociologist Elena Shih writes, in the twenty-first century it’s sprouted a new wave of civilian vigilante activity.

Compared with more prevalent forms of modern-day slavery in fields like domestic work and agriculture, sexual slavery has captured the imaginations of Americans—especially in evangelical Christian circles, which often conflate human trafficking and voluntary sex work. For many people outraged about the issue, making a donation is not enough. They want to actively “rescue” trafficking victims.

Around 2009 and 2010, Shih studied two groups offering Southern California evangelicals a chance to do just that: Project Rescue Los Angeles (PRLA) and Thai Red Light Rescue LA (TRLR).

PRLA volunteers were mostly college men. They participated in a two-hour training—featuring ominous warnings about the potential danger to their personal safety posed by trafficking rings—and then volunteered for “sweeps” of neighborhoods where immigrant sex workers were reported to do business. In one such visit in 2011, Shih joined eight male college students in Santa Monica to investigate a small massage shop. Hiding behind garbage cans and other cover, they watched people going in and out for an hour—choosing a time after sunset, which helped them hide but also made it difficult to accurately see what was happening. Field notes ran along the lines of “Dark bald man, Arab (maybe), entered massage parlor for 33 minutes.”

TRLR, whose volunteers were mostly women, focused on looking for suspicious activity and spreading information about sex trafficking in Koreatown and other immigrant neighborhoods, though none of the volunteers spoke Spanish or Korean, the areas’ main languages.

“Outreach participants frequently interpreted pauses or looks of confusion as affirmations of the importance of their work,” Shih writes. “A response of confusion was met by assurance that this community was unaware of the perils of human trafficking, while a response of pause or recoil was met by confirmation that the subject herself could be a victim of human trafficking whose ‘pimp’ was watching nearby.”

Local law enforcement declined to recognize any relationship with the “rescue” groups, though the groups were adamant that they worked with police. For example, PRLA compiled a report on more than 400 suspicious locations that they submitted to the Los Angeles Police Department. Its leaders maintained that they were doing legwork that police couldn’t do due to red tape and limits on manpower. Several years after PRLA ceased operations in 2012, its director told Shih with great disappointment that the LAPD never had enough definitive proof of exploitation to “free” any victims or prosecute any perpetrators, despite the “binders and binders of data” the organization provided.

“Unless someone is literally bound to a bed, you are not going to be able to prove that she is a victim of sex trafficking,” he said.

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