Gangs and Girls is the first major piece of qualitative research specifically aimed at understanding and analyzing the involvement of street gangs in female juvenile prostitution. Organized around a number of direct central questions, Michel Dorais and Patrice Corriveau document how street gangs control the lucrative trade in underage girls.
They discuss how young men are drawn to gang life, how young girls become attracted and attached to the gang members who eventually sell them into prostitution, and why it is so hard to infiltrate and dismantle the distinct but interrelated worlds of the procurer, victim, and client. Rooted firmly in first person testimony, this research deepens our understanding of juvenile prostitution by identifying and exploring the types of motivations and circumstances that lead teenagers into prostitution rings.
The ultimate focus is on prevention: the authors provide essential tools for parents and those trying to help adolescents in peril, support and intervention strategies for practitioners, and the tools and information necessary for policy makers to reflect on and design innovative social policy.
Review quotes
"[The author's] critique of the justice system should be mandatory reading for prosecutors and defence lawyers, and might, if heeded, bring about more effective prosecutions of pimps and gang leaders." The Globe & Mail
Michel Dorais has spent many years working with victims of sexual abuse and juvenile prostitution as a clinical social worker and is now a professor of social work at Laval University in Quebec City. He is the author of ten books dealing with sexuality.
Patrice Corriveau is assistant professor in the Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa and the author of La répression juridique des homosexuels au Québec et en France.
Cecilia Benoit is Professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria
