# Gendered Vice Complaints: 911 Calls Reporting Sex Work in Chicago Neighborhoods, 2017-2020

## TL;DR

This study examines how different Chicago neighborhoods use 911 calls to report sex work and links these reports to neighborhood characteristics.

## Contribution

The paper reveals how gentrification and socioeconomic factors influence the policing of sex work in Chicago.

## Key findings

- 911 calls for sex work are moderately clustered but most frequent on Chicago's West Side.
- Gentrifying, commercial, and Black neighborhoods show increased 911 calls for sex work.
- Socioeconomic disadvantage is most strongly linked to rising vice complaints.

## Abstract

Urban communities use 911 to demand “quality-of-life” police responses and control neighborhood “disorder.” Less is known about the neighborhoods calling 911 to report sex work perceived as disorderly. We investigate the frequency and spatiality of 911 calls reporting sex work across Chicago census tracts relative to arrests and model the relationships between these and neighborhood characteristics. We find that 911 calls spread across Chicago with moderate clustering, but the highest social control of sex work occurs in the West Side. Increased 911 calls come from gentrifying, commercial, and Black neighborhoods, but socioeconomic disadvantage has the largest increase on vice complaints.