Clients of Street Prostitutes in Portland, Oregon, San Francisco and Santa Clara, California, and Las Vegas, Nevada, 1996-1999 (ICPSR 2859)

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Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection

Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes

Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose

In the late 1990s, prostitution had become an issue of increasing concern to law enforcement officials, women's organizations, and community members. The presence of prostitution negatively affected the livability of neighborhoods, potentially harmed local businesses, and was associated with illicit drug use and other vice. Prostitutes were at high risk of contracting human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and prostitution had the potential to become a vector for the transmission of STDs to clients and their spouses or partners. Perhaps most significantly, prostitutes themselves were frequent victims of violent crimes. Research and policy had focused attention primarily on prostitutes rather than on their clients. In 1995, two creative programs, Portland's Sexual Exploitation Education Project (SEEP) and San Francisco's First Offender Prostitution Program (FOPP), began to address the issue of prostitution differently, focusing prevention efforts on the demand side of the supply/demand equation, the clients of prostitutes. The overwhelming majority of men in these cities who were arrested for paying or attempting to pay for sex participated in the intervention programs. Some were required to attend the program as part of their sentence, while others received reduced fines or had the arrest purged from their records in exchange for their attendance. Using data gathered from men attending such programs, this study sought to provide information about this otherwise inaccessible population. In particular, this project sought to collect information about the background characteristics, attitudes, and reported behaviors of arrested clients, with particular attention to the issue of violent crime against women. The project was designed to answer the following questions: (1) What are the background characteristics of men who solicit prostitution? How do they differ from a representative sample of men? (2) What types of sex-related behaviors characterize men who solicit prostitution? (3) Why do men visit prostitutes? How consistent are their motivations with scholarly and popular understandings of the prostitution client? (4) What are the attitudes of prostitution clients toward violence against women? (5) What are the consequences of conceiving of sexuality as a commodity? (6) What are rates of recidivism for participants in prostitution client intervention programs?

Study Design View help for Study Design

Client intervention programs provided an unprecedented opportunity to gather information from the previously inaccessible population of men arrested for trying to hire street prostitutes. For this study, a detailed anonymous questionnaire was administered to men before the beginning of every client intervention workshop in San Francisco, California, and Portland, Oregon. The questionnaire was also administered at a small program in Santa Clara, California, which was modeled after the San Francisco program. During the course of the study, the Portland program ceased operations and a new program began in Las Vegas, which became a significant source of data. Both English and Spanish versions of the questionnaire were used when the researchers gathered the data.

Sample View help for Sample

Convenience sampling.

Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation

Data Source View help for Data Source

Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)

Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables

Men were asked about their sexual behavior, including the number and type of partners, frequency of sex, interest in pornography, age and circumstances of first sexual encounter with a prostitute, sexual acts performed with prostitutes, and condom use with prostitutes. Clients were also asked about their attitudes toward premarital sex, homosexual sex, extramarital sex, and sex between adults and children. Other questions probed men's views about prostitutes, the legality of prostitution, and violence against women. Background information gathered on clients included race, educational level, sexual orientation, marital status, work status, socioeconomic status, age, parents' marital status, history of sexual or physical abuse, military service, relationship history, and sexual preferences.

Response Rates View help for Response Rates

Over 80 percent.

Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales

Several Likert-type scales were used.

Original Release Date View help for Original Release Date

2000-08-04

Version History View help for Version History