Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Like everything Steven Levitt writes, his new paper (warning PDF) on the economics of prostitution in Chicago is fascinating. The paper was co-written by none other than the other bad boy of the social sciences, Sudhir Venkatesh, who we all know as that crazy Indian graduate student who basically embedded himself with a Chicago crack gang for six years so he could do ethnographic research.

The little tidbits strewn throughout are interesting if not just for how understated Levitt is about the data he uncovers or the methods used to procure it. For instance, when he describes the research methodology, he almost off handedly says, “The bulk of these data were collected by our trackers who stood on street corners or sat in brothels with prostitutes, recording the information immediately after the customer departed.” Also, did you know that prostitution in a certain area is inversely correlated with a high concentration of female-headed households?

While you should just read the paper if you want to know all the details, I’ll just summarize some bits I found particularly interesting. Levitt and Venkatesh conclude that prostitution pays $27 an hour, 20,000 dollars per year, and for that money, a prostitute has unprotected sex 300 times in a year and is the victim of 12 incidents of violence. Condoms are used 25% of the time, and on July 4th weekend, “total quantity increases by 60 percent” while the price goes up 30%. Black johns systematically pay less than whites or Hispanics, even after correcting for different distribution of sex acts among the races. Also, repeat customers, if they are black, get lower prices, 10-30 percent less, while whites and Hispanics have no such discount.

Pimps, because they can set-up tricks, don’t need to have prostitutes solicit on street corners, thus decreasing the chance of arrest. Working with a pimp also allows prostitutes to earn higher wages per trick, despite the fact that they must fork over 25% of all revenue — even from trick arranged without the pimp’s assistance — the their pimp. And so, prostitutes are “eager to work with pimps.”

The part of the paper most likely to make you think about prostitution in its broader legal context is the section on how prostitutes interact with police officers. Levitt and Venkatesh estimate that a prostitute is only arrested once every 450 tricks, and only 1 in 10 arrests leads to a jail sentences. More surprising than the low rate of enforcement is the high rate of police officers having sex with prostitutes in exchange for protection; about 1 in 20 tricks, five percent, are freebies for protection from either gang members or police. Of the total tricks, three percent are for police officers. Thus “a prostitute is more likely to have sex with a police officer than to get officially arrested by one.”

Despite prostitution being illegal in Chicago, the law is rarely enforced and doesn’t hamper demand unless there’s a big enforcement push. While having “on the book” laws that are spottily enforced may not seem particularly negative, it breeds a disrespect for both laws that ought to be enforced consistently as well as for law enforcement in general. And when prostitutes can essentially purchase protection from the police, the corruption compromises the police’s relationship with both those prostitutes and the community as a whole. For example, if a cop who has freebie sex with a prostitute were to beat her, she could not report him. And if the community views the policy as easily corruptible, they are less likely to cooperate with them or trust them to stop violent and more deleterious crime. In view of the enforcement (or lack thereof) of prostituion laws, some sort of legalization seems like a reasonable step.

While there are good arguments for why prostitution, whatever its legal status, is coercive, exploitative and immoral, it seems like the demand, and thus the supply, for prostitution, will always exist – it is, after all, the world’s oldest profession. In a regulated, legalized system, the government could mandate condom use, disease testing and more easily crack down on abuses because prostitutes wouldn’t be afraid to go the police. In Nevada counties where prostitution is legal, condom use is 100%, there hasn’t been a case of HIV since 1988 and prostitutes don’t have to give “freebies” to gang members or police officers (via). Although there may be black market in condom free sex, enforcement of prostitution laws would increase from the status quo’s pitiful low level if prostitution were legalized and regulated.

But whatever your views on prostitution, read the paper!

cross-posted at campusprogress.org/blog