The Houston Press is a free weekly newspaper that is part of a national chain of free newspapers with all kinds of interesting articles on a variety of subjects. On a weekly basis, there is an article or two that "mainstream newspapers" won't cover. This week, there was a real eye opener of an article.
The article is quite lengthy, and I'll supply the url if you care to read it at your leisure. Boiled down, the article has some mind blowing stats that blow out of the water pretty much every stereotype that state controlled media and NBC likes to portray child prostitution to be.
The research was done by two researchers from John Jay College of New York City. The researchers set out to do a census of underage sex workers in New York City in order to get a barometer on just what is going on concerning underage sex for sale. What they found was that there were just over 3,000 underage sex workers in New York City, and,
*-55% of underage hookers were girls (45% boys). *-10% had pimps. *-45% entered the trade with the help of friends. *-90% were U.S. citizens (56% from New York City). *-On average, they started at age 15. *-Most serviced wealthy white males. *-Most deals were negotiated on the streets. *-70% had sought help, at least once, from youth service centers.
The F.B.I. is the only federal agency engaged in the effort to document and rescue underage sex workers, and as such, rescue about 200 per year. With that said, federal expenditures in this area:
*-20 million per anum in awareness, victim services, and and Police work (payroll) *-50 million on youth homeless shelters *-186 million spent since 1996 on youth outreach,
which comes to a pricetag of 400k spent per rescued child.
Federal agencies depend on budgets, wherein they are granted the amount of money they spent in April of this year for April in the coming year. With that said, no federal agency has compiled the statistics that the two researchers in the John Jay study compiled because federal agencies would prefer to perpetuate the myth that the typical child prostitute is a petite 11 or 12 year old white girl, under the control of a huge pimp with dark colored skin, therefore necessitating massive federal bucks this year, and the next, and the next.
(Note- The New York City study was done in 2006/07 and the statistics from other cities are still being compiled).
So, the next time you see a news release that federal agents are being sent to the city of a large sports event (i.e. The Superbowl) for the reason of finding underage prostitutes, it's just the feds intervening and blowing your money, instead of just backstopping local Police, who probably have a better grip on the situation anyway.
Some of the numbers that get bantied around are just ridiculous. A popular figure is that there 300,000 underaged women working, against their will, as prostitutes in the US or about 0.1% of the population. In a city the size of New York that would mean 20,000. Seems way off in fantasy land. The number in the study you quote, about 10% of that, seems much more realistic.