Fluent Essays

4 PARAGRAPHS Following the guidelines in the section Elements of a Research Proposal (pp. 24-25) and using the report Street Prostitution in Raleigh, North Carolina: A Final Report to the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services on the Field Applications of the Problem-Oriented Guides for Police Project found at streetProstitution.pdf (asu.edu)  , identify the following: Problem or objective of the study Research question(s) Subjects for study Measurement - What are the key variables in the study? Data collection - How was the data collected in the study? Analysis - What kind of analysis was done in the study? Results - What were the results of the study? file attached. Only study what is in this ATTACHEMENT. DO NOT USE OUTSIDE SOURCES AT ALL. STREET PROSTITUTION IN RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA A Final Report to the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services on the Field Applications of the Problem- Oriented Guides for Police Project DEBORAH LAMM WEISEL, NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY AUGUST 2004 This project was supported by cooperative agreement #2001CKWXK051 by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions contained herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official position of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific companies, products, or services should not be considered an endorsement of the product by the author or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues. SUMMARY The capital city of North Carolina, Raleigh enjoys a modest crime rate and widespread economic prosperity. The city is not free of public safety problems, however, and many crime problems addressed by the Raleigh Police Department are concentrated in low- income areas populated by minority groups. In 2002, police undertook a problem-solving effort to reduce street prostitution in one police district near the city’s Central Business District. The problem had been one of long standing, relatively immune to routine enforcement efforts by police and revitalization efforts in the city. For many years, prostitution and street level drug dealing had been a source of community concern. To learn more about prostitution in the area, police examined historic arrest data. Arrests were primarily of prostitutes rather than customers. Over ten years, a group of about 60 chronic offenders had been routinely arrested and rearrested by police for misdemeanor offenses ranging from worthless checks, drug paraphernalia and prostitution. In most cases, the women were adjudicated guilty and sentenced to “time served”; many were rearrested within a short period of time within the same geographic area. As this project concluded, Raleigh police were developing a two-pronged approach to the prostitution problem: one focused on detecting and discouraging the male customers of prostitutes; the other focused on assisting female prostitutes in leaving the business either voluntarily or through conditional release from jail. The male customers were to be deterred through a publicity effort that placed photographs of arrested offenders on the department’s website and cable television; further, customers who appeared to be seeking prostitutes in the neighborhood were identified through police and citizen surveillance and the department was preparing a cautionary letter to be sent to the residence of the licensed vehicle owner. Police were planning to assist female prostitutes by linking them with needed services, such as housing, drug and alcohol treatment and other services. For entrenched prostitutes, police were seeking court dispositions to restrict offenders from the areas of prostitution and require drug treatment, as appropriate. The response phase of the project had not been fully implemented at the conclusion of the project but police were continuing their efforts and developing a unique way to measure their impact. Since arrests and calls for service do not provide reliable indicators of the extent of the prostitution problem, police were developing a procedure to assess how accessible the prostitution market was to customers. By recording start-and-stop times for undercover operations, police were measuring how long a customer might have to look for a prostitute and the amount of time a prostitute might have to wait for a customer. While the efforts may not completely eliminate prostitution, police believed that increasing the time and effort to negotiate sexual transactions would reduce the problem and improve the quality of life for citizens and provide a measure to police to monitor the problem over time. THE PROJECT In January 2002, a survey was conducted of sworn officers in the Raleigh Police Department. Personnel from patrol, investigations and special operations were asked to identify and rank order the problems of most concern on their beat and to rank the extent to which the problem could be improved through police effort. Nearly 450 people responded to the survey, approximately 70\% of the Department’s 640 sworn personnel. The respondents consisted primarily of line personnel from the Department’s field operations division. Survey results indicated that prostitution was not perceived as a citywide problem, but was viewed as particularly problematic in the Downtown District—one of six patrol districts and adjacent to the downtown area of Raleigh. In contrast to many other problems included in the survey, police respondents consistently ranked prostitution as a problem that could be substantially improved through a problem- solving effort. Among all the field operations personnel, a greater percentage of officers in the Downtown District than any other responded to the survey, and their interest prompted the Chief and command staff to address the problem of prostitution in this area. Scope of the Problem The scope and seriousness of prostitution in Raleigh was not immediately obvious, though a focus group with officers in the Downtown District indicated that it was a recurring problem, closely linked to crack drug markets. One patrol officer described the problem on his beat: If you throw a rock on my beat, you will hit a drug dealer. If you don’t hit a drug dealer, you will hit a prostitute. While the description was somewhat of an exaggeration, the officers believed that the problem with prostitution was common, occurring 24 hours a day over seven days a week. Police were not the alone in their concern about prostitution. In 2001, a survey of Raleigh citizens revealed similar concerns. Asked to list three top priorities for the Department, 34\% of respondents urged police to “clear the streets of homeless, prostitution and drugs.” The citizen survey also indicated that many Raleigh citizens did not travel to the center city areas because of concern about their safety. Some experienced police in Raleigh described the evolution of prostitution over time. For many years, problems had been concentrated in an area known as Moore Square, a park on the edge of the Central Business District in Raleigh, but redevelopment of the area in the early 1990s apparently displaced much of the of it to several predominately residential neighborhoods less than a mile away. As well as being a problem in Raleigh because of its visibility and offensiveness to citizens, prostitution had also been associated with violence. In 1991, Raleigh police arrested a man for brutally killing a prostitute from Southeast Raleigh (North Carolina v. Taylor). Although it occurred more than 10 years ago, witnesses in that case described a pattern of open drug use and street prostitution in areas where the problem continues today. In fact, one of the witnesses in that murder case—Eva Marie Kelley, now 54 years old—remained an active prostitute and was even arrested by Raleigh police three times in 2002 on prostitution-related charges. Violence associated with prostitution became a headline story again in 1996, when six poor black women, four of them prostitutes, were killed over the course of the year. As a result of a decoy operation, police arrested a suspect in February 1997 as he was assaulting a woman. Again, in May 2002, several prostitutes in Raleigh were assaulted and raped, and police were searching for a suspect. Despite these periodic episodes of violence that generated newspaper headlines, most prostitution in Raleigh has been relatively cloaked from public view and geographically isolated. By 2002, prostitution in the city was described by police as consisting of four relatively discrete problems: homosexual prostitution, which clustered in several blocks downtown near gay bars and also occurred in one notorious state park street prostitution, a multi-ethnic problem occurring in several locations primarily in the Downtown District, and closely linked to drug markets. Street prostitution also included some transvestite prostitution, although this appeared to be part of street prostitution rather than a distinctly separate problem. houses of prostitution set up by an emerging Hispanic immigrant population, including Hondurans and El Salvadorans escort services. Based on a preliminary discussion of the types of prostitution in Raleigh, police elected to focus on street prostitution near drug markets concentrated geographically in areas near downtown and located in the Downtown District. They perceived the four types of prostitution as separate and necessitating different approaches. The problem with street prostitution was not new to the Downtown District. This diverse geographic area encompassed the central business district of downtown Raleigh, a large state government complex including the state Capitol building and the Governor’s mansion. Residentially, the district included an historic neighborhood of single-family homes, several public housing complexes and a wide variety of other single- and multi-family housing. Most of the prostitution appeared to concentrate in predominately residential neighborhoods, areas that were clearly low income but not desperately deteriorated. Police were well aware of citizen concerns about prostitution in these residential areas, part of which had been targeted through a C.O.P.E. project—Citizen Oriented Police Enforcement—in late 2001. At that time, uniformed police had surveyed nearly 600 citizens, who reported a high level of concern about prostitution. The respondents’ concerns about prostitution were exceeded only by their concerns about drug dealing in the area. In addition to conducting the survey during the COPE project, Raleigh officers provided their names and phone numbers to citizens, documented problems such as code violations, and made referrals to other city agencies. Traditional Response Notwithstanding the COPE project in 2001, Raleigh police had traditionally responded to prostitution primarily through undercover operations. These periodic enforcement efforts typically resulted in the arrest of female prostitutes. Occasionally, these operations included reverse stings, in which female undercover officers were deployed to target the customers of prostitutes. It was not always easy for police to find female decoys, however, as few Raleigh officers could emulate the state of physical decline that often characterized the street prostitutes. Undercover operations continued into 2001 and 2002. Over the course of a 10- month period (May 2001 through February 2002), police in Raleigh made 143 arrests (see Table 1) for varied prostitution-related charges including soliciting, crimes against nature, and felony charges for acts such as oral sex. The arrests in Table 1 were predominately generated by undercover operations. Traditionally, uniformed officers in Raleigh have not been involved in responding to prostitution; typically they discourage prostitutes by making individuals aware of police presence but make few arrests because the evidence necessary for the criminal charge of prostitution is difficult to obtain. Since officers would generally be unable to observe the actual solicitation, a case requires that officers observe the sexual act and obtain a statement from either the customer or the prostitute. It is difficult for police to obtain such statements, as they are inherently self- incriminating. Instead of charging prostitutes with prostitution, including soliciting and crimes against nature, uniformed officers are more easily able to enforce a state statute prohibiting “loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution” adopted in 1979. This charge requires only that officers observe multiple efforts by prostitutes in public places to stop pedestrians or drivers by beckoning or other repeated efforts to engage in conversation. While the loitering charge only required uniformed officers to observe the patterned behaviors and could be accomplished through surveillance, this task usually required a block of time free from calls or assistance from other beat officers. Despite the lower threshold of evidence, the loitering charge therefore appeared to be used infrequently. The loitering statute did not provide police with assistance in apprehending the customers of prostitutes. In fact, case law appeared to specifically prohibit the application of the loitering statute to prostitution customers: It is the organized and repeated provision of [prostitution] services, not their use by unorganized and casual individuals, that constitutes the most readily eradicable social evil. (State v. Evans, 1985). Prior to analysis for this project, beat officers were very familiar with the problem of prostitution in the Downtown District. Although there was little empirical data about its extent or prevalence, many of the officers knew the prostitutes by name and routinely saw the women move throughout the geographic area. Officers described the problem as being quite visible and concentrated on and just off the major southern, northern and eastern thoroughfares into the city of Raleigh—Edenton Street, New Bern Avenue and Person Street (see Figure 1). For the most part, police perceived the prostitutes as being quite blatant in soliciting and generally unconcerned about police actions. Police also had some ideas about the prostitution market, the prostitutes, and the criminal justice system. As a preliminary form of analysis, we developed these ideas as hunches about the local problem and sought ways to gather information to verify or disconfirm these ideas. The following perceptions shaped our initial hunches or working hypotheses about street prostitution: Some police believed that the Department’s prior responses to prostitution had not been effective because enforcement efforts were not sustained over time or there was an insufficient amount of enforcement. In particular, some uniformed police officers perceived that more undercover enforcement was necessary since uniformed officers could do little about the problem. Police were aware that many citizens were very concerned about prostitution in the neighborhood; citizens routinely complained there was not enough police enforcement and were concerned about visible contact between prostitutes and customers, evidence of sexual activity such as used condoms and uninvolved women in the neighborhood often being approached for sex. Citizens were equally concerned about drug markets, however. Some of the police officers believed that many women had taken up prostitution because of drug addiction or the inability to find other sources of income. They described the prostitutes as being on the bottom rung of society and often virtually homeless. Police also believed most of the women were frequent users of drug and alcohol. Police were aware that many of the prostitutes were physically victimized by their customers and were reluctant to report assaults to the police. Believing little could be done about the their victimization, prostitutes seemed to treat violence as an occupational hazard and the evidence of such violence— broken teeth or bruises—was often apparent. Most police felt arrest was not an effective deterrent for prostitutes because many of the women served only a short period of time and returned to the streets almost as soon as they were released. They felt prostitutes perceived arrest and jail time as a cost of doing business and that arrests served only to temporarily incapacitate them. Each of these hunches about the problem was addressed and generally supported in Street Prostitution, one of the Problem-Oriented Guides for Police. Even police perceptions about the need for more enforcement efforts against prostitution were supported by the Guide—although it noted that such strategies were expensive and a that strong police presence could create or reinforce perceptions that the neighborhood was unsafe. From the outset of this project, most police appeared to support the premises of the Guide—namely that an effective strategy must do more than arrest prostitutes, and must give them an alternative, necessitating the involvement of service agencies; and that effective strategies should also address the behavior of prostitution customers. ANALYSIS OF THE PROSTITUTION PROBLEM Preliminary problem analysis was undertaken to verify the prevailing wisdom about prostitution near downtown Raleigh. The analysis was organized to examine the characteristics of the environment and the prostitution market, to learn more about prostitutes and their customers, to assess the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in handling the problem, and to gauge perceptions of residents in neighborhoods where the problems were most severe. Geographic Characteristics of Prostitution Market Arrest data from 2001 and 2002 was used to determine the geographic areas in which prostitution occurred. While there was awareness that arrests might not reveal the entire picture of the prostitution market, police agreed that prostitution certainly was occurring where arrests were made. Spatial analysis of arrests showed that prostitution was primarily occurring in three distinct areas along and adjacent to the New Bern/Edenton and Person avenue corridors of the city (see Figure 3). These one-way surface streets carried much of the vehicular traffic into and out of the city each day. Despite the high volume of traffic on the roadways, the streets were not limited access, included numerous traffic signals, and the speed limit was posted at a modest 35 mph. Thus the streets gave potential customers in vehicles the ability to appraise the market and its risks by slowing down or stopping without fear of detection. The street configuration also provided potential customers immediate access into, and escape routes out of, the residential areas along the major thoroughfares. In the Edenton Street market, most arrests occurred on or within one block of the thoroughfare (see Figure 1). Spatial analysis of prostitution and drug arrests also revealed the close proximity of prostitution and drug markets (see Figure 2). While many drug arrests occurred away from the prostitution area, virtually all of the prostitution arrests occurred in the midst of the city’s primary drug hot spots. The correlation between the two markets supported the police view of the close relationship between prostitution and drug markets. Composition of the Prostitute Population Although police were knowledgeable about individual prostitutes, prior to analysis there was no empirical information about the number of prostitutes, where they lived or their involvement in other crimes. Arrest data shed some light on the composition of the prostitute population. 1. Virtually all of the prostitutes for whom addresses were available lived close to the prostitution and drug markets, further highlighting the interrelationship between drugs and prostitution, and offenders were typically arrested within two to three blocks of their residence (see Figure 3). 2. They ranged in age from 18 to 54 years old, but most were not young women— the average suspect was 35 years old. Among 50 chronic prostitutes for whom age information was available, more than half were aged 30 to 39, while one- fourth were 40 years or older. The prostitutes were ethnically diverse—about two-thirds were African American and one-third were Caucasian. Few Hispanic prostitutes were detected, presumably because that market (as described previously) is typically manifested in houses of prostitution rather than street markets. Arrest data from May 2001 to October 2002 was examined to determine the number of active prostitutes. Of 201 arrests for prostitution made by the Raleigh Police Department, most (109) were of offenders arrested only once during the time period, while 39 individuals were arrested more than once for prostitution during the period and generated 92 arrests. Thus, about one-fourth of offenders accounted for nearly half of the total arrests (see Table 2). Relying only on arrest data underestimates the proportion of prostitutes who are repeat offenders or habitual prostitutes, however. When Raleigh police ran criminal histories on all 148 persons arrested for prostitution during the data period, the analysis revealed that an additional 21 of the suspects had been previously arrested for prostitution, resulting in a total of 60 repeat offenders. This analysis suggested that 40\% of prostitution suspects (60 out of 148) were habitual prostitutes, accounting for 56 \% (113) of the arrests for prostitution in about 18 months. Although using arrest and criminal history together improved our understanding of chronic offenders, these data underestimated the criminal activity of prostitutes. A detailed analysis of criminal history provided greater insight into individuals’ criminal careers. The 60 suspects accounted for 779 various charges—208 or 27\% of all charges were prostitution-related. On average, each suspect had 13 charges in their criminal history (see Figure 4). In addition to prostitution, charges included worthless checks, trespassing and public disturbance. Many of the charges—a total of 147—were drug- or alcohol-related, including paraphernalia, drug possession and DWI. The criminal histories showed little involvement in property or violent crime, although a few fraud and larceny charges were included in the total. The criminal history data gave more insight into the involvement of prostitutes in drug-related activity and shed light on the proximity of offenders’ residences to the drug and prostitution markets. The picture that emerged of prostitution was a lifestyle rotating between getting high and getting money to get high. The proximity of the prostitute’s residence provided a place to take a break, get high, carry out the sexual transaction or clean up after the transaction. The cycle of sex and drugs theory was reinforced by the close correlation between pricing for sexual transactions and pricing for drugs. Arrest data suggested that prostitutes offered sex for prices ranging from $15 to $50; the average price solicited was $21, approximately one dollar more than the prevailing price for crack. The typical sexual transaction was for oral sex. The association between prices of sexual transactions and drugs cannot be considered causal because we do not know the direction of the relationship, but the similar pricing structuring and the brevity and ease associated with oral sex supported the contention that prostitutes offered a particular type of service (oral sex) and priced their service as low as possible in order to quickly generate enough money to get high and to perhaps purchase a small snack. Police developed a survey to learn more about prostitutes, including their business practices, customers, and social needs (see Appendix A.) During the course of this project, they completed approximately four surveys with prostitutes. But as it was difficult for police to get cooperation, the interviews were not generally productive. Even the four completed surveys included a number of refusals by the subjects on specific questions. Although we anticipated that we could gather additional information by finding someone else to carry out the surveys, we elected to focus our analysis efforts elsewhere. A few kernels of information from the completed surveys did, however, shed some light on our understanding of prostitution. Among the prostitutes interviewed, one was 19, two were 37 years old and one was 52. All said they had engaged in prostitution for less than two years—one because of homelessness and the others because they needed money. Three were virtually homeless, and one reported living with her parents. Three of the prostitutes reported regular use of crack and alcohol. None of the prostitutes used a pimp and none routinely traded sex for drugs or shared their earnings with anyone else. Three of the prostitutes reported having regular clients, and one reported having both regular customers and providing services to strangers. Three described their clients as arriving in vehicles and carrying out the sexual transaction in the vehicle. Two reported being victimized by customers—rape, robbery and assault—but neither had reported this to police. Two of the prostitutes reported having no set schedule or routine working hours and claimed to work either day or night. However, three prostitutes estimated the length of their working day as, respectively, three hours, four to eight hours, and eight hours each day. Two prostitutes estimated the number of customers as, respectively, three to four, and five per day. Two of the prostitutes said the prostitution market was not competitive and could be lucrative, while another, the oldest prostitute who worked the fewest hours, reported jealousy between prostitutes and said there was little money to be made. Prostitution Customers and Market Operations Since there were few arrests of prostitution customers and we gained little information from interviews with prostitutes, we realized we knew little about prostitution customers. Nonetheless, we made several assumptions about the prostitution market, based upon a reading of the prostitution literature, other observations, and common sense. The prostitution markets were located near and just off major thoroughfares—a location that seemed attractive to “out of town” customers; and most sexual transactions appeared to occur in or near the market, where the prostitutes and their customers felt relatively safe. We believed it likely that the market included many repeat customers and that customers learned about it informally, from friends and associates. Although customers may have been coming to the area to purchase drugs, interviews with prostitutes did not support this view. Customers were exclusively male, but appeared to include a wide range of ethnic groups and ages. Although the sexual transactions were relatively inexpensive, the custody of a vehicle suggested that these customers were wage earners, and thus could be deterred through informal social sanctions or shaming. It was hypothesized that a proportion of customers were also married, making them further receptive to informal social sanctions. The POP Guide on prostitution suggested that prostitutes often carried out three to five sexual transactions per day and worked five days per week, and the few interviews with prostitutes confirmed this. Using this formula, we hypothesized that approximately 60 chronic prostitutes, making 15 sexual transactions per week for 50 weeks per year, would result in approximately 45,000 sexual transactions. Over an 18-month period, the duration of this study, we can estimate that 67,500 sexual transactions occurred. Police involved in the study believed that these estimates were very conservative, however. To the extent they are accurate, police effectively clear only about 3/10 of 1\% of offenses through arrest. To learn more about the customers, we analyzed arrests of prostitution customers. In 2001-2002, Raleigh police arrested 56 males for prostitution1. The suspects were ethnically diverse and included 34 African Americans, 16 Hispanics, five Caucasians and one Asian. Although the customers ranged in age from 19 to 58, age appeared to vary with ethnicity—for example, among the African American suspects, most (23, or 68\%) were 30 years old or older; while among the Hispanic suspects, who ranged in age from 19 to 42, only two (13\%) were 30 years old or older. The geographic origin of suspects was more informative than their ethnicity and age. Among the suspects who reported addresses, 37 could be verified, geocoded and mapped. While 14 (39\%) of these suspects resided relatively near the offense location, 61\% lived three miles or more from the location of the arrest; 25\% lived more than nine miles away (see figure 5 and table 3). Citizens in the area believed most of the customers came from outside the neighborhood, however. In a survey of citizens conducted by police in October 2002, 83\% of respondents voiced this belief. Similarly, 81\% of respondents indicated that customers and prostitutes hooked up via car rather than on foot, and this view appeared to be supported by the interviews from prostitutes. Total arrests with valid address information 362 Since the conclusions about the residence of prostitution customers were not fully supported by empirical data, we undertook further data collection to clarify this information. For two evenings in …