some interesting 'first time' statistics on the size and 'distribution' of sex-for-money in various American cities ... from
(snip)Funded by a $500,000 grant from the Justice Department, and researched and written by the Urban Institute, the landmark study released Wednesday looks at the underground commercial sex economy in eight major cities: Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Miami, San Diego, Seattle and Washington, D.C. It includes interviews with pimps, prostitutes, traffickers, child pornographers and law enforcement officials, all with an eye toward understanding the trade better.
As of 2007, the underground commercial sex economy was estimated to generate between $39.9 million and $290 million in revenue in each city, with Denver’s being the smallest and Atlanta’s the largest. In the two years examined — 2003 and 2007 — the size of these economies decreased in all but two cities: Seattle and Atlanta. Washington, D.C.'s sex economy suffered the greatest decline
The researchers seem to have gotten the clearest picture yet of how America's illegal sex trade and trafficking work. "There are no accounting records to trace, no receipts to scrutinize, and no legal records to analyze," says Meredith Bank, the study's lead author. "Simply, it is difficult to grasp the size of this economy."Unsurprisingly, cash is king, accounting for 66.7 percent of all sex-for-pay transactions. Credit cards are used 10 percent of the time, while trading sex for drugs accounts for another 4.2 percent of transactions (snip)
If interested, the whole study is up for grabs at




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