Last week, researcher Melissa Farley’s book, Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections, was published by the San Francisco-based nonprofit Prostitution Research and Education. The study took Farley 2 1⁄2 years to complete, and prompted the New York Times to slam Mayor Oscar Goodman for saying he supports discussion of legalizing brothels Downtown.
Here are some factoids the report brings to the nation’s attention:
20—Number of legal brothels in Nevada right now
8—Number of brothels Farley visited in her research
45—Number of prostitutes interviewed in legal brothels
1—Time per week prostitutes in our legal brothels are required to be tested for STDs
12-14—Number of hours per average shift a brothel prostitute works
50 percent—Amount that brothels typically take from the prostitute’s earnings
$100-$500—Amount of fees a prostitute must pay if she is late for the lineup or falls asleep on her shift
80—Percentage of women interviewed who said they wanted out of prostitution
9—Times bigger the state’s illegal prostitution industry is than the legal industry
14—Average age of hundreds of child prostitutes who pass through Family District Court Judge William Voy’s court per year
90—Percentage of Nevada’s prostitution that occurs in Vegas, where it is illegal
50—Approximate percentage of people Farley surveyed on the street who thought prostitution was legal in Las Vegas
150—Pages of ads in the Las Vegas phone book for prostitution, which is illegal.
And this is from the Times second editorial on the matter:
“Any honest investigation of the facts, as opposed to abstract theories, of prostitution—in any form—would reveal a horror show.”