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Hooker Facts

Santa Cruz Patrol Officer Christina Bentley, who has worked the Beach Flats beat until recently and has participated in stings on sex workers and johns, has a few estimates about local people in "the life":
• About a dozen street prostitutes work the streets, primarily in the Beach Flats district.

• About 50 hookers work from their homes and in massage parlors, which are now enjoying a quiet resurgence throughout the area.

• In 1994, 33 arrests were made by Santa Cruz Police for solicitation, resulting in the detainment of 25 men (Johns) and 8 women (sex workers).

• Two stings were conducted in 1994, resulting in 20 of the 33 arrests.

• According to Helen Reynolds in The Economics of Prostitution (Charles C. Thomas, 1986), the sex worker industry in America pumps about $20 billion a year into the subterranean economy.

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