Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
I was trying to figure out a good estimate of total prostitutes in the US; general estimates are really vague or based off of outdated information. BUT: I know how many women were arrested for prostitution in 2017, and I know the % of escorts who reported arrest on my survey.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Ofc this isn’t a *great* estimate, but 8% of escorts I surveyed reported being arrested on the job, and the internet says 17300 women were arrested for prostitution in 2017, and if we assume a 8% arrest rate, this leaves us with an estimate of ~216,000 prostitutes in the US.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I wanna doublecheck years (I only checked 1 year of arrests, and I asked the women about ever having been arrested over their total career, the full spreadsheet is on a computer I don’t have rn), but I find this a really exciting and more accurate-feeling estimate.
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Lysenkoist
@Lysenkoist1
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
If you’re looking for some tighter error bars, and you have some data for multiple arrests, this sounds quite similar to the “mark-recapture” method of population estimation in ecology. I’ve used some variations before, if you have any questions.
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