San Francisco's "John School" Reduces Recidivism Among Men Arrested for Soliciting a Prostitute
April 22, 2008
Abt Associates recently conducted a two-year evaluation of San Francisco's First Offender Prostitution Program (FOPP), designed to reduce the demand for commercial sex and human trafficking in San Francisco by educating "johns" arrested for soliciting prostitutes about the negative consequences of prostitution. The program is a partnership of the San Francisco District Attorney's office, the San Francisco Police Department, and a local nonprofit organization, Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE). SAGE was founded by a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation who had previously worked as a street prostitute in San Francisco.
On February 5, 2008, the director of the john school evaluation, Michael Shively of Abt Associates (third from left) discussed the evaluation findings at a panel on "Fighting Demand for Sex Trafficking," at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. Shively's co-panelists were (from left to right) Mark P. Lagon, Ambassador of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the Department of State; Norma Hotaling of SAGE; and the Hudson Institute's Richard Weitz, who chaired the panel.
In the FOPP, eligible arrestees are given the choice of paying a fee and attending a one-day class (known generically as the "john school"), or being prosecuted. During its more than 12 years of operation, 5,735 men have attended the FOPP's john school. The fees support all of the costs of conducting the john school classes, as well as subsidizing police vice operations, the screening and processing of arrestees, and recovery programs for women and girls involved in commercial sex.
Abt Associates' evaluation addressed the FOPP's effectiveness, return on investment, and transferability to other jurisdictions (e.g., other cities). Data collection efforts included site visits, police "ride alongs," interviews, collection of program documents and administrative data, structured observations of john school classes, pre- and post-class surveys of participants, and assembly of criminal history data regarding men arrested for soliciting prostitutes in San Francisco and throughout California. In its report on the study, the Abt Associates evaluation team states that, "We have conducted many studies at many sites over many years, and we have never had greater cooperation and support than we have while conducting this evaluation." The team thanked the primary partner agencies of the FOPP "for allowing us to be underfoot for over two years."
The evaluation's findings were generally positive: the program has been effective in substantially reducing recidivism among men arrested for soliciting prostitutes. It is cost-effective and sustainable: the john school has operated over the past 12 years at no cost to taxpayers while generating nearly $1 million for recovery programs directed to providers of commercial sex. It is also transferable, having been successfully replicated in 12 other U.S. sites and adapted in over 25 additional U.S. sites over the past decade.
In its pre- and post-class survey, Abt Associates found that the program performed well in informing johns about the consequences of participating in prostitution. However, this improved understanding was not accompanied by a significant shift in the self-reported likelihood of changing behavior: the researchers observed no significant decline in the proportion of men saying they "plan to" or "might" solicit prostitutes in the future. This result is consistent with the researchers' structured observations of the course, where they found that the john school sessions focused on factual content and did not provide instruction on problem-solving skills or practical assistance regarding replacement behaviors.
To evaluate the program's impact on recidivism, Abt Associates staff analyzed time series data for San Francisco and the rest of California for 10 years prior to implementation and 10 years after implementation (1985 through 2005). In San Francisco they found that compared to the 10 years prior to FOPP implementation, a sharp drop in recidivism rates occurred in the year of implementation (1995). Recidivism rates stayed at these lower levels during the 10 years following implementation. A similar pattern was observed in San Diego, with annual average recidivism rates following implementation of a john school at less than half the pre-program levels. There were no statewide trends or shifts in either 1995 or 2000 (the year of San Diego's implementation) that might explain the recidivism rate declines in either San Francisco or San Diego. The results were repeatedly confirmed by applying various multivariate statistical modeling techniques and examining different subsets of the population of arrestees. The collective evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the FOPP significantly reduces recidivism.
The FOPP was not the first john education program in the U.S. Programs with similar curriculum content conveyed in multiple-session counseling formats were implemented in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1981, and St. Paul, Minnesota in 1988. While not the first program seeking to reduce the demand for commercial sex by educating men arrested for soliciting sex, the FOPP has served as the model for most of the 40 programs implemented after 1995. The majority of john school programs that have been implemented are still operating.
Abt Associates' transferability assessment found that the FOPP model is highly adaptable and sustainable, and that the key conditions are in place to successfully implement john school programs in hundreds of additional sites. Police undercover operations focusing on men who solicit prostitutes (the primary condition necessary for implementing a john school) are conducted in over 400 sites that do not currently have a john school program. At least 49 sites currently without programs have considered or are planning john schools.
The final report on this project was written by Michael Shively, Sarah Kuck Jalbert, Ryan Kling, William Rhodes, Peter Finn, Chris Flygare, Laura Tierney, David Squires, Christina Dyous, Kristin Wheeler, and Dana Hunt.
