New York › Sex buyers

The buyers are visible. The arrests are not.

In 2022 CATW read hundreds of posts on "hobby boards" where sex buyers across New York State review the women they bought, and placed each one on a map. The demand side of the sex trade is not hidden; it writes reviews. This page rebuilds that map as an open layer and sets it against the arrest record, which is the measure of impunity.

Content warning: the original reviews are violent, racist and degrading. They are not reproduced here. Each point marks only where a review was posted from. The full report, with the quotes, is linked below.

Where the reviews come from

Ten regions, 141 geolocated reviews. Click a region to see its count and what the report found about enforcement there. Click a figure to see its region.

New York State

141

sex-buyer reviews geolocated by CATW across ten regions

Select a region on the map or below.

Points are review locations, not where a woman was harmed, and not the buyer's home. Counts show where buyers post, which tracks population and the online markets they use.

CATW's original map

The same data as CATW publishes it. Click a figure to open the review it points to, on CATW's own map. The content warning above applies.

Source: Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, From Impunity to Accountability: Deterring Sex Buyers in New York State and Beyond (2022), and its Google My Maps layer, Sex Buyers of New York. Region boundaries and point locations reproduced with review text and images removed. Basemap: OpenStreetMap contributors.

Impunity, in numbers

The report's own measure: how many buyers there are, against how many are ever arrested.

Brooklyn: arrests for patronizing, 2018 to 2020

Brooklyn's DA stopped prosecuting prostitution in 2021 but kept prosecuting patronizing. Arrests had already collapsed. Pimping arrests fell from 36 to 7 over the same years.

16%

of American men report having paid for sex at least once. Globally, 99% of sex buyers are men. CATW report, citing survey research.

0.29%

of Swedish men reported buying sex in a six-month period, the lowest measured, under a law that holds buyers accountable. The Equality Model CATW proposes for New York.

107 vs 400+

sex-buyer arrests in Manhattan in 2011 against Nashville, Tennessee, a city with a third of Manhattan's population.

156 in 3 days

buyers arrested in Operation Losing Proposition, 30 May to 1 June 2013, with 32 vehicles seized. Over 900 arrests and 200 vehicles since 2013. Proof the arrests are possible when ordered.

All figures from the CATW report, chapter on New York City. For the women's side of the same market, see the Penn Track cases on the New York page.

Time served: sex crimes against white-collar crimes

The comparison people expect is that rapists get off lightly against tax evaders. The federal numbers say the opposite, and that is the point: when a sexual abuser is sentenced, the sentence is long. He is almost never sentenced. Impunity is not in the courtroom; it is in the thousand cases that never reach one.

Average federal sentence, fiscal year 2024

Months. US Sentencing Commission. Probation counts as zero; sentences capped at 470 months.

99.2% vs 66%

share sentenced to prison: federal sexual abuse offenders against federal tax offenders. Of fraud, theft and embezzlement offenders the median sentence is 12 months.

1,395 vs 5,312

federal sexual abuse cases sentenced in 2024 against fraud cases. Tax: 440. The system prosecutes money far more often than it prosecutes rape.

25 of 1,000

sexual assaults that end in a prison sentence, by RAINN's funnel. Sentencing a convicted rapist to 18 years means nothing to the 975 who are never charged.

typical sentence for a domestic violence conviction in New York, where most charges are misdemeanours. Not published in a comparable form; on the backlog with the state's court data.

US Sentencing Commission, Sexual Abuse quick facts FY2024, Tax Fraud quick facts FY2024, 2024 Sourcebook. State courts: the last BJS series, 1998, put the mean maximum sentence for rape at 125 months and sexual assault at 94; a current state series does not exist. Federal cases are a small, severe slice of all sex crimes; most are prosecuted, or not, in state court.

What this layer makes possible

Three overlays, in order of readiness, that turn the map from a picture of demand into a measure of impunity.

Arrests per review, by region

Add patronizing and promoting arrests by county from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, and show arrests per hundred reviews. The regions with the most reviews and the fewest arrests are the impunity map.

Deaths on the same map

Once Women Count USA aggregation is agreed, place women killed in the sex trade on this layer. The buyers' reviews and the women's deaths occupy the same streets.

Reviews over time

Recrawl the boards by year to show whether demand moved after the 2021 prosecution policy changes, and after the 2025 buyer felony law for minors.