Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps: No Arrests on a Saturday in Honolulu
03/12/2012
Sara Lin/Civil Beat
Editor's Note: This article is the first in a series investigating how the Honolulu Police Department enforces Hawaii prostitution laws. Read our related coverage:
- The Story Behind Our "Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps" Series
- In One Year, One Pimp Arrested
- Honolulu Prostitution Arrests Declining
- The Database
- Arrests Turn Up No Trafficking Victims
Want to hire a prostitute in Honolulu and get away with it? Do it on a Saturday.
A Civil Beat investigation of 12 months' worth of prostitution arrests shows that there is virtually no enforcement of prostitution laws on weekends.
In one year's time, Honolulu police made no prostitution arrests on Saturdays and just two arrests on a Sunday, and both of those were on the same day at the same location. That's no prostitutes, johns or pimps arrested on the busiest night of the week. Police made a total of 214 arrests in a 12-month period, with weekends making up less than 1 percent of those arrests. Instead, the majority of all prostitution arrests took place on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
