John school

John school is a form of educational intervention that caters to the clients of prostitutes, who are colloquially known as "johns" in North America. Societal norms deemed the behavior of clients and their engagement in sex work as atypical, so john schools work to address this. John schools originated in San Francisco due to community frustrations about the great occurrence of street prostitution in their areas and the lack of effective policies to combat the sex industry. Schools similar to the San Francisco one were established throughout the country and in multiple nations. John schools are usually a diversion program for people - almost exclusively men - arrested for soliciting the services of a prostitute, or another related offense. This often acts as an alternative to criminal prosecutions. However, in some jurisdictions, courts may sentence men to attend a john school program as a condition of probation. John schools often last a few months and usually have weekly sessions. Their focus is often on the experiences and harms of prostitution, such as the violence associated with prostitution, the sexually transmitted disease risks of prostitution, and the effects of prostitution on families and communities. Whether the john school is a diversion program or a sentencing condition, the client will often pay a fee to enroll.…

John school is a form of educational intervention that caters to the clients of prostitutes, who are colloquially known as "johns" in North America. Societal norms deemed the behavior of clients and their engagement in sex work as atypical, so john schools work to address this. John schools originated in San Francisco due to community frustrations about the great occurrence of street prostitution in their areas and the lack of effective policies to combat the sex industry. Schools similar to the San Francisco one were established throughout the country and in multiple nations. John schools are usually a diversion program for people - almost exclusively men - arrested for soliciting the services of a prostitute, or another related offense. This often acts as an alternative to criminal prosecutions. However, in some jurisdictions, courts may sentence men to attend a john school program as a condition of probation. John schools often last a few months and usually have weekly sessions. Their focus is often on the experiences and harms of prostitution, such as the violence associated with prostitution, the sexually transmitted disease risks of prostitution, and the effects of prostitution on families and communities. Whether the john school is a diversion program or a sentencing condition, the client will often pay a fee to enroll. The fee frequently covers the cost of the program and sometimes contributes to programs to aid prostitutes, or community projects within red light districts. Generally speaking, there is no definitive evidence demonstrating whether or not john schools have been able to reduce the number of people who hire prostitutes.

History

Evaluations of john schools

A 2009 audit of the first john school in San Francisco conducted as part of the city's budget analysis faulted the program due to its ill-defined goals and lack of ways to determine its effectiveness. Despite being touted as a national model that would come at no cost to taxpayers, the audit stated that the program didn't cover its expenses in each of the last five years, leading to a $270,000 shortfall. Some critics question how john school curricula socially construct sex work, while others do note the influence of contradictory perspectives of both sex work advocates and critics. For example, an academic policy evaluation of the First Offender Prostitution Program in San Francisco found that the program "both replicates and contests competing and often contradictory gender ideologies and patterns of power. Specifically, the program’s enrollment practices and most of its content imply that men who purchase sexual services are rational sexual agents, while women who sell these services are (mainly) victims. ... The program thus illustrates the contested and contradictory ideological dynamics of gender-sensitive institutional reforms." There is no clear evidence whether the establishment of john school programs has led to a decline in re-arrest rates of offenders of prostitution-related crimes. In an analysis of the First Offender Prostitution Program, it was found that shortly after the program was introduced re-arrest rates declined in San Francisco but so did rate in the entirety of California. Seven years after the program was implemented, re-arrest rates seemed to increase in San Francisco, while rates in the rest of the state decreased. Other studies conducted have found that john schools have reduced rates in areas implemented. However, experts have labeled these results as inconclusive, and stated that they do not prove the effectiveness of such schools, as first-offenders could have simply relocated to other areas to engage in prostitution or begun to use more private forms of sex work instead. Psychologist David Ley claims that john schools rely on ideas such as sex addiction, despite the fact that this is a "debunked treatment model, with mounds of modern evidence showing that it has more to do with moral and religious conflicts over sex, than the sex itself", and that "there remains no empirical evidence" that such treatment works. While john schools teach that "men purchase sex either because of unhealthy attitudes about being men, or because of sexual addiction, or because they simply don’t know how to have healthy relationships", a research paper published in 2013¹ which examined men who pay for sex found "no evidence of a peculiar quality that differentiates customers in general from men who have not paid for sex." Ley argues that while "they may hold some value as a social or criminal intervention, the “treatment” component of these programs ultimately rests on a flawed (or at least decidedly unproven) core assumption, that there must be something “wrong” or diseased, in men who try to buy sex and that public treatment intervention will alter that man’s future sexual behaviors."

Footnotes

Prostitution: From Wolfenden to John Schools - Research on John Schools in North America and the UK by Ian R. Cook (Northumbria University) "Final Report on the Evaluation of the First Offender Prostitution Program: Report Summary" by Michael Shively, Sarah Kuck Jalbert, Ryan Kling, William Rhodes, Peter Finn, Chris Flygare, Laura Tierney, Dana Hunt, David Squires, Christina Dyous, Kristin Wheeler. National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. "Recidivism Among the Customers of Female Street Prostitutes: Do Intervention Programs Help?" by Martin A. Monto and Steve Garcia. Western Criminology Review 3(2), June 2002. Reports on School for Johns, BAYSWAN (website). – index of reports critical of john school programs. "John school takes a bite out of prostitution" by Justin Berton. "San Francisco Chronicle," April 14, 2008.

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1344017818 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.