According to the German government, there are 1,700 prostitution vehicles (love mobiles, sex drive-ins, and boxes called Verrichtungsbox) and more than 10,000 prostitution businesses: 62% are apartments or private houses, 14% are clubs, bars and saunas, 12% are brothels, 1% are classified as ‘other’, less than 1% are escort agencies. In 2016, while the BKA observed the same development of prostitution in private places, its estimates are slightly different: 29% in hotels, 26% in apartments, 41% in bars and brothels and 12% in streets.
These figures indicate that most occurrences of prostitution escape the attention of authorities as it develops in clandestinity. This is confirmed in the example of the city of Stuttgart, which, according to the city councilor in charge of equal opportunities, Ursula Matschke, has 1,500 legal prostituted persons and 3,000 underground prostituted persons.
Simultaneously, prostitution also continues to develop on the Internet: 11% of the victims identified in 2016 were recruited online. The Internet is the preferred tool for loverboys, who seek out their victims on social networks and chat rooms, then organize their meetings via Messenger Services such as WhatsApp, which are more difficult to monitor.