The judicial processing of 2859 male and female prostitutes by the prosecutors and courts of a large, south central Texas metropolitan area for the years 1973-1985 was examined in order to determine how legal and extralegal variables were related to process outcomes. Three outcomes were examined: disposition (guilt or innocence), judgment (probation or jail), and sentence length. Those more likely to be found guilty were women, repeaters, and minorities who were nonrepeaters. Sex, per se, was not a factor in judgment: at the point of sentencing, women were treated the same as men. Those sentenced most harshly were minorities. The systematic punishment of nonrepeaters suggests that the system seeks to deter rather than punish those processed for prostitution. 4 graphs, 3 tables, 31 references. (Author abstract)