For Janet Duran, it was just another night of work in Atlantic City.

She was having sex in a casino bathroom with a customer — a married man.

Police showed up and placed her under arrest for prostitution, she said. In New Jersey, prostitution is either the offering or accepting of sex in exchange for money. So her customer should have been brought to the station, too.

But that’s not what happened, Duran said.

“He was patted on his back," she said. “The security guy shook his hand, and they sent him back upstairs to his wife.”

Prostitution can be a thinly veiled cover for heinous criminal acts such as human trafficking, as seen last month with the arrest of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft on charges of soliciting women in Florida who had been forced into sex.

But in more common cases where women are working the street on their own, the paying customers rarely pay any price at all. It’s usually the sex workers like Duran — typically woman — who face arrest, while the buyers — typically men — are not targeted.

Nearly 70 percent of the 4,715 prostitution-related arrests by New Jersey law enforcement agencies from 2012 through 2016 were of women, according to an analysis of FBI crime statistics.

“It brands you forever,” said Duran, who co-founded New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance, a sex worker advocacy group. “You see all the media they put out there when they make a bust, they plaster, you know, our faces and information out there so it becomes public knowledge that, you know, we’ve been busted.”

The numbers are even more striking in some individual departments.

In Atlantic City, where Duran was arrested, women accounted for 84 percent of all prostitution-related arrests. They accounted for 88 percent of arrests in Paterson, and 95 percent — or 280 out of 294 arrests — in Camden.

For police trying to rid a neighborhood of the sex trade, it’s more efficient to focus on the sex workers rather than the customers, said Stuart Green, a professor at Rutgers Law School.

“If you have a sex worker who is selling sex to ten separate buyers, and your goal is eliminate the sex trade, then it would make sense to arrest the seller who is selling to 10 buyers as opposed to arresting 10 separate buyers,” Green said.

Other police officials defend the practice as a lifeline to women in desperate situations who need help.

“When we do these prostitution details, it’s mainly just to get them some help,” said Vivian Coley, a lieutenant in the Camden County Police Department. “We have had girls out on the streets addicted on heroin, they’re offering $5 for oral sex."

But an arrest and subsequent conviction for prostitution in New Jersey can mean up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. The criminal record makes it harder to find jobs and housing, reinforcing a cycle of homelessness, said Meredith Dank, research professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“There’s this long, continued never-ending level of stigma, shame and trauma that these individuals are facing,” Dank said.

Kurt Fowler, a professor at Rutgers University-Camden, said sex workers want nothing to do with police, even if they have been the victims of assault or needed other help.

“If workers are going to be targeted by police, they’re not going to reach out if they’re being victimized,” said Fowler, who has conducted interviews with sex workers over the past couple of years as part of research into sexual commerce.

In many communities, who the police arrest depends a lot on the type of operation.

If they’re investigating human trafficking or sex slavery, they nearly always treat women as victims and get them help. Guidelines issued by the state Attorney General’s Office say trafficking victims should not be charged with prostitution, and instead should be directed to additional protection and services.

In South Hackensack, a small town near a major highway with several motels, Capt. Robert Kaiser said every situation is different. From 2012 through 2016, the township reported 73 prostitution-related arrests, about 70 percent of which were women.

“We always interview every girl, male or female, that we’ve arrested for prostitution,” Kaiser said. “There have been cases when some people are being trafficked and some are not being trafficked and are doing it because this is how they’re making a living so every situation is different.”

Departments sometimes use female officers to go undercover as sex workers to target buyers. More often than not, however, officers pose as buyers or track down sex workers in the street, said Sgt. David D’Arco, a spokesman for the Paterson Police Department.

“The officers can do it in the course of the year, if they have some downtime,” D’Arco said. “It’s always out there, and it’s not that hard to find.”

In Newark, women accounted for 74 percent of all prostitution-related arrests. A spokesman for the city’s vice task force said those arrests usually occur after residents complain about women soliciting sex in a neighborhood.

The Atlantic City Police Department declined comment on its numbers.

Overall, of the 256 New Jersey law enforcement agencies that reported prostitution-related arrests to the FBI during the five-year period, about 63 percent reported arresting more women than men.

Coley, the lieutenant in Camden, said her department has put extra resources into helping women avoid the criminal justice system by giving those arrested a choice: spend the night in jail or go to a shelter run by the non-profit She Has A Name, where sex workers receive a bed, food and free counseling to get them off the street.

“We’re basically saving lives,” she said.

That message is not being received on the ground, researchers say, which is hurting efforts to stop human trafficking. Non-trafficked women with information are unlikely to come forward for fear of being arrested themselves.

“Right now, most [non-trafficked] sex workers wouldn’t feel empowered to [report any human trafficking] because the system is against them, and they’d be more likely arrested for prostitution than thanked for bringing that forward,” said Dank, of the Urban Institute.

Groups including Amnesty International, New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance and the American Civil Liberties Union advocate for the complete decriminalization of sex work. The state Attorney General’s Office said that while municipalities cannot categorically decriminalize any offense, they can prioritize which cases to prosecute and which to let go.

“When was the last time you heard of somebody getting arrested that helped them?” Duran said. “That doesn’t help nobody.”

Carla Astudillo may be reached at castudillo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @carla_astudi.