Fare evasion and returning to the days of "Defining Deviance Down"

Last year, NYC decriminalized transit fare evasion, at the instigation of the District Attorney ("Manhattan DA To End Most Prosecution for Fare Evasion This Fall," New York Observer).   DC has just passed legislation to decriminalize transit fare evasion ("DC Council Approves Decriminalization of Metro Fare Evasion," NBC4).

The metropolitan transit agency, WMATA/Metrorail doesn't support the legislation, and claims that policing fare evasion contributes to crime reduction on the system.

The issues with decriminalization are fourfold:

(1) the loss of revenue to transit systems and how decriminalization impacts compliance;

(2) linkage between fare evasion and committing other crimes;

(3) transit access of the impoverished; and

(4) perceived differential enforcement against people of color.

It turns out there is some academic literature out there on the subject, including the book, Secure and Tranquil Travel: Preventing crime and disorder on public transport.

Increased tolerance for crime and disorder versus zero tolerance policy as a response.  Decades ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a seminal article, "Defining deviancy down: How we've become accustomed to alarming levels of crime and destructive behavior," making the argument that out of sense of being overwhelmed by crime and not having the resources to respond, certain crimes were redefined as not being crimes.

The proposed response to "public tolerance of intolerable behavior" was to increase police enforcement using the "zero tolerance" approach.

Zero tolerance as repression, especially of people of color.  Many pushed back ("Defining Deviancy Down": How Senator Moynihan's Misleading Phrase About Criminal Justice Is Rapidly Being Incorporated Into Popular Culture," Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 1994) arguing that was this meant in practice was further police repression meted out against the underclass.  Or that actions that shouldn't be considered crimes, were made into crimes, therefore "defining deviance up."

Fare evasion as an element of criminal activity.  Former transit police chief and later NYC Police Commissioner William Bratton believed that fare evasion was a crime that wasn't victimless, and associated with other criminal acts.

He argued that turnstile jumping was one element of people's perceptions that the subway system was unsafe.  And that people who were fare beaters tended to commit other crimes on and off the subway system, so that arresting fare beaters ended up reducing crime overall. 

From The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems . . . and Create More:

... at a time when crime on the subway was at an all-time high, Bratton focused his attention on making sure that people paid for their tickets. His reasons .. were simple: fare evasion was a gateway drug to more serious crime.

Legitimate riders felt they were entering a place of lawlessness and disorder. They saw people going in for free and began to question the wisdom of abiding by the law. The system was veering toward anarchy. By stopping and searching law violators for even the most minor of infractions, troublemakers decided it was easier to pay their fares and leave their weapons (which were often uncovered during searches) at home. Crime fell exponentially.

Studies, such as by the New York City Transit system ("Measuring and Controlling Subway Fare Evasion: Improving Safety and Security at New York City Transit Authority"), Philadelphia ("SEPTA: Felonies down after crackdown on fare-evaders," Philadelphia Inquirer), and in the Netherlands ("The Effects of Increasing the Certainty of Punishment: A Field Experiment on Public Transportation," European Journal of Criminology) find a link between crime reduction and fare payment enforcement.

Also see "Sorry, but jumping a turnstile is not like getting a parking ticket," Washington Post).

Fare evasion as a function of poverty.  Arresting fare evaders has often been criticized as an initiative with disproportionate negative impacts on the impoverished ("Fare evasion is a crime of poverty," New York Daily News), especially people of color ("Subway Policing in New York City Still Has A Race Problem," Marshall Project). And this is in fact true.

The San Francisco Chronicle article, "How bad is BART fare evasion? We saw 90 people in 92 minutes slip through the gates," includes a time-elapsed video of fare evasion at the 16th Street/Mission Station.

 Photo by Gabrielle Lurie: A man jumps the turnstile at the BART station at Civic Center despite gates that were installed (seen at left and right) to deter fare evasion in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, Aug. 16, 2018.

Need to distinguish between the ability to pay and anti-social and criminal behavior.  In dealing with fare evasion, I think it's important to separate out criminal behavior from those people evading more out of being impoverished.


BART system.  WMATA has similar signs, less well designed, posted on the emergency gates in stations.  Photo: Dan Brekke, Flickr.

Rather than decriminalize fare jumping, because of how it contributes to people's sense of lawlessness and because of the association between fare jumping and criminal activity, I would rather see center cities provide reduced price transit service for the impoverished.

The solution to low income people needing transit assistance is to provide transit assistance, not to make it easier for people "to steal" from the public via the local transit agency,.

New York City's just done it ("New York Will Cut Transit Fares for Low-Income Riders," CityLab).  Cities like San Francisco already do.  Some bike sharing systems provide low cost or no cost access for people on income and/or housing assistance programs.  Other cities may not have a low income transit pass but provide discounted or free transit passes to youths--and youths, especially teens, commit fare evasion disproportionately.

DC does not have a low income transit pass.

Fare evasion seems to rise with decriminalization.  In keeping with the results of some of the studies cited above, NYC Transit has experienced a rise in fare evasion after decriminalization ("Fare Evasion Is Skyrocketing on New York City's Subway. Here's Why," NYT), although the article opines part of this might be a "protest" against bad service.

Photo: Photos By Jessica Christian / The Chronicle. A man is given a citation after failing to pay his fare at Civic Center BART Station during the morning commute in San Francisco, Calif. Thursday, May 31, 2018.

Note too that an illustration of the necessity of distinguishing between fare evasion as anti-social and/or criminal activity versus fare evasion is the San Francisco case.  The city offers some of the best priced reduced cost transit passes in the country for low income residents and youths.  But while these passes include BART access within San Francisco's core, the reduced price transit pass does not include BART stations outside of San Francisco.

So it's possible that fare evasion on the BART system, which mostly lies outside of San Francisco, has a slightly different etiology compared to the SF MUNI system.