"Well, because the slightly absurd idea that it’s bad to punish people for violating rules has been bouncing around progressive circles for the past decade and was supercharged by George Floyd’s death."
These progressives would be horrified if their own children didn't obey rules in schools. I think we have a little 'soft bigotry of low expectations' going on here.
The people Matt is talking about are very small in number, but very noisy on Twitter. The "abolish prisons, abolish police, abolish punishing crimes" people are extremely loud, extremely wrong and extremely small in number.
Which is why it's not a popular position among people of any race.
And yet, Alvin Bragg is the DA for the nation’s largest city. I think that the “no enforcement” crowd is both very loud and very wrong, but they seem to be much more influential than your post suggests.
Alvin Bragg is a career prosecutor who cut his teeth in the notoriously aggressive U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. He's not someone who doesn't believe in enforcing rules.
To be fair, deciding not to enforce laws has been the primary mechanism of every DA ever for putting their own stamp on the office.
I am not saying it is good policy, but electing a DA who will not enforce crimes that seem to selectively punish certain demographics (e.g. marijuana possession and African Americans) is easier than getting the police to stop engaging in biased policing, or changing the laws to make the behaviors legal.
He's the DA for less than one-fifth of the nation's largest city. The full city elects different people than its richest enclave. And Mr. Bragg has certainly been under a lot of scrutiny and pressure from other city officials since taking power in this enclave.
Bragg is a progressive prosecutor (who has indeed been compared to Krasner) who has generally adopted a program of effectively decriminalizing various low- and mid-level offenses (including, relevant to this article, fare evasion, although AIUI that specific initiative predates him was initiated under his predecessor Cy Vance, albeit it's reiterated in his own memo). Bragg's "Day one memo" drew a great deal of protest for formalizing a lot of this, although I also understand that it's more emblematic of his general approach rather than being the sum-total of his actions towards more lenient or absent charging.
He also reversed course on an investigation into Donald Trump for which a grand jury had been convened, resulting in the resignation of two top white collar prosecutors in disgust, although that's probably a different kettle of fish rather than specifically attributable to his general preference for leniency. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/nyregion/trump-ny-fraud-investigation.html
Bragg has rolled back a lot of his changes and there's no connection between sophisticated white-collar prosecutions and street crime--they're in practice separate legal specialties because they involve such different considerations.
I'm pretty anti-enforcement and if my hypothetical kid didn't obey most of the rules in school I expect I'd buy 'em ice cream (as long as they're not starting conflict with other kids).
I do agree with Matt when he says "If we fear that the punishments on the books are too harsh, we should adjust them, not make enforcement spotty. And if we think people are being punished for things that don’t deserve punishment, then we should legalize them." If we did those things, I would be pro-enforcement.
But most systems of rules fall far shy of this, IMO, and I don't have much faith in their ability to be reformed in practice in the near-term. No comment on DC Metro fares in particular, never even been there, but the other example we have at hand, schools, I think makes this pretty clear. Idiotic and/or broken systems of rules like bathroom passes, zero tolerance policies wrt fighting and bullying, stiff tardiness penalties for a school day that starts too early for kids, and cumbersome homework burdens that exist to placate parents instead of further learning-- all abundant.
Best thing you can do for a kid is just help em understand which rules are there for good reasons and which should be broken, and shield them as best you can when they do it
I might not be one of these same progressives you are talking about though, I feel like I'm tapping into a well of libertarianism inside me when I say this stuff. My motivating concern is not that these systems are racist (though it seems many also are, and that's absolutely fucked), it's that they're really stupid regardless of that
Given your comment about your hypothetical child, you seem to see disregard for order and authority as a virtue. Does this sort of attitude not seem detrimental to the public good, in your view? Or is it that you think the harm to the public good is a price worth paying for the freedom of being able to ignore people who tell you what to do?
It’s not “disregard for order and authority” - it’s disregard for stupidity, even when it’s masked as authority. I don’t want to insist that people come to a full stop at four-way stops - I want people to do what they actually do, which is what makes sense, which is slowing down sufficiently that they *could* stop if necessary, verifying that whoever has right-of-way (a crossing driver or pedestrian or cyclist) can safely get through before them, and then proceeding.
That's fine as far as it goes. The problem is if you start circulating the idea that everyone gets to decide which rule to follow you're going to arrive at a much worse equilibrium very quickly.
We don't even need to imagine what this looks like. There are plenty of countries and cultures where most people view rules and the law this way, and those countries are generally more corrupt and less developed. Mexico is probably a very good example. If you have enough money to break a rule in Mexico, or if you're fairly certain you won't get caught, you won't be criticized for breaking the rule, and you can rationalize it as "it was stupid anyway"
There's a tradeoff and a balance here. Of course everyone does a little of this. I'm sure we've all jaywalked, and last night I briefly drank a beer on the street when my daughter unexpectedly wanted to play out in the cold. And so we get to an equilibrium where certain rules are usually or sometimes ignored, but some aren't.
The problem is everyone rationalizes a little differently, and pushing everyone in the direction of "ignore more rules, rationalize more" is a very slippery slope that directly leads to terrible outcomes like the fare evasion example, like the smoking crack on public transport example others have mentioned, like the "don't snitch" example in high crime neighborhoods and like the Mexico example I give.
It's very dangerous, and it appeals the most to people with big egos or sociopathic tendencies who "know more" and "deserve more" than others.
Suppose selectively breaking "stupid" laws becomes the message from the Left - what's to stop date rapists from deciding they have a better definition of consent? What's to stop motorcyclists from going 100mph when "they feel it's safe". You're basically encouraging Mexican societies approach to law and order
I think people’s capacity to understand which rules are stupid is underrated - it’s not the case that exercising this kind of discretion leads inevitably to chaos. People doing stupid shit usually have other problems, like having no impulse control or not caring about anyone else, rather than sincere miscalculation.
Point taken, but then what's going on with the fare jumping? Or with tax evasion in Greece? Or with police corruption and bribe taking in Latin America?
People can calculate some stupid rules correctly, but we also have great capacity to rationalize selfish behavior. Culture can move in the direction of bad equilibriums.
That's why we should fix the rules, not try to insist that people follow rules that are so manifestly stupid that 90% of people break them (usually without even consciously realizing that they are breaking them!)
But does anyone disagree with "we should fix the rules, not try to insist that people follow rules that are so manifestly stupid"? Yeah, of course we should! And we do! Continuously, via political and administrative processes--maybe not your personal least favorite rules, but that's what those processes are fundamentally doing, modifying rules.
But what do you do in the interm? Ignore, or work the system? It's a bigger debate than traffic law, I grant you that.
I broadly agree with what Kenny said, though I also want to speak particularly to my view on order and authority. Since to me, they're neither inherently virtuous nor unvirtuous to adhere to or disregard. I don't think think they're very compelling reasons, in themselves, to take any course of action, but I think a good society is one whose order and whose authorities are built according to such compelling reasons that they become so
There are always silly rules — I wish some of my professors wouldn't ask us to wear masks in class given that Yale mandates vaccines — part of being an adult is learning when to pick your battles.
I certainly agree with that, but maybe we'll turn out to disagree, if we do, about how many battles are worth picking. And agreed that masks in class seems like a good example of one that isn't; I would expect if you fight it you'll just lose, even if it's silly.
We'd all *collectively* be better off if we broke some number of rules that are in place, too. And beyond that, since this *was* about enforcement not about rulebreaking, we'd all be way better off if a much larger number of rules stopped being enforced
I mean, I'm not going to lie and say I don't jaywalk or speed in the car. Guilty.
But on the other hand, for most societal rules that seem outdated, inappropriate, or wrong, I feel there are more mature ways to address the issue than ignoring the rules.
Fwiw, almost nobody goes to jail for "having pot", and removing disparities in punishments as small as detention is actually the boundary over which the culture war is being fought.
Right, in part because the conditions for release reasonably assume a good-faith attempt to turn their life around and stop criminal behavior, and regular drug and alcohol use do not signal that.
I think this is my first time wading into the comments section on any piece of writing in the last 10 years, but I finally have a boring point that I disagree with Matt about.
I live in Berlin, Germany, where we objectively have a very good metro system, but we have a very large percentage of people who ride without a ticket (including myself past a certain hour at night, when I know I can get away with it) because we have a proof-of-payment system.
All of the policy nerd friends I have in Berlin pine for the BVG (the local metro authorities) to install turnstiles in U-Bahn and S-Bahn stations, and I agree with them. We want this because:
- Because it's so easy to evade fares currently, we suspect a proof-of-payment system would lead to increased revenue (and therefore improved service).
- There are many homeless individuals who (understandably) sleep on the platforms during the colder parts of the year. Less understandably, many of these individuals also do intravenous drugs on the platforms, accost passengers, and occasionally commit other crimes, which make it an extremely unpleasant riding experience in certain parts of the city and at night.
- The current fare checkers are mostly contractors with poor training who not infrequently use discriminatory judgement when it comes to enforcement. Even as someone living in a quite wealthy area of the city, I have personally seen fare checkers drag riders of color off of trains and physically assault them. It is shocking and disturbing to witness — and the idea of these kind of acts being filmed in American and posted all over social media makes me very worried about the backlash.
I completely agree with your assessment that metro systems should better enforce purchasing fares, but I strongly disagree about moving towards a proof-of-payment system.
Thank you for your insight. I actually think "on the ground" viewpoint from non-US locations is perhaps needed for this site for policies and issues just like this one. I think Matt has done a lot of great work highlighting all the ways that public transit and infrastructure more generally is so much worse here than in "peer" countries. This seems especially apparent in the realm of costs in that we seem to pay more for worse service, especially in regard to public transit.
But I think the good work Matt (and many others) have done highlighting the deficiencies in transit and infrastructure more generally, sometimes unintentionally results in way too rosy a view of train systems in parts of Europe. I think reading Matt's work, you start to get in an impression in your head that train service in Germany or in Spain is like something out of Star Trek. When the real answer is places like Germany and Spain have systems that are cheaper and better than the US, but still deal with a lot of problems, including a lot of the same problems as in America.
If I had to guess, in a place like NYC (where I'm most familiar as I work in midtown Manhattan), if you were to give truth serum to subway commuters and ask them what's the thing that bothers them the most about riding the subway, the number one answer is homeless people. Yes, crime has increased (as an aside, the number of lefties saying crime rise is "Fake news" is actually extremely low, but they are loud on Twitter. Having said that, those charts showing insane spike in crime being mentioned on cable news and specifically NYC were really striking in showing how much the focus truly is wildly disproportionate to the actual situation. But I digress). And yes, a decent amount of that crime has unfortunately happened in the subway. But the reality is by far the more common situation that would make your commute or trip more unpleasant is dealing with a homeless person. I blanche at some of the more foul thing said about homeless people on the right and find the rhetoric often foul (and straight up bigoted). But reality is, it truly is not fun to be too physically close to someone who is homeless. Their clothes are raddy, they are often clearly not mentally stable in their actions and oh yeah...they often smell really bad.
But as your anecdote about homeless on Berlin trains (not the only thing you noted, but one that just stood out to me) shows that this is not an issue that's easily solvable or unique to the US. Public transit is just that "public". You can't just stop people from going on trains because they are unpleasant to be around. What you're going to create a rule where only people who have put on deodorant this morning can be allowed on the train? It's silly the way I've put it, but speaks to how difficult "solving" something like this really is.
Bit rambling response I know but thought it worth responding to your post.
Good comment. It's a tricky issue and a tough one to talk about. The only thing I want to add or point out is that these indicators: "clothes are raddy, they are often clearly not mentally stable in their actions and oh yeah...they often smell really bad" are not the same thing as homeless. Some people meeting that description will be housed, and some homeless people will not meet that description.
There is some overlap, and being homeless might make it more likely to be raddy, unstable or smelly. But it's worth pointing out that no one is literally bothered by "the homeless". We're bothered by symptoms we ascribe to homelessness. Fixing homelessness won't remove all of those problems and even in low-homeless areas (i live in the rustbelt, not many homeless) we still have smelly, raddy-clothed and mentally disturbed people.
I'd actually bet there are more homeless where you live in the rust belt that you might expect. Not sure if you live in suburbia, exurbia or rural area. But one thing that living in non-city environments does is it makes it much more likely to not have to see or interact people in "bad" neighborhoods. Reality is homeless is just a lot more hidden and give the impression it's less of a problem then it really is.
Unfortunately, I suspect that's what too many people really want when they say they want something done about homeless. Just physically take them somewhere else where they are "out of sight and out of mind". Please someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember reading that one reason the touristy areas of London and Paris don't seem to have as much homeless is the governments there take measures to physically remove them, precisely so as not to disrupt tourism.
Well - where are they hiding? I did live in a more urban and poor area when I was in LA, but I still go to various areas in the city I live in and there's just no comparison. LA has homeless squatters in nearly every park and under and / or over nearly every freeway overpass. Even the biggest camps I know of in my current city would be insignificant if they were in LA.
Since covid the worst area in terms of "homeless" disruption in my current city appears to be downtown, but a large % of the homeless there appear to be of the least sympathetic variety - otherwise healthy young men and women who are not so down on their luck that they can't afford drugs and a pit bull on a leash.
I'll grant there may be far more people squatting in vacant houses here, but they aren't homeless.
Trust me, I see a lot of the same stuff you're describing in NYC. And as Matt has pointed, out the homeless situation in CA is especially bad due in large part to the high cost of housing. But it really is the case that we notice it more in cities because the nature of city living; people are just more clustered together more generally.
The NY times magazine piece I thought was very good just generally speaking. It's specifically about students, but it's obviously covering a lot of the same ground. Worth your time regardless.
I should add. It seems pretty clear to me from the article that one reason homeless data in exurban or rural areas seemed like it might have shown less homelessness than cities is the resources weren't being put in to properly track this stuff.
That’s interesting, because downtown Pittsburgh seems every time I’m there to have vastly more homeless people on a per capita basis than Center City Philadelphia.
Pre-covid, I lived in the city of Pittsburgh for 1.5 years and I don't recall even seeing a single homeless person, even in downtown. I'm sure they were around somewhere, but they were either far fewer or "out of sight, out of mind"
Then I moved to LA for 2 years where homeless people were "everywhere"
Last couple times I went to downtown Pittsburgh, post-covid, it looked closer to LA than to what I remember from pre-covid. It's just my anecdota but it's hard for me to avoid forming the impression that I have.
Little bit of history. We used to institutionalize the insane and mentally disturbed. My next door neighbor was sent to one in Willard NY, and came to his senses in three months. In the sixties the 'experts' decided the mentally disturbed would do better if they lived among society, and the mental institutions were shut down. So we have what we have on the subways.
I also just don't think POP system will work in American culture. This is *not* Germany* (or Japan, or Korea, or other EU countries where you get stared at funny if you cross the street against the signal...)
We we cross against the signal *as a rule*, we jaywalk, we cut every possible small corner in life--it's the American way! Honestly, it's part of the same energy makes America great, entreprenurial spirit, find a better way, move fast and break things, etc. But it is what makes America, dangerous, wild, a bit disorderly. Order is just not emphasized, but instead efficiency, speed, creativity....
Summary: POP would be 10x greater evaded in US than wherever it currently is in use.
POP is already in use in some cities, though. Seattle uses it for the light rail, for instance.
And Americans are pretty responsive to authority despite social myths to the contrary. Note, for instance, how no one seems to jaywalk in front of a sports stadium right before an event where there are traffic cops everywhere. And isn't for fear of punishment (everyone knows that the cops would not actually take the time to write citations for jaywalkers), it's for fear of the embarrassment of being pointed at and told not to do it.
Seattle is a wealthy, relatively small city. As Seattle's underclass grows along with the rest of the city, POP will undoubtedly become less popular, unless Seattle's light rain continues to primarily serve only the wealthier parts of the city.
We also would never enforce it here. We'd have thousands of people with dozens of unpaid tickets in perpetuity who would continue to ride with impunity regardless of surveillance systems. Worst thing that happens is they get kicked off a train every fifty rides.
This system kind of works with parking tickets because eventually you can boot or impound the car for non-payment. Can't do that with a human fare evader.
Thanks for this comment! I used to live in a different EU metro area before moving to the US, and I really don't think that Matt's argument are coherent here. Some points:
- Despite the fact that there was a proof of payment system, I would always pay the fare in the subway. But even I didn't think that it was logical to pay the fare if you only wanted to ride the bus. Nobody would check there, and I think that made sense from an enforcement standpoint, since many more people would pass through a specific subway station than a specific bus stop.
- I don't see how you may believe that stop and frisk leads to profiling and it should be replaced with automation like cameras, but spot checks for fare evasion won't lead to profiling and it isn't necessarily a good idea to automate them.
I will just say about point (2) that last night I was coming back to Union Station from Boston at 1am and in the span of 5 minutes waiting for the bus two homeless people came up to me inside the station to ask for money. I told them I didn't have any but I'm a young man so I didn't worry for my safety — if I was a woman it might've made me feel differently.
As a young woman, I’m not bothered when people come up and ask me for money (that is unfortunately a fairly regular part of big city life today), but I have been screamed at on the metro by individuals who appear homeless, and been followed off of trains. That is upsetting and does negatively affect my experience as a rider.
He wrote "if I was a woman" (the past tense) not "if I were a woman" (the subjunctive) so he's saying "if I used to be a woman," which is hardly cis-normative. :-)
It's been a while since I was in Berlin, my favorite city in the whole world by the way, and I do remember machines where you purchased your fare. I think it was good for 3 hours? What I did like was at night when the UBahn shut down, buses took over the rail routes until the UBahn opened back up in the morning. 24 hour public transportation service. Of course, I also remember Checkpoint Charlie when it was Checkpoint Charlie, and flying into Tempelhof on a C-130 from Ramstein. Using the SBahn was off limits.
Yes, in fact, we should bring back accountability into the culture. Things we should enforce with much bigger fines, and if violations are repeated enough, incarceration:
- fare evasion
- reckless driving
- road rage
- tax evasion
- littering
I picked a set of things on purpose that are pretty equal opportunity across race and even gender lines.
Society has rules. Those rules should be enforced. Not sure why the concept need be controversial
I think that approach is backwards if what you want is to actually reduce these things. Remember, the factors in deterring crime are certainty, swiftness, and severity of punishment. Of those three, empirical studies repeatedly show that the severity of punishment is the *least* important—it does very little to actually keep people from doing crime. This makes sense, since the vast majority of people doing crime aren’t thinking particularly rationally. They’re only really concerned with whether they get caught, not factoring in the consequences if they do. That’s why we have this fare evasion issue in the first place—if you jump a faregate, you’ll only get caught if transit-agency staff see you, and since most faregate locations are unstaffed they probably won’t.
This is why enforcement mechanisms are more important than the punishment. If you want to deter traffic violations you put up traffic cameras while leaving the consequences largely the same. (Largely, because we’ve gotten too lenient about revoking driver’s licenses for traffic violations—but that’s a direct safety issue rather than a severity of punishment one). Littering, ditto—put cameras on every corner. If you want to deter tax evasion, hire more tax police (like me!). The actual consequences need only be moderately worse (say a few times) than whatever unpleasantness the offender was trying to avoid if there’s a good chance they get caught.
While the point that likelihood of being caught is a primary deterrent to the generally risk-seeking class of criminals is sound, I think this underrates the value of incapacitation as a positive good in and of itself. There’s a line of progressive thinking that seems to believe there are no bad people, only bad acts, but both experience and criminological data strongly suggest the other way round: the people causing the worst traffic accidents are weighted towards those with several previous violations (and also often driving despite a license suspension), college sexual assault seems to follow a 80/20 or 90/10 distribution (high majority of crimes committed by a small minority of offenders), and I’m pretty confident that most people spend 100% of their time not stealing bicycles. Locking up the small subset of people who demonstrate criminal tendencies in a way different in kind from the majority seems likely to produce positive marginal value to society in and of itself.
Rafael Mangual makes this point very well in his book Criminal (In)Justice, released just this year.
When I read the most anti-incarceration people I sometimes wonder if they just don't know anyone with anti-social and criminal tendencies? The people I know who have been in and out of prison the most have long, long histories of being violent and abusive. I'm talking about people who were mean and violent and enjoyed causing pain when they were 10 or 12. They were taking lunch money at that age and now they are robbing drug dealers.
In contrast, I don't know anyone who was a normal kid and then "got arrested for 1 joint" and then turned to crime.
Yeah, this is something I think I've mentioned here before -- a giant blindspot in progressive policy discussions is that there very clearly is a genuine "criminal class" of people who really do not have an interest in living anything that could be characterized as a productive life and do not feel restrained or pressured in any meaningful way by monetary penalties, social opprobrium, or anything else that operates to deter "normies" from committing crimes.
Just a "fun" story since you mention middle school. There used to be a sketchy guy sitting on his back alley walk-up porch at the top of my mom's street. I would drive by him all the time when I visited, and I used to tell my wife he was probably a drug dealer (the empty aquariums on the porch were the biggest giveaway).
Anyways, right before covid he was in the news b/c a customer tried to rob him with a knife and he pistol whipped and shot at the guy. He had made himself a target by living with a stripper so it was assumed he had lots of cash at hand.
When I mentioned this to my younger brother he told me we both knew his family and he knew him from school. In middle school he came up to my brother's shared lunch table and spit on it and one of my brother's friends sitting there beat him up. Same thing happened again a couple more times before he quit. A year before the robbery attempt he had had part of his ear sliced off in a bar fight. His older brother was in my grade and is now a doctor, his sister owns a yoga studio and his cousin was a broadway dancer who died in his 30s.
I'm not sure that kind of logarithmic scaling of punishment severity is needed when it comes to, say, jaywalking or fare avoidance.
But for unsafe driving practices and violent crime, absolutely. A few offenses should be enough to lose a license, driving without one should then be subject to criminal penalty.
Yeah, to be clear I was focused on the OP's list of nonviolent and driving offenses. For what it’s worth, I am unsure of the benefits of harsher punishment for tax offenses, since the difficulty of detection is high, but also it’s easy to not pay taxes because you or your preparer/accountant screwed up not because you’re trying to cheat the government out of its tax dollars.
I honestly think we need more than just suspension but rather need to move to vehicle impoundment. At least in the NYC area road deaths attributable to people driving with suspended licenses are depressingly common. If they weren’t going to follow the rules with a license, they aren’t going to follow one without one.
I had this same thought Kareem, but Matt _also_ said that looking abroad, best practices seem to indicate this style is preferable. So that suggests that while that might be a good general principle, it might not apply here due to real world differences.
I wonder if this is different because:
1) Fare evasion in an individual case is a pretty small crime. Any _individual_ perpetrator you fail to catch you lose a bit of money but nobody otherwise gets hurt/scared/harassed. Therefore, as long as you're not so lax you're encouraging _more_ fare evasion, you can do a legitimate cost-benefit analysis to determine whether this is worth doing.
2) If fare evasion starts being more rampant - you can step up enforcement (in a way that you can't easily build more turnstiles) until it starts going down again.
3) If you step up enforcement to catch more people, you don't necessarily need to make the penalty multiplier as large.
(Edit: Based on Claire's point below about not liking the POP system in Germany, I'd like to see the links to why this is best practice)
The last time I rode the T (Boston) I paid with tokens so they weren't tracking me anyway.
I can see how you would do turnstiles without all that tracking (prepaid cards paid with cash?) but of course it's hard to guarantee the government does that.
> Largely, because we’ve gotten too lenient about revoking driver’s licenses for traffic violations—but that’s a direct safety issue rather than a severity of punishment one
Agreed, which is why I like the "points" systems common in Europe - you get points for a violation; the points drop off after X years. If you have more than Y points, your license is revoked until the points drop off.
In the UK, the typical version is 3 points for speeding, 4 for speeding more than 20mph above the posted speed, or for running a red light, or similar minor offences. 6 points for most things you'd get stopped by the traffic cops for (e.g. anything immediately dangerous like weaving or tailgating). They last three years normally. You can't drive if you have 12 points or more at any time, but you get the license back as soon as the oldest points drop off. Courts can give points instead of taking your license away if they choose; those points can last longer than three years (I know someone who got 11 points for six years instead of a ban for drink-driving because they had a really good lawyer; the result was a young man in his twenties driving exactly at the speed limit because he was terrified of losing his license).
We have this, too, but only from our car insurance. But that causes the dual problem of 1) not deterring the very rich and 2) not deterring the very poor, who often illegally drive without insurance anyway.
Unfortunately many of these kinds of quality of life problems are committed by people poor enough to be “off the grid” - car not registered, never had a bank account, etc. If you’re not willing to physically apprehend and incarcerate at some point then the rules are really only binding on people in a certain narrow range of SES (high enough to have something to lose, low enough that it’s not spare change).
The concept of locking up people who can’t pay fines is exactly the “criminalization of poverty” however.
Not sure where you went to college, but in NYC land is very expensive so it makes sense that using it without paying (parking ticket situation) costs more.
As a good urbanist I think on-street parking is a terrible land use, but given the (bad) status quo - don’t get me started on placards or alternate side - high ticket prices make sense.
I agree, but then you also run into the problem of people who then treat tickets as a toll they are quite willing to pay and it loses its deterrent affect.
I've read a few hundred of Aaron Erickson's posts, and you couldn't be more wrong about him. He works in startup tech in SF and is very active in the YIMBY movement there. He likes systems to work well and work fairly and for incentives to be distributed well. I find his comments to be very consistant across topics wrt to those preferences / values.
You may disagree with his views on enforcement, but that doesn't mean "it's all about revenge" or somehow about "cancelling" or that his posts are insincere or unserious.
There’s little evidence of this in his post and it’s not Ok to make strong negative assertions about other commenters here based on scant evidence (and best to focus on the substance).
He went out of his way to pick areas across a spectrum of factors. If you have clear rules and understanding they they will be enforced then you often don’t need any punishment. Either way the trade offs are well established, so even if you feel differently you should understand why others might have this view.
A lot of murders and assaults, quite likely the majority, are also motivated by the desire for vengeance, especially when the state seems unlikely to perform that function. Wishing away the desire for revenge does not make that desire go away.
Just to spell this out by example - two guys get in a fight over a woman (something a strong safety net doesn't change). One stabs or shoots the other.
In a society with strong enforcement and incarceration (or some other form of vengeance), the assaulter will serve prison time or pay some meaningful penalty that will, in part, have a punitive aspect.
In a society without any punitive enforcement, it's quite likely that the victim or his friends or family will seek revenge, both for satisfaction of revenge and to deter future attacks.
You or I might not like it or agree with it - but this is actually what happens very frequently in neighborhoods without good police enforcement. The majority of murders in infamous neighborhoods in Chicago and other major cities are revenge driven. You can't wish that aspect of human nature away from all humans. But an actual solution is for the state to punish and enforce the assualters, thereby removing the hunger for revenge that the victim will have.
Because corruption is so rampant at the top of American society. Even ignoring Trump, insider trading, campaign finance violations, and "no fault" resolution to corporate malfeasance is endemic. Leadership matters and when you have a bipartisan commitment to elites filling their boots across government and business, you can't be surprised when there are problems elsewhere.
I agree with your comment (though I might quibble with "endemic"), so my observation below isn't in any way a disagreement with you.
It will be interesting to see how the Democratic Party deals with this. With the educational & professional sorting going on between the parties, the Democratic Party already has a majority of the people in professions where "insider trading, campaign finance violations and no-fault resolution to corporate malfeasance" happens. I'll be interested to see how the coalition of identity-groups, unions, teachers, Black people, leftists, idealists and upper class professionals will wrestle with these issues over time.
Well, I don’t speak for any of those, but I find Dems’ behaviour abhorrent and I suspect it’s a big part of why Republicans get away with their even worse outrages. If you claim democracy is under threat but aren’t worried enough about it to stop trading on information from congressional briefings, why should ordinary people act against their own perceived self interest.
“How dare you even bring it up when the other side is such a threat?” is doing the exact opposite of the work that some people seem to think it’s doing.
I honestly think it’s because ejecting Franken was a victory against sexism, which Democrats care passionately about, whereas Menendez would be a victory against corruption, which Democrats don’t care passionately about, and one might even suggest some in their coalition support.
While I overall liked Obama I think this was his biggest miss. He had a real opportunity during the financial crisis to insist on more accountability in return for the bailouts and he just didn’t. They say you couldn’t have gotten convictions (probably true) but you could have gotten something like requiring all the leaders to be fired in return for the financial help and they just didn’t do it. (They DID do that with GM IIRC). Maybe it wouldn’t make much difference but it would have been a nice change in tone.
If they required firing the leaders, many banks wouldn't have taken the TARP money. The government believed it was important for the economy that ALL banks participated -- not just the most troubled -- so attaching too many conditions would have been counterproductive. That wasn't the case with GM.
Yep. Many banks didn’t even need the funds, but Paulson wanted every bank to take funds so that counterparties wouldn’t interpret some banks as being in a relatively weak position. That would certainly cause depositors (particularly institutions) to withdraw funds from perceived weak banks.
So TARP funding was structured on particularly favorable terms and Paulson/Bernanke promised them hell from their bank examiners if any bank refused the funds. The CEOs recognized the logic of collective action, saw the chance for cheap funding on good terms, and they all agreed.
The collapse of Lehman is insightful to what could’ve happened. Paulson tried to engineer some acquisitions, but CEO Dick Fuld kept pushing acquirers for better terms. He really lived up to his name! He waited too long and eventually only Barclays was still at the table.. Fuld reluctantly agreed to rough terms, but the British government blocked the deal; and for good reasons.
Many more vulnerable banks would’ve gone the way of Lehman if the Federal Gov attempted to push harsh terms for accepting TARP.
I would add that the Dodd-Frank financial regulations were perceived by the banks as their punishment. Particularly it decreased their return-on-equity; i.e., made the banks less profitable. That is a good thing because this was accomplished by constraining their ability to take on risk. High risk, higher reward.
Wrong thought! Huge gobs of money should have been flooded into the banks but the shareholders of the most overleveraged should have gotten zeroed out, "pour encourager les autres "
Deferred prosecution agreements and consent decrees generally involve corporations handing over incredible amounts of money, and individual executives who get charged generally go to prison. Even if plea bargains were weak, federal judges are not bound by factual stipulations in plea bargains when sentencing because of the way that the Sentencing Guidelines system works.
Because caging human beings is bad, and decent people should weigh the harm of human caging against the benefits of increased order. Also, our society has shown a willingness to cage human beings, especially dark skinned and poor ones, for pretty trivial shit, so many are understandable leery of “lock em up” politics.
What about fines or community service, or loss of privilege in the case of driving or alcohol violations? Neither involves putting anyone in jail. Wouldn’t that be ok?
If fines come down to "legal for rich people" then you need some additional enforcement.
Obviously, for paying subway fares, fines are adequate: if some rich guy wants to pay $1000 twice a year when he's caught instead of $5 every time he rides the metro, then that's fine, he's just doing it expensively.
But when you actually want to stop people doing things, then you need either income-based fines (where rich people get million-dollar speeding fines, like in Switzerland) or you need to be prepared to escalate punishments if people repeatedly commit the same offence.
"Legal for rich people" is only less than half of it. They also become "legal for poor people" because people with no savings or bank account or steady job will just not pay. We don't put people in debtor's prisons and only repossess cars and assets if creditors are after them, so a drug dealer with cash assets won't be impacted either.
Better to extend it to everyone, at least as an option. If it's mandatory then it deters rich people, too.
And we already do this to some extent anyways. I once had to pick up and drop-off a friend who was doing community service with roadside trash due to a few DUIs. He was late 20's, no kids, working in VC/tech. Maybe not a millionaire, but not someone who would be easily deterred by $1,000 fine.
It is OK, and we already do all of that stuff to a significant degree. As one example, a friend of a friend has a clean criminal history except for multiple DUIs. After his first few he had to pay fines and do community services. At some point he was jailed for a month and then lost his license.
For most people, that would be enough deterrence, along with fines.
The tail end of the distribution causes a lot of the problems, though, and they seem less deterred by those things. Probably need incarceration to be an option at least.
Yes but if you increase arrests in DC today are people going to be doing more community service or more time. Unfortunately the system we have today probably means time.
That just kicks the can. A court orders conditions. A poor defendant who is barely keeping his head above water fails to comply. The decision of jail or tolerance still pops up, it’s just been deferred by the conditional probation
Caging is bad- why aren’t we doing more with ankle bracelets? We have the technology. You’re getting a time out- sentenced to being home for 30 days, maybe you are allowed to go to work too but no where else. Not even a grocery store.
Everyone here seems to be overweighing how bad "caging" is. The median inmate is on their 5th or 6th conviction and 11th or 12th arrest. Does that sound like someone who greatly fears incarceration?
Many, possibly most, convicts are safer locked up than they are outside. The homicide rate across detention centers in the US is around 5 or 6 per 100,000 annually, which is actually less than the homicide rate outside prison, and far, far less than the homicide rate for criminally active young men, which is likely north of 200 per 100,000.
And that's to say nothing of the safety benefits of incapacitation. If someone has been shooting people or molesting children, multiple times, what alternative is there?
Monitoring is hard, and it's also hard to verify whether it's being done, which is why there have been murders by people with monitoring anklets who were not where they were supposed to be. That doesn't mean we shouldn't use it or even expand it, but the vision of "you can go to work but not the grocery store" - we're not going to get 100% there, whereas we pretty much do get to 100% with 'people who are incarcerated are actually in jail."
Monitoring is hard because we make it hard. There could be a lightweight approach that simply tracks you everywhere and deters you from committing crimes because you’d be easy to find. No need to limit where you can go to.
I’d be down for more humane jails and prisons along with this. Like actually make a good faith attempt at reforming people so they can contribute to society.
How would that work? I ask because it's a very widely shared viewpoint that I'm sympathetic to, but also one where I seldom hear concrete ideas.
We have various work programs, education programs, etc. I should look into what limits their scale, but I suspect it's a combination of funding and inmate interest, neither or which is easy to increase.
No expert, but one can start with things like intensive therapy to help people get over whatever led them to a life of crime, a ton of drug addiction counseling, basic education on how to live a self-sufficient life, some strong lessons in morals (not from a religious standpoint, but from a more neutral "how to go about life not messing with others rights" standpoint)... that kind of thing.
If the inmate shows no interest, well, then you go in the old style lockup, which is far more unpleasant.
I'm all for those things, but they will all cost money and most of them are unproven. So until someone can demonstrate that they are working, at scale, they shouldn't be an excuse to not remove dangerous people from society until they are an acceptably low risk to others and themselves.
Why can’t we balance the two? Your argument is basically that criminals are and ought to be an out group so we should not worry about their suffering and should prioritize the in group of people who aren’t criminals.
My argument is that criminals are human beings with hopes and dreams and fears and that human suffering is bad no matter who does the suffering. The only reason to create human suffering is to avoid an even greater quantity. Accordingly, I want to know how much caging a given level of order will require.
If you're going to replace "imprisoning" with "human caging", you can also go ahead and replace "criminals" with "people who hurt others". While I agree that human suffering is bad, and that people who hurt others are still human, the idea behind imprisoning people who hurt others is that it *reduces* the total amount of human suffering, because prisons both deter and directly stop (through caging) people who want to hurt others.
Deterrence is the goal. Whether a given system deters is an empirical question. Why oh why are all y’all smart folks substituting normative bromides for empirical rigor?
All evidence shows that recidivism rates for most prisoners upon release are extremely high, over 50%+ through periods as short as 3 years, depending on the crime.
Add to that the fact that the median incarcerated offender has been convicted 4 or 5 prior times and arrested double that (to say nothing of crimes for which they were not caught) and it's reasonable to assume that we don't have enough deterrence.
We do balance the two! Crimes are specified and enumerated, have to be proved, and carry specific limited penalties. You don’t label someone a menace to society based on vibes alone and throw away the key, but you do lock them up proportional to what they’ve actually done.
Fines are a good starting point, but including community service and some kind of public shaming in the escalation tree is probably a good idea.
And as Matt as pointed out many times before, increased probability of detection and punishment needs to be included, along with escalating severity.
Incarceration needs to be in the mix, to prevent abuse by the people who have almost nothing else to lose besides their freedom...but it should probably be the last resort when all else has failed.
I know people who regularly pay over $500 a month in tolls and consider it well worth it to get there faster. For that person, a $5 parking ticket would essentially be considered a toll they would happily pay. Depending on the situation, they might look at a $100 parking ticket that way.
I do like your idea to scale them though. Perhaps after the first five, you have to show up and provide your last year's tax return and the penalty will be set at .25% of your income. ($100 for 40k, $250 for 100k, $1250 for 500k, etc.)
I don't think reckless driving, road rage, and tax evasion would be on anyone's no-enforcement list, although the right wants to make tax enforcement difficult unless you are an EITC recipient.
The prison sentence for littering happens when you dump toxic waste into someone's water supply. Or a few days in the clink on, say, the 25th documented time after many warnings.
Ah- so you think we should alternate between caning them and dipping them in the toxic waste until we're satisfied they will never do it again and will instead dedicate their lives to providing restitution for their crime.
Further proof that modernity has allowed too many people to outsource the job of the state monopolizing violence too far from themselves, and it has made them profoundly stupid on the topic.
I want to superlike(tm) this post. It’s astonishing to me that so many self-proclaimed urbanists advocate for free fares (and various types of non-enforcement). As I’ve described in various comment threads, I love city living, but there’s a point of chaos beyond which even I will decide to leave. If I had kids I’d probably be gone. If you want to set cities back to a 1970s situation, this is the best strategy. There should be rules, they should apply to everyone, and they should be enforced.
In NYC the total lack of traffic enforcement, public drug use (not talking about smoking weed, which is legal, but I don’t love that you can get a contact high just by being outside), large population of aggressive homeless people, and general trashiness is really discouraging. I would feel somewhat less bad about it if I had any confidence in the local government, but I have none.
I’m a city planner but I sidled into the profession and did my master’s program less than a decade ago. I was shocked even then at the degree to which my much younger classmates romanticized the “gritty and authentic” city of the 70s. Unlike them, I was alive then, and many of my friends’ parents wouldn’t set foot in Detroit. There are worse things for cities than chain stores, clean streets, and uncool tourists.
Yea, if Philly approaches the situation that it was in prior to 2000 in terms of crime and (un-) livability, I'm out too. As are most of the folks who make up the new tax base that's allowing us to tackle some of the problems the poor face here.
I believe that the worldview of people promoting stuff like this is incredibly babyish. There's no accounting for how a transit system or a city actually functions, or how people not besotted by ideology actually think and act.
I'm not sure whether ebike anarchy is a thing in Philly, but it definitely is here - one of my colleagues was hit by one a couple of weeks ago while in the field collecting data. When I was still working for the city, I had to sit through a presentation by DOT about their grant-funded program to "educate" delivery people about the rules of the road, as if somehow they are unable to understand one-way arrows, traffic lights, and the nature of sidewalks v streets. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think George W Bush had it right about the "soft bigotry of low expectations" (per the comment above in the thread). The left seems to view wide swaths of people as having no agency, which is, IMO, extremely condescending.
I think you should not expect to convince leftists to endorse policies they otherwise find unjust because of practical reasons like "it will alienate the rich and the tax money will flee." It merely reinforces their underlying commitment that the influence of the rich is the root of the problem.
The preference for "nice" neighborhoods is one revealed through personal moving and spending decisions - which are, to put it lightly, not a source of moral authority in the leftist worldview. When left activist coalitions win elections, they choose de-policing, and that IS a source of moral authority in their view.
Oh yeah, n of 2 but my house in the Portland 'burbs gained a ton of value since 2020 and a friend's condo in downtown lost value and was hard to sell when they had to move for work.
Values for single-family houses in the less-dense parts of the city have held up but downtown is just a wasteland at this point. The benefits of being downtown -- proximity to offices and nightlife -- were totally hollowed out by 2020's Covid + riots combo. Even if and when it's cleaned up, something will have to replace the offices and the restaurants that used to serve them.
The urban decay of the mid-to-late 20th century was the result of a series of deliberate policy choices and social trends, and yet the tropes associated with urban decay became so culturally pervasive that I think a lot of younger people like the ones you're describing intuitively think of that as the "natural" state of cities. They seem to treat minorities trapped in poor urban neighborhoods like they are indigenous tribes in their "natural" habitat, and then proceed to play-act the Ferngully/Avatar plot in their head in order to try and prevent "habitat destruction".
I moved to New York in 1977. I was 25 and it was paradise, Studio 54, CBGB's. What not to like. I don't know what level of chaos you like but I'd guess my level is higher than yours. Why I still like it and have lived here ever since, except for a year in Florence, which was great, and five years in Dallas, which was a hellscape of boredom and bad climate.
I am not so sure that this is true. My experience of New York in 1990s was that there was plenty of disorderly conduct on the subway even with rigorous fare enforcement.
It was only after violent crime got way lower that resources were freed up to do more about subway behavior.
Starting in the pandemic and until about 6 months ago, it was pretty common for people to smoke fentanyl on Seattle’s trains and busses. The people who were smoking fentanyl almost never paid fares. A number of things have happened in the past six months to decrease that behavior but one factor seems to have been more bus drivers refusing to let people on without paying because they know that they can call someone to enforce it if it gets dicey
I've been transit-dependent (albeit with the disposable income and flexibility to avoid it in certain circumstances) for about 15 years in a medium-sized Midwestern city (Minneapolis) with a reasonably useful transit system. This is really one of those situations where "what is going on out there" wildly diverges from what people on the computer think is going on. I continued taking transit occasionally throughout the pandemic, but went back to (night) school this fall, taking the train back from St. Paul at night, and there's pretty regularly some kind of scene*.
The situation on the trains started to deteriorate, pre-pandemic, when the usual suspects (Twitter users with cartoon avatars) started complaining about fare enforcement on the trains maybe six or seven years ago? People did not smoke crack on the trains in the middle of the day ten years ago. People are currently smoking crack in the middle of the day on the trains.
This isn't rocket science. We don't need to hire teams of consultants with master's degrees to get to the bottom of why people are smoking on the trains. People are behaving antisocially on the train because there are no consequences for behaving antisocially on the train. Tossing the people who aren't paying fares off of the trains would be a very straightforward way of improving conditions on the trains and making them usable. The trend in some circles towards ruining the few usable, high-quality public services we have in this country in order to make a point about the lack of other, different public services does not make the case activists think it does.
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*Why don't I just ignore it? It's not bothering me personally, is it? Putting aside the easy joke that the same people who were losing their minds about microaggressions six years ago are now asking people to ignore considerably more macro aggressions, it's repeatedly been the case that when someone is blasted and laying on the floor yelling obscenities at people, someone less enlightened than me (i.e. also blasted) takes matters into their own hands and escalates the situation into a fight.
*Why don't I just ignore it? It's not bothering me personally, is it?
I think it's very fair to be bothered and people who would just you for being bothered are the real jerks. Especially because, if it bothers you (I'm assuming you're a young or middle-aged male) it only takes a little imagination to guess that it might really bother more vulnerable and defenseless people like children, women, the elderly, etc.
The leftist view is that particular norms are merely instruments by which one group dominates another. Raising the salience of microaggressions is good because historically powerful groups commit them a lot & their members can be brought low when called out. Lowering the salience of fare evasion is good because the people being punished for it are already marginalized.
I think the frame is flawed, but it’s perfectly consistent.
This reminds me of the supreme court case(s?) on affirmative action which I stumbled across on Youtube last night. I was watching a bunch of excerpts and it was interesting how much the conservative judges were using pieces of logic that I normally see from the left and applied to attack apparent discrimination from businesses and / or society at large. The reason was that they are on the "side" of being against Academia, just like the leftists are on the "side" of the marginalized.
To expain, Harvard / UNC have to "discriminate" in some subjective ways to select a student pool. They don't want to rely ONLY on SATs or a formula or some quota system. So whether they are allowed to use race or not, they are always going to end up with a student body that is not perfectly aligned with whatever ideal anyone could put forth. And the subjective element will always push the percentages around in some racially non-equal ways, whether by intent or not.
This is the same argument that businesses use to defend their hiring or credit or insurance practices. They want to use race-neutral decisions, but it's not always that simple. For example, zip codes are quite predictive of certain things, like automobile accidents, so car insurance providers want to use zip code to set prices. But clearly zip code align with race, so there's no truly easy answer.
The right-wing is usually arguing that the businesses should be able to use whatever data helps them achieve their objectives without worrying quite so much about racial discrimination. But in this case the left was using those arguments and the right was using the other sides' rhetorical toolkit. It was strange, even a bit unsettling.
At the end of the day these discrimination decisions come down to "who do you trust" and "what are the potential costs" Do you trust businesses to do business in a way that is racially "fair" whatever you think that looks like. If you do, you let them use zip codes to set prices, b/c after all that really is colorblind and they're out to make a buck, not oppress people racially. But if you don't, you restrict their toolkit so that few if any minorities are ever badly priced based simply on where they live (but it's still ok if white people are badly priced based on where they live).
> recent fad against enforcement of any kind of rules
I believe this is a result of a substantial antiestablishment, possibly even antisocial, mindset among some of the loudest “leftish” figures. For a particularly disgusting recent example that Yglesias highlighted see, https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1587078093147185159
I’d normally quote the text here so people don’t need to visit the tweet, but it’s too vile.
Note it’s a Chapo so they’re not representative of any actual professional activists.
Yet I think it is just an extreme example of the mindset. The Chapos and similar personalities popularized the “dirtbag left” worldview. This attracted a lot of people with this personality disposition to the left.
And much of this vision gets sanewashed into a social justice message where the enforcement of any rules is seen as having a negative impact on marginalized groups. But I believe antiestablishment is the starting point, not any sort of rational analysis of policies.
I think one of the consequences of the fact that Bernie ran in 2016 as more of a "protest" candidacy, as opposed to a candidacy with real aspirations to become President is that it ended up attracting some pretty fringy people, not just as supporters but as actual advisors or people high up in the campaign.
Point being is that I suspect you're right and you'll see a lot more people associated with Bernie go down the Glen Greenwald road.
I don't understand the link between the tweet and not enforcing the law against attempted murder. Saying that a criminal is so ridiculous that you have to laugh is not saying that they should not be punished.
Only skimmed this because I find it absurd that a whole piece must be written to justify what I consider a total non brainer. I do have an observation though: ignoring fare skipping in the system as it is now is essentially a “might makes right” mentality. It privileges the physical superiority of fit able bodied young people who can jump over the turnslides or what have you, at the expense of the elderly , disabled etc who need the public transit system most , must pay and thus pick up the bill and pay more as fares inevitably rise. This is very similar to the idea of non enforcement at the border, which privileges the same kinds of people , and means e.g. Mexicans waiting to come legally based on sponsorship now have a waiting list of about 20 years- essentially they are being shoved to the back of the line by brute force. I can’t think of anything more antithetical to the values of the left than supporting this kind of raw unfairness.
You don't have to jump over. You can also slip through. On the way out, you can exit through the exit gate. It's really not just able-bodied young people. If you're actually in a wheelchair it's probably going to be difficult. But in general, they've made it pretty easy for people of varying physical capabilities.
It might be easier in DC compared to NY but the point stands. Anecdotally how many elderly have you seen do this ? It generally favors reckless young people. Older people are far less likely to try to squeeze in (and risk injury/fall/being yelled at) a pregnant woman might be more hesitant , and some people are actually in a wheel chair …
I have not seen very many elderly people do this. I think they are probably more law-abiding in general. But if you try to slip through in DC, I don't think you will fall, you will just not make it, and you definitely will not get yelled at. There are certainly some people who are physically not going to be able to do this, but I do not think it is a high proportion. And if it were made easier to fare evade by that group of people, I do not think that this would be a better policy.
Your rejoinder is quantitative not qualitative. My point stands. Lack of enforcement punishes the physically weaker and the conscientious and rewards the unscrupulous who are able and willing to use force to achieve their ends. This is a perversion of justice par excellence. The left ought to have been sensitive precisely to these kinds of systemic wrongs.
It's not punishment that you follow the law. If this were the real issue, we could just make fare jumping easier for the disabled and elderly. Would that be better? Would that be a better state of the world? The problem here is the fare jumping, and everything that goes along with it, not that fare jumping excludes certain populations by virtue of their physical abilities. Is not a systemic wrong that people in wheelchairs are excluded from breaking this law.
As a DC resident I am 100% behind this sentiment. Every time is see someone jump the turnstile I feel a bit of resentment. I don't think we should get rid of the turnstiles though and switch to a pure random inspection bit. A hybrid approach is better.
Your bio: "Curious person, finder of talent for interactive media and still unsure how to use comma’s correctly." Add a comma after "media," and check out the rules on apostrophes.
Laws and rules are meaningless without enforcement. Laws and rules with selective enforcement invite corruption. When people don't respect laws and rules, or decide they should decide for themselves whether or not to comply without any consequence, society breaks down.
Last night I took BART for the first time in a while. Despite numerous signs telling people not to bring bicycles on the escalators (you should use the elevator), two young men dragged their bikes up the escalator.
Exiting, a young man in front of me vaulted over the fare gate rather than pay. He did this 5 feet away from not one but TWO station agents, one of whom was outside the booth. Neither of them batted an eye or otherwise acknowledged the fare evader.
It made me wonder what we pay those two people for, why I bother to pay for BART, and why we have rules or laws at all anymore.
Transit systems cannot and should not be free. "What is free has no value". And "free" just means everyone else is paying for it.
I've been fare-checked in Europe a few times -- I think Paris and Prague -- and recall the checkers being armed. As much as I like the idea of non-armed civilian enforcement, we are sadly a gun society with more guns than people.
I think they have a turnstile system for the Tube and the Overground, but maybe on other trains. Boston commuter rail has the guy who comes around too, although he/she is collecting from everyone and it's not a spot-check. I see people say London cops do not have guns, which is mostly true .. except for the ones who do and are heavily armed, mostly in more sensitive places.
Depends where and how busy the service is - they have spot checks in some places, turnstiles in others, both in yet others. On longer distance trains, the guard checks every ticket - not a "spot" check, but a universal one.
As for guns: regular UK cops do not have guns. Armed police do, but they aren't like "normal" police at all; they are heavily armed (usually with a select-fire submachine gun or an assault rifle; the MP5 and MP7 are popular SMGs, the G36 is the main assault rifle; some marksman/sniper rifles are also used), and they are generally only deployed in a small number of very sensitive locations (e.g. Parliament, Number 10, the royal palaces, airports), plus in Armed Response Vehicles (ARVs, you will see these driving around from time to time). They can be put out on street patrol when there are particularly high tensions (e.g. in the aftermath of a terrorist incident). They also have a very high level of training and are required to reach high marksmanship standards (and pass a host of psychological tests).
Regular police used to be able to get authorisation to draw guns from the police armouries, but that hasn't been the case since the 1980s, and police with (non-concealed) handguns are unusual in Great Britain now. Northern Ireland police are routinely armed and do carry holstered handguns (Glock 17 is the standard issue).
Some detectives carry concealed handguns, as do the close protection teams of the two police bodyguard units (SEG and DSG).
The bigger forces have mostly moved to MP7s or G36s - when there were armed police on the streets of Manchester after the Ariana Grande concert was bombed, they were all G36s (and these are the military select-fire version, not a civilianised semi-auto), which are really quite impressive when there are a few hundred people openly carrying them in a city where you rarely see anything bar the occasional illegal handgun (there are quite a lot of illegal handguns held by criminals, but there is a serious shortage of ammo - handguns are always illegal and therefore most handgun ammo is as well; a few thousand rounds of 9mm Parabellum would make you very rich indeed if you had the right contacts)
It has been a while since I rode Boston transit. All I remember is how gross it was and we had one of those cards we had to wave a transit employee down for.
I got to experience a fare-check on the Paris Metro about 5 years ago and it was insane -- literally a dozen or more inspectors got on at once and swept the train like it was a military operation (and my recollection is that you're correct and at least part of them were armed).
The gun thing is a great point—i would say that sad fact argues in favor of turnstiles to avoid subjecting unarmed employees to dangerous situations, with actual police occasionally posted near turnstiles, or more use of video evidence as Matt proposes.
The reason transit employees don't enforce rules (like the case of the people drinking on NJ transit) is because it is not safe for them to do so. In DC the city council neutered punishments for fair evasion (a minor fine and no penalty for non-payment/no-show to court).
Right, I’m wondering what the spot check enforcement would actually look like in practice. A ticket? No ID. I agree fares need to be enforced, but it seems like there would have to be non trivial amounts of arrests on the train to actually get folks to pay or be punished. Hopping turnstiles at least seems like a more ‘affirmative’ action that could be acted on.
I support lax enforcement of some minor offenses, and reduced sentences overall, but agree there are minor offenses that should be targeted. They do not have to always be *criminal* -- they can be civil offenses or just a good talking to or talking to parents/family. Two categories, arguably versions of one, that I came up with where there should be some enforcement are offenses that make others:
1. feel like chumps
2. feel bad about their safety/surroundings
Fare evaders are in #1 and to a lesser extent #2: people see fare evaders and feel like chumps for paying. Public urination is #2, or blatant littering. The littering is the kind of thing that also leads to more of the same -- this is the *real* broken windows metaphor.
I would suggest that drinking a beer after dark in a public park (as Matt says he was caught doing and had to go to court for) would not be included and is more of an offense where you dump the beer and get a talking-to and if young enough, the parents are notified. Ignore selling loosies, or subtly drinking from a paper bag (see the great speech in Season 3 of The Wire about this), or other out-of-view minor offenses.
How does "selling loosies" not fall right under your category one? Does that not make people feel like chumps for paying for fully taxed smokes? With said tax being an important revenue generator and a powerful public health incentive?
My assumption -- admittedly not from experience -- is that most loosies have been taxed. People buy a pack for $8 ($0.40/cigarette) and then sell the loosies for a markup to people who might not have enough money to buy a whole pack, or who only want 2-3 cigs rather than a whole pack.
My understanding is that most of them are either purchased in a state with lower taxes than the final market or they may have simply "fallen off of a truck" at some point in the supply chain.
Even so, I'd be really surprised if it's profitable to then sell them loose at a unit price lower than that of a pack. There's so much friction in that "supply chain" that costs must mount rapidly unless someone literally did the pushing off the truck themselves before selling loosies.
Back in the day there were a lot of VCRs, and later DVD players, that fell off trucks in NYC. You’d think that would be more of a problem than cigarettes because of the general fragility of fine Japanese consumer electronics. But the packaging of home video components was made of sterner stuff than one might expect, and there was never so much as a scratch or dent in any of the boxes.
Loosies in NYC are often purchased in Delaware: low cigarette taxes; no sales tax; and it’s an easy day trip across the GWB or Goethals, and down the NJ Turnpike. There are a number of cigarette outlets within a few minutes of the bridge across the Delaware River that cater to out-of-state entrepreneurs.
Even if they are bootlegged from NC, the connection is too remote. I think most people would say there goes a guy so cash poor he's overpaying for a smoke. Now if the public thinks he's selling something harder and out in the open, it's more like my #2.
Sometimes they are stolen, but generally they are smuggled in from lower-tax jurisdictions. So it most closely resembles tax evasion, which is squarely in category #1: "makes others feel like chumps".
It's been really bananas in DC watching fare evasion go from being an occasional thing concentrated among young men to a common event among people of all genders and ages and (I'm guessing) employment statuses. Also, it is going to be Metro Police enforcing this, at least to start with, and that seems like a good thing -- one can think that other metro workers should be willing to put themselves in potentially violent confrontations, or not, but many of them simply are not going to, and I do not think WMATA is going to make them.
I have always felt one should pay something - even nomimal - to remind yourself "this service has value" And yes I want to pay becayse I want *more* service - like a DC metro that runs more than once every 30 minutes (or whatever the very slow train arriving service is but it is too damned long)
The real culprit is Slow Boring - they have failed to do a leveraged buyout of a mass transit system and fix it up.
We are, but when I recently took Amtrak, someone boarded with a pile of sweet smelling tamales and I had to curse Slow Boring Dining Experience, Ltd. for not upgrading our experience.
I still recall my annoyance at WMTA for changing my great bus route into town and making me go the Pentagon to transfer to the train. The result was I switched to a car pool with net decrease in public transit use. Trains can have value in promoting high density development in the long run but often they are not the best alternative to reducing vehicle congestion.
How do you pay to take the train in DC? In Stockholm, I just tap my credit card against the panel. It’s all one zone. Paying is far easier than cheating.
If I had to navigate some gross looking machine with a confusing ux (after standing in line to use it) like I did in Vancouver many years ago, I would take cabs a lot more often.
Making it seamless and easy to do the right thing is an under-rated tool for achieving high rates of compliance.
Using public transportation in Stockholm was amazingly easy.
In DC, you put money on a card and then tap it in and out at the gates and the appropriate amount is deducted according to the distance and time of day. It's not too bad as long as you don't waste time trying to pre-determine the exact amount (speaking as an occasional visitor).
The core question is how many man-years of incarceration is a given increase in “order” worth. Commenters rarely confront that question. Is avoiding one murder worth 50 additional years of prison? 100? 500? How many years of human caging would you tolerate to reduce retail theft by $100,000?
Smart people often use their intelligence to evade the fact that incarceration is awful. Saying “enforcing rules is good” is an evasion. It implies that the consequences visited upon the rule breaker somehow don’t matter because rules are good and the criminal “deserves it.” This is basically magical thinking. No deontological moral theory will tell you whether the penalty for fare evasion should be jail or community service. Sensible thinking means weighing consequences.
No matter how vile the criminal act, incarceration degrades inmate and jailer alike. Prison guards have low life expectancies, sky high morbidity rates and staggering levels of stress. Jails and prisons are factories of human misery, and I want fewer of them.
So, gentle reader tell me this. How many years of prison time for illegal gun possession would you tolerate to prevent one murder? How many years to collect an extra $100,000 in fares?
Easy answer for me: Between 3 and 10 years for the illegal gun possession. Fare evasion should start with civil penalties (fines), and progress to jail time if fines aren't paid or if they accumulate.
I don't share your aversion to incarceration, though I do believe we in the US underinvest in prison facilities and their officers.
Yea, I live in a place with actual gun crime, as opposed to exurban Atlanta.
David is entitled to make whatever calculus he wants. But mine is different, and there's no objective moral principle that indicates one or the other despite his pretentions thereto.
I’m literally in court right now about to enter a guilty plea for an offense a client committed on 5/17/20. It’s easy to say justice should be swift. Where is the condition to hire the judges and prosecutors and public defenders to do that?
I think everyone, on all sides of this debate, supports swift. It's a question of prioritization and funding, but also of crime levels. If John is correct and his approach would reduce crime, swift will be a side effect.
The penalty for unlawful possession of an unregistered firearm in Washington D.C. is up to one year in jail and a $1000 fine for a first offense, which if anything seems rather lenient given that one generally carries unregistered guns because they are likely to shoot someone. The penalty for turnstile jumping in D.C. is a $300 fine and up to ten days in jail, which also seems more than reasonable given the burdens this conduct places on society. If someone does not want to incur these penalties might I suggest that they simply, you know, not commit these crimes. Not committing crimes is extremely easy, normal people do it every day.
That one year sentence is only applicable if the possession is in the violator's home or business. If you're caught in elsewhere, the punishment is five years, and more with prior felony convictions (see § 22–4504(a)(1)).
From the WaPo's reporting, it seems the problem is some combination of
1) Police not arresting those with possession;
2) Poor quality of admissible evidence when violators are arrested;
3) Prosecutorial discretion exercised to drop gun possession cases.
Hard to tell how much of each is responsible. For example, are the cases dropped because the evidence really is so bad or inadmissible? Do police stop arresting violators because they know/suspect the case will be dropped regardless?
Probably it's all of the above in a really bad reinforcing cycle.
Sorry, what’s the alternative to incarceration? Public flogging ? Cutting the hand off thieves ? Castrating rapists ? Executions for half of the crimes out there (with rising degrees of cruelty of method congruent with the severity of the crime)? Because that’s more or less where we were before incarceration. I note that Americans , like all of us, like their extreme pendulum swings. In the us it’s somehow revolving around prisons. In the 90s you decided on the insanity of eg life sentencing for committing any 3 crimes regardless of what they were, and judging juveniles like adults (I hear that still happens). Now you’re swinging the other way and suggesting the most progressive form of punishment humanity has devised thus far (yes!) must be abolished altogether - but without offering a shred of an alternative. Why this insistence to jump from one edge of insanity straight to the other? Keep calm and reform your criminal law to be more like that of other western countries.
P.S.
While you’re at it, de-politicize the roles of public prosecutors. Of course if they have to stand for elections they’re going to be loony one way or the other rather than professionals like in the rest of the world.
The real alternative is hiring more cops to prevent crime. Unfortunately I suspect we’re headed for a repeat of the 80s where we don’t hire cops and instead throw a bunch of people in prison while crime continues to rise.
I’d give many things to get the 90s Clinton Democrats and 90s Joe Biden back. Hell even super predators are probably a basically accurate description of how crime works (a tiny percent of people commit a high proportion of the crime)
And we've seen a larger increase in all categories of avoidable deaths from homicide to drug overdose to car accident. According to the CDC (wonder database, google it) the above all jumped in May of 2020 and hadn't decreased by the end of that year. And the % increases in deaths were biggest in populations that correlate with prison populations and police attention: young, black, male. All 3 categories had the biggest increases in deaths single, but especially in combination.
To give you an empirical and concrete example:
2020 saw an increase in non-disease mortality of 10 per 100k for non-hispanic white males aged 14-24. The increase for non-hispanic black males was 58 per 100k, a 60% increase in non-disease mortality! Contrast that with Asian females, and the increase was only 0.1 per 100k.
Something caused a lot more people to die in traffic accidents, murders and overdoses in 2020, beginning in May 2020. That thing impact young, black, males the most and older, non-black females the least. I don't know what it was exactly, the pullback in incarceration is a very reasonable and empirical hypothesis.
But that's just tn, the sociology and psychology behind this are extremely well-understood: If I significantly increase the chance of getting caught and punished for a given offense, I can make the punishment more mild, not less.
The only practical way to get to a world in which *fewer* people are incarcerated is to hammer through the skulls of even those with the least self-control and strongest time preferences, that there is no world in which the stupid, illegal thing they're about to do is going to pay off.
Wide-ranging enforcement coupled with an effective, *quick* legal system is the objectively correct answer to both the problems of crime and the problems of mass incarceration. It is the reality of Europe, to which the progressives point. It's the reality of much of East Asia, to which conservatives do. It's the reality that prevailed in the US for a brief golden era between 1940 and 1960, and it works!
Have you, or anyone you care about, ever been the victim of a violent crime? Or is crime merely an abstraction to you?
One of the points that Matt makes well in this piece, is that enforcing rules and laws has a direct effect on the people who are caught in the act, yes. But it also has an indirect (and larger) effect on the decision calculus of others who might or might not choose to break the rule or law in the future.
Hypothetically, I rob someone at gunpoint. I am arrested and convicted. But, since incarceration is so dehumanizing, I don’t go to prison. I reflect on what’s happened. My friends and acquaintances see what happened to me.
What is the likely result, on net…more dehumanization or less dehumanization, going forward?
Thats not what David is saying. There are costs and benefits to locking people up, and people generally underweight the cost. If we lock people up, there should be good reasons for doing so. On the current margin, maybe the guy who had an unregistered gun on him a few weeks ago should be held, but not 6 months ago.
The thing is I think people actually overweight the cost and underweight the benefits. If the median criminal really feared the costs of being locked up they wouldn't be rearrested and reoffend so frequently. The median prisoner has 4-6 prior convictions and double that number of arrests. And death rates for prisoners are much, much lower than their comparable cohorts outside of prison from murder, traffic accidents and drug overdoses
And that's all without taking into account the public safety benefits of holding a criminally violent or larcenous person out of society for a period of time.
"The thing is I think people actually overweight the cost and underweight the benefits."
I think people realize that going to prison is actually pretty terrible. There might be people whose lives outside of prison aren't better, just like being caught in a bear trap isn't as bad as being tortured by the inquisition. But let's not pretend that makes prison a nice place to be.
Speaking only for myself I never said it was nice.
But the argument coming the other way goes something like: "going to prison ruins people's lives" or "is the worst thing that could ever happen to them". You can find versions of it in this thread and elsewhere in this comment section. That's where I'm trying to push back.
If it was so bad for them compared to other options, people would do more to avoid it and recidivism would be a lot lower. Just in my personal experience, I know several fellow graduates of my elite technical school (Caltech) who were busted for DUI. Some took steps to make sure it never happened again, 1 only did that after his first night in jail, 1 died in a DUI accident and 1 went to jail for a month but was un-phased by the experience and still probably DUIs. It's bad but it's not as bad as people are making it out to be.
There is a substantive difference in experience between spending 1-3 nights in jail and going to prison for a year+ of your life. The consequences post incarceration are also dramatically different. People with a DUI are *generally* not significantly impacted in their careers, while being in prison for 18 months for stealing a car will get you excluded from a large number of jobs.
That's just flat wrong. Criminals in the US generally have their basic needs met: food, clothing, shelter. If it was all about needs we'd expect the vast homeless camps in West Coast cities to be the most violent places in America, but they are not. Or we'd expect India to have higher violent crime rates than America, which it does not. Or we'd expect the poorest cities in America to be the most violent, which is not really true either - El Paso is the poorest very large city in American and also nearly our safest.
Saying "prisons suck so we can't incarcerate people" is literally insane. It will disproportionately destroy the lives of the most vulnerable of law-abiding citizens, in every instance.
My threshold for "have no other option but to incarcerate" is "this individual has threatened or used violence against anyone, repeatedly failed to reform behavior that puts others at risk, or caused large-scale damage to others' or public property."
I bet 90%+ of the people here, including myself, would like to fund programs like those more, particularly if we can demonstrate that they work.
But there isn't strong evidence that we know how to do those things in ways that reduce crime, especially at scale. We really don't. Instead we get vague hand-waving to Scandinavia, which is about as convincing for me Frigid's handwaving to Singapore probably is for you.
If you can show me those things working, I'll get excited about them. But in the meantime, until they're working and funded, we have to punish people that are assaulting, robbing, molesting, raping and shooting at other people.
If a loved on of your becomes a victim of violent crime, are you going to tell them "it's going to be OK, vote progressive and in 10 years these problems will go away". Or are you going to call the police and press charges?
What if they steal or fight because they enjoy it? If someone comes to your house and starts breaking stuff because they enjoy breaking stuff, are you going to value their freedom over your property?
What if they don't want to go to rehab - are you going to forcefully institutionalize them and for how long? If not, then what are you going to do when they decide the doorway to your business or home is their preferred location to shoot up?
I'm fully in agreement that we generally lock up people for too long, but this idea that force and imprisonment are unacceptable suggests you've never actually had to deal with these situations where you live.
Something you're probably missing is that the "cruelty" of prison doesn't impact each prisoner the same. For hardcore criminals, the cruelty of living outside of prison can be just as bad, or worse. This is backed up in part by statistics that show that the chance of being a murder victim is 10 times less while in prison than on the outside for most gang members, and the chance of dying of a drug overdose is similarly lessened while inside.
In other words, you're probably ignorant of what goes on in the life of a typical reoffender.
Mostly it's not intended to be. But it does weaken the argument that prison should be used less because it's crueler than the alternatives.
But it also suggest, to me, that the state could take a more active role in protecting the most criminal and anti-social members of society from themselves.
"Well, because the slightly absurd idea that it’s bad to punish people for violating rules has been bouncing around progressive circles for the past decade and was supercharged by George Floyd’s death."
These progressives would be horrified if their own children didn't obey rules in schools. I think we have a little 'soft bigotry of low expectations' going on here.
I don't think the bigotry behind that absurd idea is all that soft.
The people Matt is talking about are very small in number, but very noisy on Twitter. The "abolish prisons, abolish police, abolish punishing crimes" people are extremely loud, extremely wrong and extremely small in number.
Which is why it's not a popular position among people of any race.
And yet, Alvin Bragg is the DA for the nation’s largest city. I think that the “no enforcement” crowd is both very loud and very wrong, but they seem to be much more influential than your post suggests.
Alvin Bragg is a career prosecutor who cut his teeth in the notoriously aggressive U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. He's not someone who doesn't believe in enforcing rules.
To be fair, deciding not to enforce laws has been the primary mechanism of every DA ever for putting their own stamp on the office.
I am not saying it is good policy, but electing a DA who will not enforce crimes that seem to selectively punish certain demographics (e.g. marijuana possession and African Americans) is easier than getting the police to stop engaging in biased policing, or changing the laws to make the behaviors legal.
He's the DA for less than one-fifth of the nation's largest city. The full city elects different people than its richest enclave. And Mr. Bragg has certainly been under a lot of scrutiny and pressure from other city officials since taking power in this enclave.
Is he like Larry Krasner, or what?
Bragg is a progressive prosecutor (who has indeed been compared to Krasner) who has generally adopted a program of effectively decriminalizing various low- and mid-level offenses (including, relevant to this article, fare evasion, although AIUI that specific initiative predates him was initiated under his predecessor Cy Vance, albeit it's reiterated in his own memo). Bragg's "Day one memo" drew a great deal of protest for formalizing a lot of this, although I also understand that it's more emblematic of his general approach rather than being the sum-total of his actions towards more lenient or absent charging.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/06/nyregion/alvin-bragg-manhattan-da.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/nyregion/manhattan-da-alvin-bragg-memo-prosecution.html
https://www.manhattanda.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Day-One-Letter-Policies-1.03.2022.pdf (See pages 4+)
He also reversed course on an investigation into Donald Trump for which a grand jury had been convened, resulting in the resignation of two top white collar prosecutors in disgust, although that's probably a different kettle of fish rather than specifically attributable to his general preference for leniency. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/nyregion/trump-ny-fraud-investigation.html
Bragg has rolled back a lot of his changes and there's no connection between sophisticated white-collar prosecutions and street crime--they're in practice separate legal specialties because they involve such different considerations.
We should be grateful that Musk is going to give Twitter the death it deserves.
Insane
This is neglect, and will result with the usual outcomes of neglect.
I'm pretty anti-enforcement and if my hypothetical kid didn't obey most of the rules in school I expect I'd buy 'em ice cream (as long as they're not starting conflict with other kids).
I do agree with Matt when he says "If we fear that the punishments on the books are too harsh, we should adjust them, not make enforcement spotty. And if we think people are being punished for things that don’t deserve punishment, then we should legalize them." If we did those things, I would be pro-enforcement.
But most systems of rules fall far shy of this, IMO, and I don't have much faith in their ability to be reformed in practice in the near-term. No comment on DC Metro fares in particular, never even been there, but the other example we have at hand, schools, I think makes this pretty clear. Idiotic and/or broken systems of rules like bathroom passes, zero tolerance policies wrt fighting and bullying, stiff tardiness penalties for a school day that starts too early for kids, and cumbersome homework burdens that exist to placate parents instead of further learning-- all abundant.
Best thing you can do for a kid is just help em understand which rules are there for good reasons and which should be broken, and shield them as best you can when they do it
I might not be one of these same progressives you are talking about though, I feel like I'm tapping into a well of libertarianism inside me when I say this stuff. My motivating concern is not that these systems are racist (though it seems many also are, and that's absolutely fucked), it's that they're really stupid regardless of that
Given your comment about your hypothetical child, you seem to see disregard for order and authority as a virtue. Does this sort of attitude not seem detrimental to the public good, in your view? Or is it that you think the harm to the public good is a price worth paying for the freedom of being able to ignore people who tell you what to do?
It’s not “disregard for order and authority” - it’s disregard for stupidity, even when it’s masked as authority. I don’t want to insist that people come to a full stop at four-way stops - I want people to do what they actually do, which is what makes sense, which is slowing down sufficiently that they *could* stop if necessary, verifying that whoever has right-of-way (a crossing driver or pedestrian or cyclist) can safely get through before them, and then proceeding.
That's fine as far as it goes. The problem is if you start circulating the idea that everyone gets to decide which rule to follow you're going to arrive at a much worse equilibrium very quickly.
We don't even need to imagine what this looks like. There are plenty of countries and cultures where most people view rules and the law this way, and those countries are generally more corrupt and less developed. Mexico is probably a very good example. If you have enough money to break a rule in Mexico, or if you're fairly certain you won't get caught, you won't be criticized for breaking the rule, and you can rationalize it as "it was stupid anyway"
Yes. I think it's very important to rationalize the rules, more important than getting people to respect the existing irrational rules.
There's a tradeoff and a balance here. Of course everyone does a little of this. I'm sure we've all jaywalked, and last night I briefly drank a beer on the street when my daughter unexpectedly wanted to play out in the cold. And so we get to an equilibrium where certain rules are usually or sometimes ignored, but some aren't.
The problem is everyone rationalizes a little differently, and pushing everyone in the direction of "ignore more rules, rationalize more" is a very slippery slope that directly leads to terrible outcomes like the fare evasion example, like the smoking crack on public transport example others have mentioned, like the "don't snitch" example in high crime neighborhoods and like the Mexico example I give.
It's very dangerous, and it appeals the most to people with big egos or sociopathic tendencies who "know more" and "deserve more" than others.
Suppose selectively breaking "stupid" laws becomes the message from the Left - what's to stop date rapists from deciding they have a better definition of consent? What's to stop motorcyclists from going 100mph when "they feel it's safe". You're basically encouraging Mexican societies approach to law and order
I think people’s capacity to understand which rules are stupid is underrated - it’s not the case that exercising this kind of discretion leads inevitably to chaos. People doing stupid shit usually have other problems, like having no impulse control or not caring about anyone else, rather than sincere miscalculation.
Point taken, but then what's going on with the fare jumping? Or with tax evasion in Greece? Or with police corruption and bribe taking in Latin America?
People can calculate some stupid rules correctly, but we also have great capacity to rationalize selfish behavior. Culture can move in the direction of bad equilibriums.
Eh, no.
Everyone has a different judgement of things.
I can drive 110mph safely!
That's why we should fix the rules, not try to insist that people follow rules that are so manifestly stupid that 90% of people break them (usually without even consciously realizing that they are breaking them!)
But does anyone disagree with "we should fix the rules, not try to insist that people follow rules that are so manifestly stupid"? Yeah, of course we should! And we do! Continuously, via political and administrative processes--maybe not your personal least favorite rules, but that's what those processes are fundamentally doing, modifying rules.
But what do you do in the interm? Ignore, or work the system? It's a bigger debate than traffic law, I grant you that.
I broadly agree with what Kenny said, though I also want to speak particularly to my view on order and authority. Since to me, they're neither inherently virtuous nor unvirtuous to adhere to or disregard. I don't think think they're very compelling reasons, in themselves, to take any course of action, but I think a good society is one whose order and whose authorities are built according to such compelling reasons that they become so
There are always silly rules — I wish some of my professors wouldn't ask us to wear masks in class given that Yale mandates vaccines — part of being an adult is learning when to pick your battles.
I certainly agree with that, but maybe we'll turn out to disagree, if we do, about how many battles are worth picking. And agreed that masks in class seems like a good example of one that isn't; I would expect if you fight it you'll just lose, even if it's silly.
Me too, but I was raised with a good degree of this and it worked out nicely, so I don't think it's a bad approach
Turned out nicely for *you*. Rules are for society though...
We'd all be individually better off if we could selectively break rules without significant consequence.
We'd all *collectively* be better off if we broke some number of rules that are in place, too. And beyond that, since this *was* about enforcement not about rulebreaking, we'd all be way better off if a much larger number of rules stopped being enforced
Makes sense to me. Society would quickly grind to a halt if every rule was always enforced
Most of us do, though. You could reasonably argue that figuring how to do this is a core qualification of adulthood
I mean, I'm not going to lie and say I don't jaywalk or speed in the car. Guilty.
But on the other hand, for most societal rules that seem outdated, inappropriate, or wrong, I feel there are more mature ways to address the issue than ignoring the rules.
Fwiw, almost nobody goes to jail for "having pot", and removing disparities in punishments as small as detention is actually the boundary over which the culture war is being fought.
Plenty of people go to jail for failing drug or even alcohol tests while on probation
Right, in part because the conditions for release reasonably assume a good-faith attempt to turn their life around and stop criminal behavior, and regular drug and alcohol use do not signal that.
I think this is my first time wading into the comments section on any piece of writing in the last 10 years, but I finally have a boring point that I disagree with Matt about.
I live in Berlin, Germany, where we objectively have a very good metro system, but we have a very large percentage of people who ride without a ticket (including myself past a certain hour at night, when I know I can get away with it) because we have a proof-of-payment system.
All of the policy nerd friends I have in Berlin pine for the BVG (the local metro authorities) to install turnstiles in U-Bahn and S-Bahn stations, and I agree with them. We want this because:
- Because it's so easy to evade fares currently, we suspect a proof-of-payment system would lead to increased revenue (and therefore improved service).
- There are many homeless individuals who (understandably) sleep on the platforms during the colder parts of the year. Less understandably, many of these individuals also do intravenous drugs on the platforms, accost passengers, and occasionally commit other crimes, which make it an extremely unpleasant riding experience in certain parts of the city and at night.
- The current fare checkers are mostly contractors with poor training who not infrequently use discriminatory judgement when it comes to enforcement. Even as someone living in a quite wealthy area of the city, I have personally seen fare checkers drag riders of color off of trains and physically assault them. It is shocking and disturbing to witness — and the idea of these kind of acts being filmed in American and posted all over social media makes me very worried about the backlash.
I completely agree with your assessment that metro systems should better enforce purchasing fares, but I strongly disagree about moving towards a proof-of-payment system.
Thank you for your insight. I actually think "on the ground" viewpoint from non-US locations is perhaps needed for this site for policies and issues just like this one. I think Matt has done a lot of great work highlighting all the ways that public transit and infrastructure more generally is so much worse here than in "peer" countries. This seems especially apparent in the realm of costs in that we seem to pay more for worse service, especially in regard to public transit.
But I think the good work Matt (and many others) have done highlighting the deficiencies in transit and infrastructure more generally, sometimes unintentionally results in way too rosy a view of train systems in parts of Europe. I think reading Matt's work, you start to get in an impression in your head that train service in Germany or in Spain is like something out of Star Trek. When the real answer is places like Germany and Spain have systems that are cheaper and better than the US, but still deal with a lot of problems, including a lot of the same problems as in America.
If I had to guess, in a place like NYC (where I'm most familiar as I work in midtown Manhattan), if you were to give truth serum to subway commuters and ask them what's the thing that bothers them the most about riding the subway, the number one answer is homeless people. Yes, crime has increased (as an aside, the number of lefties saying crime rise is "Fake news" is actually extremely low, but they are loud on Twitter. Having said that, those charts showing insane spike in crime being mentioned on cable news and specifically NYC were really striking in showing how much the focus truly is wildly disproportionate to the actual situation. But I digress). And yes, a decent amount of that crime has unfortunately happened in the subway. But the reality is by far the more common situation that would make your commute or trip more unpleasant is dealing with a homeless person. I blanche at some of the more foul thing said about homeless people on the right and find the rhetoric often foul (and straight up bigoted). But reality is, it truly is not fun to be too physically close to someone who is homeless. Their clothes are raddy, they are often clearly not mentally stable in their actions and oh yeah...they often smell really bad.
But as your anecdote about homeless on Berlin trains (not the only thing you noted, but one that just stood out to me) shows that this is not an issue that's easily solvable or unique to the US. Public transit is just that "public". You can't just stop people from going on trains because they are unpleasant to be around. What you're going to create a rule where only people who have put on deodorant this morning can be allowed on the train? It's silly the way I've put it, but speaks to how difficult "solving" something like this really is.
Bit rambling response I know but thought it worth responding to your post.
Good comment. It's a tricky issue and a tough one to talk about. The only thing I want to add or point out is that these indicators: "clothes are raddy, they are often clearly not mentally stable in their actions and oh yeah...they often smell really bad" are not the same thing as homeless. Some people meeting that description will be housed, and some homeless people will not meet that description.
There is some overlap, and being homeless might make it more likely to be raddy, unstable or smelly. But it's worth pointing out that no one is literally bothered by "the homeless". We're bothered by symptoms we ascribe to homelessness. Fixing homelessness won't remove all of those problems and even in low-homeless areas (i live in the rustbelt, not many homeless) we still have smelly, raddy-clothed and mentally disturbed people.
I'd actually bet there are more homeless where you live in the rust belt that you might expect. Not sure if you live in suburbia, exurbia or rural area. But one thing that living in non-city environments does is it makes it much more likely to not have to see or interact people in "bad" neighborhoods. Reality is homeless is just a lot more hidden and give the impression it's less of a problem then it really is.
Unfortunately, I suspect that's what too many people really want when they say they want something done about homeless. Just physically take them somewhere else where they are "out of sight and out of mind". Please someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember reading that one reason the touristy areas of London and Paris don't seem to have as much homeless is the governments there take measures to physically remove them, precisely so as not to disrupt tourism.
Well - where are they hiding? I did live in a more urban and poor area when I was in LA, but I still go to various areas in the city I live in and there's just no comparison. LA has homeless squatters in nearly every park and under and / or over nearly every freeway overpass. Even the biggest camps I know of in my current city would be insignificant if they were in LA.
Since covid the worst area in terms of "homeless" disruption in my current city appears to be downtown, but a large % of the homeless there appear to be of the least sympathetic variety - otherwise healthy young men and women who are not so down on their luck that they can't afford drugs and a pit bull on a leash.
I'll grant there may be far more people squatting in vacant houses here, but they aren't homeless.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/magazine/rural-homeless-students.html
Trust me, I see a lot of the same stuff you're describing in NYC. And as Matt has pointed, out the homeless situation in CA is especially bad due in large part to the high cost of housing. But it really is the case that we notice it more in cities because the nature of city living; people are just more clustered together more generally.
The NY times magazine piece I thought was very good just generally speaking. It's specifically about students, but it's obviously covering a lot of the same ground. Worth your time regardless.
I should add. It seems pretty clear to me from the article that one reason homeless data in exurban or rural areas seemed like it might have shown less homelessness than cities is the resources weren't being put in to properly track this stuff.
That’s interesting, because downtown Pittsburgh seems every time I’m there to have vastly more homeless people on a per capita basis than Center City Philadelphia.
Pre-covid, I lived in the city of Pittsburgh for 1.5 years and I don't recall even seeing a single homeless person, even in downtown. I'm sure they were around somewhere, but they were either far fewer or "out of sight, out of mind"
Then I moved to LA for 2 years where homeless people were "everywhere"
Last couple times I went to downtown Pittsburgh, post-covid, it looked closer to LA than to what I remember from pre-covid. It's just my anecdota but it's hard for me to avoid forming the impression that I have.
Little bit of history. We used to institutionalize the insane and mentally disturbed. My next door neighbor was sent to one in Willard NY, and came to his senses in three months. In the sixties the 'experts' decided the mentally disturbed would do better if they lived among society, and the mental institutions were shut down. So we have what we have on the subways.
I also just don't think POP system will work in American culture. This is *not* Germany* (or Japan, or Korea, or other EU countries where you get stared at funny if you cross the street against the signal...)
We we cross against the signal *as a rule*, we jaywalk, we cut every possible small corner in life--it's the American way! Honestly, it's part of the same energy makes America great, entreprenurial spirit, find a better way, move fast and break things, etc. But it is what makes America, dangerous, wild, a bit disorderly. Order is just not emphasized, but instead efficiency, speed, creativity....
Summary: POP would be 10x greater evaded in US than wherever it currently is in use.
POP is already in use in some cities, though. Seattle uses it for the light rail, for instance.
And Americans are pretty responsive to authority despite social myths to the contrary. Note, for instance, how no one seems to jaywalk in front of a sports stadium right before an event where there are traffic cops everywhere. And isn't for fear of punishment (everyone knows that the cops would not actually take the time to write citations for jaywalkers), it's for fear of the embarrassment of being pointed at and told not to do it.
Seattle is a wealthy, relatively small city. As Seattle's underclass grows along with the rest of the city, POP will undoubtedly become less popular, unless Seattle's light rain continues to primarily serve only the wealthier parts of the city.
We also would never enforce it here. We'd have thousands of people with dozens of unpaid tickets in perpetuity who would continue to ride with impunity regardless of surveillance systems. Worst thing that happens is they get kicked off a train every fifty rides.
This system kind of works with parking tickets because eventually you can boot or impound the car for non-payment. Can't do that with a human fare evader.
The only way to enforce that would make excessive fair evasion a criminal penalty. But there's plenty of other reasons not to do that.
Thanks for this comment! I used to live in a different EU metro area before moving to the US, and I really don't think that Matt's argument are coherent here. Some points:
- Despite the fact that there was a proof of payment system, I would always pay the fare in the subway. But even I didn't think that it was logical to pay the fare if you only wanted to ride the bus. Nobody would check there, and I think that made sense from an enforcement standpoint, since many more people would pass through a specific subway station than a specific bus stop.
- I don't see how you may believe that stop and frisk leads to profiling and it should be replaced with automation like cameras, but spot checks for fare evasion won't lead to profiling and it isn't necessarily a good idea to automate them.
I will just say about point (2) that last night I was coming back to Union Station from Boston at 1am and in the span of 5 minutes waiting for the bus two homeless people came up to me inside the station to ask for money. I told them I didn't have any but I'm a young man so I didn't worry for my safety — if I was a woman it might've made me feel differently.
As a young woman, I’m not bothered when people come up and ask me for money (that is unfortunately a fairly regular part of big city life today), but I have been screamed at on the metro by individuals who appear homeless, and been followed off of trains. That is upsetting and does negatively affect my experience as a rider.
Are you engaged in cis-normative gender stereotyping? I wouldn’t mind if you were, but I can’t speak for the woker elements of the SB community.
He wrote "if I was a woman" (the past tense) not "if I were a woman" (the subjunctive) so he's saying "if I used to be a woman," which is hardly cis-normative. :-)
Can't you solve these problems, though? Like:
- maybe pay some more money for a night time enforcement crew?
- maybe get the police to deter illegal activities on the platforms?
- maybe fire or arrest fare checkers that engage in blatantly illegal activities like beating up people of color?
It feels like "let's put in turnstiles" is just an attempt to evade solving the actual problems here
It's been a while since I was in Berlin, my favorite city in the whole world by the way, and I do remember machines where you purchased your fare. I think it was good for 3 hours? What I did like was at night when the UBahn shut down, buses took over the rail routes until the UBahn opened back up in the morning. 24 hour public transportation service. Of course, I also remember Checkpoint Charlie when it was Checkpoint Charlie, and flying into Tempelhof on a C-130 from Ramstein. Using the SBahn was off limits.
Yes, in fact, we should bring back accountability into the culture. Things we should enforce with much bigger fines, and if violations are repeated enough, incarceration:
- fare evasion
- reckless driving
- road rage
- tax evasion
- littering
I picked a set of things on purpose that are pretty equal opportunity across race and even gender lines.
Society has rules. Those rules should be enforced. Not sure why the concept need be controversial
I think that approach is backwards if what you want is to actually reduce these things. Remember, the factors in deterring crime are certainty, swiftness, and severity of punishment. Of those three, empirical studies repeatedly show that the severity of punishment is the *least* important—it does very little to actually keep people from doing crime. This makes sense, since the vast majority of people doing crime aren’t thinking particularly rationally. They’re only really concerned with whether they get caught, not factoring in the consequences if they do. That’s why we have this fare evasion issue in the first place—if you jump a faregate, you’ll only get caught if transit-agency staff see you, and since most faregate locations are unstaffed they probably won’t.
This is why enforcement mechanisms are more important than the punishment. If you want to deter traffic violations you put up traffic cameras while leaving the consequences largely the same. (Largely, because we’ve gotten too lenient about revoking driver’s licenses for traffic violations—but that’s a direct safety issue rather than a severity of punishment one). Littering, ditto—put cameras on every corner. If you want to deter tax evasion, hire more tax police (like me!). The actual consequences need only be moderately worse (say a few times) than whatever unpleasantness the offender was trying to avoid if there’s a good chance they get caught.
While the point that likelihood of being caught is a primary deterrent to the generally risk-seeking class of criminals is sound, I think this underrates the value of incapacitation as a positive good in and of itself. There’s a line of progressive thinking that seems to believe there are no bad people, only bad acts, but both experience and criminological data strongly suggest the other way round: the people causing the worst traffic accidents are weighted towards those with several previous violations (and also often driving despite a license suspension), college sexual assault seems to follow a 80/20 or 90/10 distribution (high majority of crimes committed by a small minority of offenders), and I’m pretty confident that most people spend 100% of their time not stealing bicycles. Locking up the small subset of people who demonstrate criminal tendencies in a way different in kind from the majority seems likely to produce positive marginal value to society in and of itself.
Rafael Mangual makes this point very well in his book Criminal (In)Justice, released just this year.
When I read the most anti-incarceration people I sometimes wonder if they just don't know anyone with anti-social and criminal tendencies? The people I know who have been in and out of prison the most have long, long histories of being violent and abusive. I'm talking about people who were mean and violent and enjoyed causing pain when they were 10 or 12. They were taking lunch money at that age and now they are robbing drug dealers.
In contrast, I don't know anyone who was a normal kid and then "got arrested for 1 joint" and then turned to crime.
Yeah, this is something I think I've mentioned here before -- a giant blindspot in progressive policy discussions is that there very clearly is a genuine "criminal class" of people who really do not have an interest in living anything that could be characterized as a productive life and do not feel restrained or pressured in any meaningful way by monetary penalties, social opprobrium, or anything else that operates to deter "normies" from committing crimes.
These conversations are dominated by people who were tracked into honors classes in middle school, and it shows.
Just a "fun" story since you mention middle school. There used to be a sketchy guy sitting on his back alley walk-up porch at the top of my mom's street. I would drive by him all the time when I visited, and I used to tell my wife he was probably a drug dealer (the empty aquariums on the porch were the biggest giveaway).
Anyways, right before covid he was in the news b/c a customer tried to rob him with a knife and he pistol whipped and shot at the guy. He had made himself a target by living with a stripper so it was assumed he had lots of cash at hand.
When I mentioned this to my younger brother he told me we both knew his family and he knew him from school. In middle school he came up to my brother's shared lunch table and spit on it and one of my brother's friends sitting there beat him up. Same thing happened again a couple more times before he quit. A year before the robbery attempt he had had part of his ear sliced off in a bar fight. His older brother was in my grade and is now a doctor, his sister owns a yoga studio and his cousin was a broadway dancer who died in his 30s.
How were the empty aquariums on the porch a giveaway about him being a drug dealer?
I'm not sure that kind of logarithmic scaling of punishment severity is needed when it comes to, say, jaywalking or fare avoidance.
But for unsafe driving practices and violent crime, absolutely. A few offenses should be enough to lose a license, driving without one should then be subject to criminal penalty.
Yeah, to be clear I was focused on the OP's list of nonviolent and driving offenses. For what it’s worth, I am unsure of the benefits of harsher punishment for tax offenses, since the difficulty of detection is high, but also it’s easy to not pay taxes because you or your preparer/accountant screwed up not because you’re trying to cheat the government out of its tax dollars.
I follow, yea, though I'm quite willing to start suspending drivers' licenses early in the game when someone is being willfully dangerous.
I honestly think we need more than just suspension but rather need to move to vehicle impoundment. At least in the NYC area road deaths attributable to people driving with suspended licenses are depressingly common. If they weren’t going to follow the rules with a license, they aren’t going to follow one without one.
I had this same thought Kareem, but Matt _also_ said that looking abroad, best practices seem to indicate this style is preferable. So that suggests that while that might be a good general principle, it might not apply here due to real world differences.
I wonder if this is different because:
1) Fare evasion in an individual case is a pretty small crime. Any _individual_ perpetrator you fail to catch you lose a bit of money but nobody otherwise gets hurt/scared/harassed. Therefore, as long as you're not so lax you're encouraging _more_ fare evasion, you can do a legitimate cost-benefit analysis to determine whether this is worth doing.
2) If fare evasion starts being more rampant - you can step up enforcement (in a way that you can't easily build more turnstiles) until it starts going down again.
3) If you step up enforcement to catch more people, you don't necessarily need to make the penalty multiplier as large.
(Edit: Based on Claire's point below about not liking the POP system in Germany, I'd like to see the links to why this is best practice)
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/08/15/fare-payment-without-the-stasi/ favors POP on privacy grounds.
The last time I rode the T (Boston) I paid with tokens so they weren't tracking me anyway.
I can see how you would do turnstiles without all that tracking (prepaid cards paid with cash?) but of course it's hard to guarantee the government does that.
> Largely, because we’ve gotten too lenient about revoking driver’s licenses for traffic violations—but that’s a direct safety issue rather than a severity of punishment one
Agreed, which is why I like the "points" systems common in Europe - you get points for a violation; the points drop off after X years. If you have more than Y points, your license is revoked until the points drop off.
In the UK, the typical version is 3 points for speeding, 4 for speeding more than 20mph above the posted speed, or for running a red light, or similar minor offences. 6 points for most things you'd get stopped by the traffic cops for (e.g. anything immediately dangerous like weaving or tailgating). They last three years normally. You can't drive if you have 12 points or more at any time, but you get the license back as soon as the oldest points drop off. Courts can give points instead of taking your license away if they choose; those points can last longer than three years (I know someone who got 11 points for six years instead of a ban for drink-driving because they had a really good lawyer; the result was a young man in his twenties driving exactly at the speed limit because he was terrified of losing his license).
We have this, too, but only from our car insurance. But that causes the dual problem of 1) not deterring the very rich and 2) not deterring the very poor, who often illegally drive without insurance anyway.
In most states, it looks like points actually apply to your license, though you're right that they also affect your insurance rates. https://wallethub.com/edu/ci/points-on-license/84874
Yes, 41 states have a point system of some type.
Unfortunately many of these kinds of quality of life problems are committed by people poor enough to be “off the grid” - car not registered, never had a bank account, etc. If you’re not willing to physically apprehend and incarcerate at some point then the rules are really only binding on people in a certain narrow range of SES (high enough to have something to lose, low enough that it’s not spare change).
The concept of locking up people who can’t pay fines is exactly the “criminalization of poverty” however.
Not sure where you went to college, but in NYC land is very expensive so it makes sense that using it without paying (parking ticket situation) costs more.
As a good urbanist I think on-street parking is a terrible land use, but given the (bad) status quo - don’t get me started on placards or alternate side - high ticket prices make sense.
The could be lower with citizen with cell phone snitches.
I agree, but then you also run into the problem of people who then treat tickets as a toll they are quite willing to pay and it loses its deterrent affect.
If they are willing to pay it it's may be optimal to let them. Depend on the fine and the actual scarcity of spaces.
I've read a few hundred of Aaron Erickson's posts, and you couldn't be more wrong about him. He works in startup tech in SF and is very active in the YIMBY movement there. He likes systems to work well and work fairly and for incentives to be distributed well. I find his comments to be very consistant across topics wrt to those preferences / values.
You may disagree with his views on enforcement, but that doesn't mean "it's all about revenge" or somehow about "cancelling" or that his posts are insincere or unserious.
There’s little evidence of this in his post and it’s not Ok to make strong negative assertions about other commenters here based on scant evidence (and best to focus on the substance).
He went out of his way to pick areas across a spectrum of factors. If you have clear rules and understanding they they will be enforced then you often don’t need any punishment. Either way the trade offs are well established, so even if you feel differently you should understand why others might have this view.
A lot of murders and assaults, quite likely the majority, are also motivated by the desire for vengeance, especially when the state seems unlikely to perform that function. Wishing away the desire for revenge does not make that desire go away.
Just to spell this out by example - two guys get in a fight over a woman (something a strong safety net doesn't change). One stabs or shoots the other.
In a society with strong enforcement and incarceration (or some other form of vengeance), the assaulter will serve prison time or pay some meaningful penalty that will, in part, have a punitive aspect.
In a society without any punitive enforcement, it's quite likely that the victim or his friends or family will seek revenge, both for satisfaction of revenge and to deter future attacks.
You or I might not like it or agree with it - but this is actually what happens very frequently in neighborhoods without good police enforcement. The majority of murders in infamous neighborhoods in Chicago and other major cities are revenge driven. You can't wish that aspect of human nature away from all humans. But an actual solution is for the state to punish and enforce the assualters, thereby removing the hunger for revenge that the victim will have.
The rapper known as Takeoff, one-third of the group Migos, was shot and killed overnight outside a Houston bowling alley yesterday.
We can either prosecute and jail the perpetrator, or Takeoff's friends and family will take matters into their own hands. I know which path I prefer.
Because corruption is so rampant at the top of American society. Even ignoring Trump, insider trading, campaign finance violations, and "no fault" resolution to corporate malfeasance is endemic. Leadership matters and when you have a bipartisan commitment to elites filling their boots across government and business, you can't be surprised when there are problems elsewhere.
This is 100% true. Accountability culture has to start at the top.
The us is not a very corrupt society by objective measures in terms of international comparisons.
I agree with your comment (though I might quibble with "endemic"), so my observation below isn't in any way a disagreement with you.
It will be interesting to see how the Democratic Party deals with this. With the educational & professional sorting going on between the parties, the Democratic Party already has a majority of the people in professions where "insider trading, campaign finance violations and no-fault resolution to corporate malfeasance" happens. I'll be interested to see how the coalition of identity-groups, unions, teachers, Black people, leftists, idealists and upper class professionals will wrestle with these issues over time.
Well, I don’t speak for any of those, but I find Dems’ behaviour abhorrent and I suspect it’s a big part of why Republicans get away with their even worse outrages. If you claim democracy is under threat but aren’t worried enough about it to stop trading on information from congressional briefings, why should ordinary people act against their own perceived self interest.
“How dare you even bring it up when the other side is such a threat?” is doing the exact opposite of the work that some people seem to think it’s doing.
Now that I think about it, it is quite notable how much this defense failed to work for Al Franken but continues to succeed for Robert Menendez.
I honestly think it’s because ejecting Franken was a victory against sexism, which Democrats care passionately about, whereas Menendez would be a victory against corruption, which Democrats don’t care passionately about, and one might even suggest some in their coalition support.
“They are both corrupt so I might as well vote for the ones who will lower my taxes or crack down on the people I don’t like”
While I overall liked Obama I think this was his biggest miss. He had a real opportunity during the financial crisis to insist on more accountability in return for the bailouts and he just didn’t. They say you couldn’t have gotten convictions (probably true) but you could have gotten something like requiring all the leaders to be fired in return for the financial help and they just didn’t do it. (They DID do that with GM IIRC). Maybe it wouldn’t make much difference but it would have been a nice change in tone.
If they required firing the leaders, many banks wouldn't have taken the TARP money. The government believed it was important for the economy that ALL banks participated -- not just the most troubled -- so attaching too many conditions would have been counterproductive. That wasn't the case with GM.
Yep. Many banks didn’t even need the funds, but Paulson wanted every bank to take funds so that counterparties wouldn’t interpret some banks as being in a relatively weak position. That would certainly cause depositors (particularly institutions) to withdraw funds from perceived weak banks.
So TARP funding was structured on particularly favorable terms and Paulson/Bernanke promised them hell from their bank examiners if any bank refused the funds. The CEOs recognized the logic of collective action, saw the chance for cheap funding on good terms, and they all agreed.
The collapse of Lehman is insightful to what could’ve happened. Paulson tried to engineer some acquisitions, but CEO Dick Fuld kept pushing acquirers for better terms. He really lived up to his name! He waited too long and eventually only Barclays was still at the table.. Fuld reluctantly agreed to rough terms, but the British government blocked the deal; and for good reasons.
Many more vulnerable banks would’ve gone the way of Lehman if the Federal Gov attempted to push harsh terms for accepting TARP.
I would add that the Dodd-Frank financial regulations were perceived by the banks as their punishment. Particularly it decreased their return-on-equity; i.e., made the banks less profitable. That is a good thing because this was accomplished by constraining their ability to take on risk. High risk, higher reward.
Great comments. Substack should add a functioning like button.
And it is a shame they did not.
Wrong thought! Huge gobs of money should have been flooded into the banks but the shareholders of the most overleveraged should have gotten zeroed out, "pour encourager les autres "
Deferred prosecution agreements and consent decrees generally involve corporations handing over incredible amounts of money, and individual executives who get charged generally go to prison. Even if plea bargains were weak, federal judges are not bound by factual stipulations in plea bargains when sentencing because of the way that the Sentencing Guidelines system works.
Because caging human beings is bad, and decent people should weigh the harm of human caging against the benefits of increased order. Also, our society has shown a willingness to cage human beings, especially dark skinned and poor ones, for pretty trivial shit, so many are understandable leery of “lock em up” politics.
What about fines or community service, or loss of privilege in the case of driving or alcohol violations? Neither involves putting anyone in jail. Wouldn’t that be ok?
If fines come down to "legal for rich people" then you need some additional enforcement.
Obviously, for paying subway fares, fines are adequate: if some rich guy wants to pay $1000 twice a year when he's caught instead of $5 every time he rides the metro, then that's fine, he's just doing it expensively.
But when you actually want to stop people doing things, then you need either income-based fines (where rich people get million-dollar speeding fines, like in Switzerland) or you need to be prepared to escalate punishments if people repeatedly commit the same offence.
"Legal for rich people" is only less than half of it. They also become "legal for poor people" because people with no savings or bank account or steady job will just not pay. We don't put people in debtor's prisons and only repossess cars and assets if creditors are after them, so a drug dealer with cash assets won't be impacted either.
The UK doesn't have debtor's prisons either, but we do have imprisonment for non-payment of a fine.
We also have bailiffs who will seize any possessions they can find and sell them, but that's for debts, not for criminal penalties.
We probably should move to the bailiff system for many fines rather than imprisonment, though.
Better to extend it to everyone, at least as an option. If it's mandatory then it deters rich people, too.
And we already do this to some extent anyways. I once had to pick up and drop-off a friend who was doing community service with roadside trash due to a few DUIs. He was late 20's, no kids, working in VC/tech. Maybe not a millionaire, but not someone who would be easily deterred by $1,000 fine.
It is OK, and we already do all of that stuff to a significant degree. As one example, a friend of a friend has a clean criminal history except for multiple DUIs. After his first few he had to pay fines and do community services. At some point he was jailed for a month and then lost his license.
For most people, that would be enough deterrence, along with fines.
The tail end of the distribution causes a lot of the problems, though, and they seem less deterred by those things. Probably need incarceration to be an option at least.
Yes but if you increase arrests in DC today are people going to be doing more community service or more time. Unfortunately the system we have today probably means time.
That just kicks the can. A court orders conditions. A poor defendant who is barely keeping his head above water fails to comply. The decision of jail or tolerance still pops up, it’s just been deferred by the conditional probation
Caging is bad- why aren’t we doing more with ankle bracelets? We have the technology. You’re getting a time out- sentenced to being home for 30 days, maybe you are allowed to go to work too but no where else. Not even a grocery store.
Everyone here seems to be overweighing how bad "caging" is. The median inmate is on their 5th or 6th conviction and 11th or 12th arrest. Does that sound like someone who greatly fears incarceration?
Many, possibly most, convicts are safer locked up than they are outside. The homicide rate across detention centers in the US is around 5 or 6 per 100,000 annually, which is actually less than the homicide rate outside prison, and far, far less than the homicide rate for criminally active young men, which is likely north of 200 per 100,000.
And that's to say nothing of the safety benefits of incapacitation. If someone has been shooting people or molesting children, multiple times, what alternative is there?
Hang them.
Monitoring is hard, and it's also hard to verify whether it's being done, which is why there have been murders by people with monitoring anklets who were not where they were supposed to be. That doesn't mean we shouldn't use it or even expand it, but the vision of "you can go to work but not the grocery store" - we're not going to get 100% there, whereas we pretty much do get to 100% with 'people who are incarcerated are actually in jail."
“… maybe you are allowed to go to work too but no where else. Not even a grocery store”
How about the beach?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10897965/Fetty-Wap-flaunts-ankle-monitoring-bracelet-Miami-Beach-awaits-drug-trafficking-trial.html
Monitoring is hard because we make it hard. There could be a lightweight approach that simply tracks you everywhere and deters you from committing crimes because you’d be easy to find. No need to limit where you can go to.
I’d be down for more humane jails and prisons along with this. Like actually make a good faith attempt at reforming people so they can contribute to society.
How would that work? I ask because it's a very widely shared viewpoint that I'm sympathetic to, but also one where I seldom hear concrete ideas.
We have various work programs, education programs, etc. I should look into what limits their scale, but I suspect it's a combination of funding and inmate interest, neither or which is easy to increase.
No expert, but one can start with things like intensive therapy to help people get over whatever led them to a life of crime, a ton of drug addiction counseling, basic education on how to live a self-sufficient life, some strong lessons in morals (not from a religious standpoint, but from a more neutral "how to go about life not messing with others rights" standpoint)... that kind of thing.
If the inmate shows no interest, well, then you go in the old style lockup, which is far more unpleasant.
Something like that may be a motivator.
I'm all for those things, but they will all cost money and most of them are unproven. So until someone can demonstrate that they are working, at scale, they shouldn't be an excuse to not remove dangerous people from society until they are an acceptably low risk to others and themselves.
Why can’t we balance the two? Your argument is basically that criminals are and ought to be an out group so we should not worry about their suffering and should prioritize the in group of people who aren’t criminals.
My argument is that criminals are human beings with hopes and dreams and fears and that human suffering is bad no matter who does the suffering. The only reason to create human suffering is to avoid an even greater quantity. Accordingly, I want to know how much caging a given level of order will require.
If you're going to replace "imprisoning" with "human caging", you can also go ahead and replace "criminals" with "people who hurt others". While I agree that human suffering is bad, and that people who hurt others are still human, the idea behind imprisoning people who hurt others is that it *reduces* the total amount of human suffering, because prisons both deter and directly stop (through caging) people who want to hurt others.
Deterrence is the goal. Whether a given system deters is an empirical question. Why oh why are all y’all smart folks substituting normative bromides for empirical rigor?
Getting the criminally inclined off the streets is another goal.
All evidence shows that recidivism rates for most prisoners upon release are extremely high, over 50%+ through periods as short as 3 years, depending on the crime.
Add to that the fact that the median incarcerated offender has been convicted 4 or 5 prior times and arrested double that (to say nothing of crimes for which they were not caught) and it's reasonable to assume that we don't have enough deterrence.
We do balance the two! Crimes are specified and enumerated, have to be proved, and carry specific limited penalties. You don’t label someone a menace to society based on vibes alone and throw away the key, but you do lock them up proportional to what they’ve actually done.
Fines are a good starting point, but including community service and some kind of public shaming in the escalation tree is probably a good idea.
And as Matt as pointed out many times before, increased probability of detection and punishment needs to be included, along with escalating severity.
Incarceration needs to be in the mix, to prevent abuse by the people who have almost nothing else to lose besides their freedom...but it should probably be the last resort when all else has failed.
I know people who regularly pay over $500 a month in tolls and consider it well worth it to get there faster. For that person, a $5 parking ticket would essentially be considered a toll they would happily pay. Depending on the situation, they might look at a $100 parking ticket that way.
I do like your idea to scale them though. Perhaps after the first five, you have to show up and provide your last year's tax return and the penalty will be set at .25% of your income. ($100 for 40k, $250 for 100k, $1250 for 500k, etc.)
Agreed. Deterrence = severity x probability.*
If we triple probability, then the initial severity probably needs to be reduced.
Unless you want to dramatically increase deterrence.
* Really it is perceived severity x perceived probability, but that's a whole separate discussion.
Deterrence = 0.05*severity + 0.7*probability + 0.25*promptness
deterrence=log(severity)* probability. criminals tend to be impulsive and do discount future punishments heavily
I don't think reckless driving, road rage, and tax evasion would be on anyone's no-enforcement list, although the right wants to make tax enforcement difficult unless you are an EITC recipient.
let's add:
work place safety
environmental rules (granted, that's littering i a wider sense!)
The prison sentence for littering happens when you dump toxic waste into someone's water supply. Or a few days in the clink on, say, the 25th documented time after many warnings.
Of course there should be proportionality.
"Improper disposal of toxic waste is its own crime but also, in my view, should not be punished with prison."
Why?!?
Because he's a troll, lol.
Ah- so you think we should alternate between caning them and dipping them in the toxic waste until we're satisfied they will never do it again and will instead dedicate their lives to providing restitution for their crime.
Cool, cool - I'm down with that approach.
Lol.
Further proof that modernity has allowed too many people to outsource the job of the state monopolizing violence too far from themselves, and it has made them profoundly stupid on the topic.
Banned for obvious reasons. You could at least try civility.
I want to superlike(tm) this post. It’s astonishing to me that so many self-proclaimed urbanists advocate for free fares (and various types of non-enforcement). As I’ve described in various comment threads, I love city living, but there’s a point of chaos beyond which even I will decide to leave. If I had kids I’d probably be gone. If you want to set cities back to a 1970s situation, this is the best strategy. There should be rules, they should apply to everyone, and they should be enforced.
In NYC the total lack of traffic enforcement, public drug use (not talking about smoking weed, which is legal, but I don’t love that you can get a contact high just by being outside), large population of aggressive homeless people, and general trashiness is really discouraging. I would feel somewhat less bad about it if I had any confidence in the local government, but I have none.
I’m a city planner but I sidled into the profession and did my master’s program less than a decade ago. I was shocked even then at the degree to which my much younger classmates romanticized the “gritty and authentic” city of the 70s. Unlike them, I was alive then, and many of my friends’ parents wouldn’t set foot in Detroit. There are worse things for cities than chain stores, clean streets, and uncool tourists.
Yea, if Philly approaches the situation that it was in prior to 2000 in terms of crime and (un-) livability, I'm out too. As are most of the folks who make up the new tax base that's allowing us to tackle some of the problems the poor face here.
It's so ironic!
I believe that the worldview of people promoting stuff like this is incredibly babyish. There's no accounting for how a transit system or a city actually functions, or how people not besotted by ideology actually think and act.
I'm not sure whether ebike anarchy is a thing in Philly, but it definitely is here - one of my colleagues was hit by one a couple of weeks ago while in the field collecting data. When I was still working for the city, I had to sit through a presentation by DOT about their grant-funded program to "educate" delivery people about the rules of the road, as if somehow they are unable to understand one-way arrows, traffic lights, and the nature of sidewalks v streets. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think George W Bush had it right about the "soft bigotry of low expectations" (per the comment above in the thread). The left seems to view wide swaths of people as having no agency, which is, IMO, extremely condescending.
Obviously the problem is that the level of services a city can afford is in any way related to its catering to bourgeois sensibilities.
I think you should not expect to convince leftists to endorse policies they otherwise find unjust because of practical reasons like "it will alienate the rich and the tax money will flee." It merely reinforces their underlying commitment that the influence of the rich is the root of the problem.
The preference for "nice" neighborhoods is one revealed through personal moving and spending decisions - which are, to put it lightly, not a source of moral authority in the leftist worldview. When left activist coalitions win elections, they choose de-policing, and that IS a source of moral authority in their view.
Oh yeah, n of 2 but my house in the Portland 'burbs gained a ton of value since 2020 and a friend's condo in downtown lost value and was hard to sell when they had to move for work.
Values for single-family houses in the less-dense parts of the city have held up but downtown is just a wasteland at this point. The benefits of being downtown -- proximity to offices and nightlife -- were totally hollowed out by 2020's Covid + riots combo. Even if and when it's cleaned up, something will have to replace the offices and the restaurants that used to serve them.
The urban decay of the mid-to-late 20th century was the result of a series of deliberate policy choices and social trends, and yet the tropes associated with urban decay became so culturally pervasive that I think a lot of younger people like the ones you're describing intuitively think of that as the "natural" state of cities. They seem to treat minorities trapped in poor urban neighborhoods like they are indigenous tribes in their "natural" habitat, and then proceed to play-act the Ferngully/Avatar plot in their head in order to try and prevent "habitat destruction".
Sounds about right, lol.
I just saw a hoard of pigeons descend upon a bunch of ripped garbage bags this morning in Manhattan. Greatest City in the World (tm).
Username checks out on multiple levels.
I’ll take the pigeons over the disorderly and antisocial humans any day of the week.
I moved to New York in 1977. I was 25 and it was paradise, Studio 54, CBGB's. What not to like. I don't know what level of chaos you like but I'd guess my level is higher than yours. Why I still like it and have lived here ever since, except for a year in Florence, which was great, and five years in Dallas, which was a hellscape of boredom and bad climate.
NYC's population declined by 10% in the 70s. No other decade in NYC history had a population decline. Most people dislike crime immensely.
You definitely seem to have a higher lever of tolerance for chaos than the average person. Which is perfectly fine, you just need to be aware of it.
Uncool tourists are great because they improve the delta of the local cool population. In this essay I will....
I am not so sure that this is true. My experience of New York in 1990s was that there was plenty of disorderly conduct on the subway even with rigorous fare enforcement.
It was only after violent crime got way lower that resources were freed up to do more about subway behavior.
I'd like to see enforcement similar to what motorists deal with.
That's why I think decriminalizing fare evasion was good - I don't get arrested if I park illegally in a metered space without paying.
People point to the lost revenue from fare evasion, which is significant, but compare it to about $500m in unpaid motorist fines.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/transportation/drivers-owe-dc-nearly-half-a-billion-bucks-in-unpaid-tickets/2842158/
So I'd like to see improved WMATA enforcement, but let's make sure we are also improving enforcement against motorists.
My concern lately has been with "ghost vehicles" - drivers with fake tags rack up tickets with no fear about meaningful enforcement.
NYC has recently cracked down on this but DC has not: https://www.police1.com/patrol-issues/articles/nyc-sheriffs-office-nypd-seizes-54-ghost-cars-with-fake-paper-license-plates-Q9UJQSBRClFlmbRS/
The MTA cops handed over the subway to the NYPD in 1994. Maybe that had an effect.
Starting in the pandemic and until about 6 months ago, it was pretty common for people to smoke fentanyl on Seattle’s trains and busses. The people who were smoking fentanyl almost never paid fares. A number of things have happened in the past six months to decrease that behavior but one factor seems to have been more bus drivers refusing to let people on without paying because they know that they can call someone to enforce it if it gets dicey
I think people advocating these policies sincerely believe that rolling back gentrification would be morally valuable.
I've been transit-dependent (albeit with the disposable income and flexibility to avoid it in certain circumstances) for about 15 years in a medium-sized Midwestern city (Minneapolis) with a reasonably useful transit system. This is really one of those situations where "what is going on out there" wildly diverges from what people on the computer think is going on. I continued taking transit occasionally throughout the pandemic, but went back to (night) school this fall, taking the train back from St. Paul at night, and there's pretty regularly some kind of scene*.
The situation on the trains started to deteriorate, pre-pandemic, when the usual suspects (Twitter users with cartoon avatars) started complaining about fare enforcement on the trains maybe six or seven years ago? People did not smoke crack on the trains in the middle of the day ten years ago. People are currently smoking crack in the middle of the day on the trains.
This isn't rocket science. We don't need to hire teams of consultants with master's degrees to get to the bottom of why people are smoking on the trains. People are behaving antisocially on the train because there are no consequences for behaving antisocially on the train. Tossing the people who aren't paying fares off of the trains would be a very straightforward way of improving conditions on the trains and making them usable. The trend in some circles towards ruining the few usable, high-quality public services we have in this country in order to make a point about the lack of other, different public services does not make the case activists think it does.
--
*Why don't I just ignore it? It's not bothering me personally, is it? Putting aside the easy joke that the same people who were losing their minds about microaggressions six years ago are now asking people to ignore considerably more macro aggressions, it's repeatedly been the case that when someone is blasted and laying on the floor yelling obscenities at people, someone less enlightened than me (i.e. also blasted) takes matters into their own hands and escalates the situation into a fight.
*Why don't I just ignore it? It's not bothering me personally, is it?
I think it's very fair to be bothered and people who would just you for being bothered are the real jerks. Especially because, if it bothers you (I'm assuming you're a young or middle-aged male) it only takes a little imagination to guess that it might really bother more vulnerable and defenseless people like children, women, the elderly, etc.
The leftist view is that particular norms are merely instruments by which one group dominates another. Raising the salience of microaggressions is good because historically powerful groups commit them a lot & their members can be brought low when called out. Lowering the salience of fare evasion is good because the people being punished for it are already marginalized.
I think the frame is flawed, but it’s perfectly consistent.
This reminds me of the supreme court case(s?) on affirmative action which I stumbled across on Youtube last night. I was watching a bunch of excerpts and it was interesting how much the conservative judges were using pieces of logic that I normally see from the left and applied to attack apparent discrimination from businesses and / or society at large. The reason was that they are on the "side" of being against Academia, just like the leftists are on the "side" of the marginalized.
To expain, Harvard / UNC have to "discriminate" in some subjective ways to select a student pool. They don't want to rely ONLY on SATs or a formula or some quota system. So whether they are allowed to use race or not, they are always going to end up with a student body that is not perfectly aligned with whatever ideal anyone could put forth. And the subjective element will always push the percentages around in some racially non-equal ways, whether by intent or not.
This is the same argument that businesses use to defend their hiring or credit or insurance practices. They want to use race-neutral decisions, but it's not always that simple. For example, zip codes are quite predictive of certain things, like automobile accidents, so car insurance providers want to use zip code to set prices. But clearly zip code align with race, so there's no truly easy answer.
The right-wing is usually arguing that the businesses should be able to use whatever data helps them achieve their objectives without worrying quite so much about racial discrimination. But in this case the left was using those arguments and the right was using the other sides' rhetorical toolkit. It was strange, even a bit unsettling.
At the end of the day these discrimination decisions come down to "who do you trust" and "what are the potential costs" Do you trust businesses to do business in a way that is racially "fair" whatever you think that looks like. If you do, you let them use zip codes to set prices, b/c after all that really is colorblind and they're out to make a buck, not oppress people racially. But if you don't, you restrict their toolkit so that few if any minorities are ever badly priced based simply on where they live (but it's still ok if white people are badly priced based on where they live).
> recent fad against enforcement of any kind of rules
I believe this is a result of a substantial antiestablishment, possibly even antisocial, mindset among some of the loudest “leftish” figures. For a particularly disgusting recent example that Yglesias highlighted see, https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1587078093147185159
I’d normally quote the text here so people don’t need to visit the tweet, but it’s too vile.
Note it’s a Chapo so they’re not representative of any actual professional activists.
Yet I think it is just an extreme example of the mindset. The Chapos and similar personalities popularized the “dirtbag left” worldview. This attracted a lot of people with this personality disposition to the left.
And much of this vision gets sanewashed into a social justice message where the enforcement of any rules is seen as having a negative impact on marginalized groups. But I believe antiestablishment is the starting point, not any sort of rational analysis of policies.
I mean, tell me the "dirtbag left" will in any way still be on the left in 10 years.
I think one of the consequences of the fact that Bernie ran in 2016 as more of a "protest" candidacy, as opposed to a candidacy with real aspirations to become President is that it ended up attracting some pretty fringy people, not just as supporters but as actual advisors or people high up in the campaign.
Point being is that I suspect you're right and you'll see a lot more people associated with Bernie go down the Glen Greenwald road.
I always thought they were just extensions of the FSB and GRU... considering how much they love RT and Sputnik talking points.
I don't understand the link between the tweet and not enforcing the law against attempted murder. Saying that a criminal is so ridiculous that you have to laugh is not saying that they should not be punished.
Only skimmed this because I find it absurd that a whole piece must be written to justify what I consider a total non brainer. I do have an observation though: ignoring fare skipping in the system as it is now is essentially a “might makes right” mentality. It privileges the physical superiority of fit able bodied young people who can jump over the turnslides or what have you, at the expense of the elderly , disabled etc who need the public transit system most , must pay and thus pick up the bill and pay more as fares inevitably rise. This is very similar to the idea of non enforcement at the border, which privileges the same kinds of people , and means e.g. Mexicans waiting to come legally based on sponsorship now have a waiting list of about 20 years- essentially they are being shoved to the back of the line by brute force. I can’t think of anything more antithetical to the values of the left than supporting this kind of raw unfairness.
New, cursed disability justice take dropping in 3.. 2…
You don't have to jump over. You can also slip through. On the way out, you can exit through the exit gate. It's really not just able-bodied young people. If you're actually in a wheelchair it's probably going to be difficult. But in general, they've made it pretty easy for people of varying physical capabilities.
It might be easier in DC compared to NY but the point stands. Anecdotally how many elderly have you seen do this ? It generally favors reckless young people. Older people are far less likely to try to squeeze in (and risk injury/fall/being yelled at) a pregnant woman might be more hesitant , and some people are actually in a wheel chair …
I have not seen very many elderly people do this. I think they are probably more law-abiding in general. But if you try to slip through in DC, I don't think you will fall, you will just not make it, and you definitely will not get yelled at. There are certainly some people who are physically not going to be able to do this, but I do not think it is a high proportion. And if it were made easier to fare evade by that group of people, I do not think that this would be a better policy.
Your rejoinder is quantitative not qualitative. My point stands. Lack of enforcement punishes the physically weaker and the conscientious and rewards the unscrupulous who are able and willing to use force to achieve their ends. This is a perversion of justice par excellence. The left ought to have been sensitive precisely to these kinds of systemic wrongs.
It's not punishment that you follow the law. If this were the real issue, we could just make fare jumping easier for the disabled and elderly. Would that be better? Would that be a better state of the world? The problem here is the fare jumping, and everything that goes along with it, not that fare jumping excludes certain populations by virtue of their physical abilities. Is not a systemic wrong that people in wheelchairs are excluded from breaking this law.
Lawless situations create a might makes right reality , in which all lose but the most vulnerable lose the most. This is but one small example.
Good point! I hadn’t thought of this issue that way but it makes sense.
As a DC resident I am 100% behind this sentiment. Every time is see someone jump the turnstile I feel a bit of resentment. I don't think we should get rid of the turnstiles though and switch to a pure random inspection bit. A hybrid approach is better.
I want to love anything with the intensity and purity with which Matt loves metro transit systems.
Your bio: "Curious person, finder of talent for interactive media and still unsure how to use comma’s correctly." Add a comma after "media," and check out the rules on apostrophes.
There are rules for apostrophes? Good lord.
There were, but everyone stopped enforcing them because they’re afraid of people on Twitter. Do what thou wilt with your apostrophes.
Ah, another Oxford comma fan, I see. 😄
I'm an open-minded guy, but on this, I do not acknowledge a contrary viewpoint. I love commas almost as much as the New Yorker does.
Laws and rules are meaningless without enforcement. Laws and rules with selective enforcement invite corruption. When people don't respect laws and rules, or decide they should decide for themselves whether or not to comply without any consequence, society breaks down.
Last night I took BART for the first time in a while. Despite numerous signs telling people not to bring bicycles on the escalators (you should use the elevator), two young men dragged their bikes up the escalator.
Exiting, a young man in front of me vaulted over the fare gate rather than pay. He did this 5 feet away from not one but TWO station agents, one of whom was outside the booth. Neither of them batted an eye or otherwise acknowledged the fare evader.
It made me wonder what we pay those two people for, why I bother to pay for BART, and why we have rules or laws at all anymore.
Transit systems cannot and should not be free. "What is free has no value". And "free" just means everyone else is paying for it.
I've been fare-checked in Europe a few times -- I think Paris and Prague -- and recall the checkers being armed. As much as I like the idea of non-armed civilian enforcement, we are sadly a gun society with more guns than people.
FWIW, in the UK the guys who check your train tickets are definitely not armed.
I think they have a turnstile system for the Tube and the Overground, but maybe on other trains. Boston commuter rail has the guy who comes around too, although he/she is collecting from everyone and it's not a spot-check. I see people say London cops do not have guns, which is mostly true .. except for the ones who do and are heavily armed, mostly in more sensitive places.
Depends where and how busy the service is - they have spot checks in some places, turnstiles in others, both in yet others. On longer distance trains, the guard checks every ticket - not a "spot" check, but a universal one.
As for guns: regular UK cops do not have guns. Armed police do, but they aren't like "normal" police at all; they are heavily armed (usually with a select-fire submachine gun or an assault rifle; the MP5 and MP7 are popular SMGs, the G36 is the main assault rifle; some marksman/sniper rifles are also used), and they are generally only deployed in a small number of very sensitive locations (e.g. Parliament, Number 10, the royal palaces, airports), plus in Armed Response Vehicles (ARVs, you will see these driving around from time to time). They can be put out on street patrol when there are particularly high tensions (e.g. in the aftermath of a terrorist incident). They also have a very high level of training and are required to reach high marksmanship standards (and pass a host of psychological tests).
Regular police used to be able to get authorisation to draw guns from the police armouries, but that hasn't been the case since the 1980s, and police with (non-concealed) handguns are unusual in Great Britain now. Northern Ireland police are routinely armed and do carry holstered handguns (Glock 17 is the standard issue).
Some detectives carry concealed handguns, as do the close protection teams of the two police bodyguard units (SEG and DSG).
They're still using MP5s?? Damn, respect. I love that gun, I just think of it as being a very 80s thing
The bigger forces have mostly moved to MP7s or G36s - when there were armed police on the streets of Manchester after the Ariana Grande concert was bombed, they were all G36s (and these are the military select-fire version, not a civilianised semi-auto), which are really quite impressive when there are a few hundred people openly carrying them in a city where you rarely see anything bar the occasional illegal handgun (there are quite a lot of illegal handguns held by criminals, but there is a serious shortage of ammo - handguns are always illegal and therefore most handgun ammo is as well; a few thousand rounds of 9mm Parabellum would make you very rich indeed if you had the right contacts)
For national rail (i.e. outside of London) they actually have both turnstiles and spot checking.
It has been a while since I rode Boston transit. All I remember is how gross it was and we had one of those cards we had to wave a transit employee down for.
So many different human fluids.... gah
I got to experience a fare-check on the Paris Metro about 5 years ago and it was insane -- literally a dozen or more inspectors got on at once and swept the train like it was a military operation (and my recollection is that you're correct and at least part of them were armed).
In Denmark transit staff would get on the bus (unarmed), and then fine the college students who chose not to pay.
For good and bad, the US culture is not the same as the Danish culture.
Oh, I would say Danish culture has some very odd similarities to American culture and all want to be Americans.
That and they are all a bunch of neoliberal Reaganites 20 years behind the times. It is nothing like what US college students say it is like.
The description of Danes as "a bunch of neoliberal Reaganites" is the good part. 😀
The gun thing is a great point—i would say that sad fact argues in favor of turnstiles to avoid subjecting unarmed employees to dangerous situations, with actual police occasionally posted near turnstiles, or more use of video evidence as Matt proposes.
The reason transit employees don't enforce rules (like the case of the people drinking on NJ transit) is because it is not safe for them to do so. In DC the city council neutered punishments for fair evasion (a minor fine and no penalty for non-payment/no-show to court).
You’re allowed to drink on NJ Transit trains, but you have to do it with a paper bag and a straw.
Right, I’m wondering what the spot check enforcement would actually look like in practice. A ticket? No ID. I agree fares need to be enforced, but it seems like there would have to be non trivial amounts of arrests on the train to actually get folks to pay or be punished. Hopping turnstiles at least seems like a more ‘affirmative’ action that could be acted on.
I support lax enforcement of some minor offenses, and reduced sentences overall, but agree there are minor offenses that should be targeted. They do not have to always be *criminal* -- they can be civil offenses or just a good talking to or talking to parents/family. Two categories, arguably versions of one, that I came up with where there should be some enforcement are offenses that make others:
1. feel like chumps
2. feel bad about their safety/surroundings
Fare evaders are in #1 and to a lesser extent #2: people see fare evaders and feel like chumps for paying. Public urination is #2, or blatant littering. The littering is the kind of thing that also leads to more of the same -- this is the *real* broken windows metaphor.
I would suggest that drinking a beer after dark in a public park (as Matt says he was caught doing and had to go to court for) would not be included and is more of an offense where you dump the beer and get a talking-to and if young enough, the parents are notified. Ignore selling loosies, or subtly drinking from a paper bag (see the great speech in Season 3 of The Wire about this), or other out-of-view minor offenses.
How does "selling loosies" not fall right under your category one? Does that not make people feel like chumps for paying for fully taxed smokes? With said tax being an important revenue generator and a powerful public health incentive?
My assumption -- admittedly not from experience -- is that most loosies have been taxed. People buy a pack for $8 ($0.40/cigarette) and then sell the loosies for a markup to people who might not have enough money to buy a whole pack, or who only want 2-3 cigs rather than a whole pack.
My understanding is that most of them are either purchased in a state with lower taxes than the final market or they may have simply "fallen off of a truck" at some point in the supply chain.
Even so, I'd be really surprised if it's profitable to then sell them loose at a unit price lower than that of a pack. There's so much friction in that "supply chain" that costs must mount rapidly unless someone literally did the pushing off the truck themselves before selling loosies.
Back in the day there were a lot of VCRs, and later DVD players, that fell off trucks in NYC. You’d think that would be more of a problem than cigarettes because of the general fragility of fine Japanese consumer electronics. But the packaging of home video components was made of sterner stuff than one might expect, and there was never so much as a scratch or dent in any of the boxes.
Loosies in NYC are often purchased in Delaware: low cigarette taxes; no sales tax; and it’s an easy day trip across the GWB or Goethals, and down the NJ Turnpike. There are a number of cigarette outlets within a few minutes of the bridge across the Delaware River that cater to out-of-state entrepreneurs.
Even if they are bootlegged from NC, the connection is too remote. I think most people would say there goes a guy so cash poor he's overpaying for a smoke. Now if the public thinks he's selling something harder and out in the open, it's more like my #2.
The convenience store owner trying to sell legitimately in neighborhoods where this practice is endemic would disagree.
Many (most?) convenience store* owners sell loosies at the counter. You have to ask.
.
*Bodegas.
Sometimes they are stolen, but generally they are smuggled in from lower-tax jurisdictions. So it most closely resembles tax evasion, which is squarely in category #1: "makes others feel like chumps".
It's been really bananas in DC watching fare evasion go from being an occasional thing concentrated among young men to a common event among people of all genders and ages and (I'm guessing) employment statuses. Also, it is going to be Metro Police enforcing this, at least to start with, and that seems like a good thing -- one can think that other metro workers should be willing to put themselves in potentially violent confrontations, or not, but many of them simply are not going to, and I do not think WMATA is going to make them.
Agree completely. Happens all the time now and the WMATA employees just kinda sit there and it’s so weird
I have always felt one should pay something - even nomimal - to remind yourself "this service has value" And yes I want to pay becayse I want *more* service - like a DC metro that runs more than once every 30 minutes (or whatever the very slow train arriving service is but it is too damned long)
The real culprit is Slow Boring - they have failed to do a leveraged buyout of a mass transit system and fix it up.
Aren't we all on the Slow Boring train already?
We are, but when I recently took Amtrak, someone boarded with a pile of sweet smelling tamales and I had to curse Slow Boring Dining Experience, Ltd. for not upgrading our experience.
I still recall my annoyance at WMTA for changing my great bus route into town and making me go the Pentagon to transfer to the train. The result was I switched to a car pool with net decrease in public transit use. Trains can have value in promoting high density development in the long run but often they are not the best alternative to reducing vehicle congestion.
How do you pay to take the train in DC? In Stockholm, I just tap my credit card against the panel. It’s all one zone. Paying is far easier than cheating.
If I had to navigate some gross looking machine with a confusing ux (after standing in line to use it) like I did in Vancouver many years ago, I would take cabs a lot more often.
Making it seamless and easy to do the right thing is an under-rated tool for achieving high rates of compliance.
Using public transportation in Stockholm was amazingly easy.
In DC, you put money on a card and then tap it in and out at the gates and the appropriate amount is deducted according to the distance and time of day. It's not too bad as long as you don't waste time trying to pre-determine the exact amount (speaking as an occasional visitor).
The core question is how many man-years of incarceration is a given increase in “order” worth. Commenters rarely confront that question. Is avoiding one murder worth 50 additional years of prison? 100? 500? How many years of human caging would you tolerate to reduce retail theft by $100,000?
Smart people often use their intelligence to evade the fact that incarceration is awful. Saying “enforcing rules is good” is an evasion. It implies that the consequences visited upon the rule breaker somehow don’t matter because rules are good and the criminal “deserves it.” This is basically magical thinking. No deontological moral theory will tell you whether the penalty for fare evasion should be jail or community service. Sensible thinking means weighing consequences.
No matter how vile the criminal act, incarceration degrades inmate and jailer alike. Prison guards have low life expectancies, sky high morbidity rates and staggering levels of stress. Jails and prisons are factories of human misery, and I want fewer of them.
So, gentle reader tell me this. How many years of prison time for illegal gun possession would you tolerate to prevent one murder? How many years to collect an extra $100,000 in fares?
Easy answer for me: Between 3 and 10 years for the illegal gun possession. Fare evasion should start with civil penalties (fines), and progress to jail time if fines aren't paid or if they accumulate.
I don't share your aversion to incarceration, though I do believe we in the US underinvest in prison facilities and their officers.
Yea, I live in a place with actual gun crime, as opposed to exurban Atlanta.
David is entitled to make whatever calculus he wants. But mine is different, and there's no objective moral principle that indicates one or the other despite his pretentions thereto.
Shouldn’t your answer depend upon how many illegal gun possessors you have to cage to prevent a shooting/murder?
The more I cage, the fewer I will need to cage. Punishment for the guilty should be sure, swift and humane.
I’m literally in court right now about to enter a guilty plea for an offense a client committed on 5/17/20. It’s easy to say justice should be swift. Where is the condition to hire the judges and prosecutors and public defenders to do that?
I think everyone, on all sides of this debate, supports swift. It's a question of prioritization and funding, but also of crime levels. If John is correct and his approach would reduce crime, swift will be a side effect.
The question was about incarcerating people who are carrying illegal guns. Not quite sure why you think that means "everyone"?
The penalty for unlawful possession of an unregistered firearm in Washington D.C. is up to one year in jail and a $1000 fine for a first offense, which if anything seems rather lenient given that one generally carries unregistered guns because they are likely to shoot someone. The penalty for turnstile jumping in D.C. is a $300 fine and up to ten days in jail, which also seems more than reasonable given the burdens this conduct places on society. If someone does not want to incur these penalties might I suggest that they simply, you know, not commit these crimes. Not committing crimes is extremely easy, normal people do it every day.
That one year sentence is only applicable if the possession is in the violator's home or business. If you're caught in elsewhere, the punishment is five years, and more with prior felony convictions (see § 22–4504(a)(1)).
From the WaPo's reporting, it seems the problem is some combination of
1) Police not arresting those with possession;
2) Poor quality of admissible evidence when violators are arrested;
3) Prosecutorial discretion exercised to drop gun possession cases.
Hard to tell how much of each is responsible. For example, are the cases dropped because the evidence really is so bad or inadmissible? Do police stop arresting violators because they know/suspect the case will be dropped regardless?
Probably it's all of the above in a really bad reinforcing cycle.
Sorry, what’s the alternative to incarceration? Public flogging ? Cutting the hand off thieves ? Castrating rapists ? Executions for half of the crimes out there (with rising degrees of cruelty of method congruent with the severity of the crime)? Because that’s more or less where we were before incarceration. I note that Americans , like all of us, like their extreme pendulum swings. In the us it’s somehow revolving around prisons. In the 90s you decided on the insanity of eg life sentencing for committing any 3 crimes regardless of what they were, and judging juveniles like adults (I hear that still happens). Now you’re swinging the other way and suggesting the most progressive form of punishment humanity has devised thus far (yes!) must be abolished altogether - but without offering a shred of an alternative. Why this insistence to jump from one edge of insanity straight to the other? Keep calm and reform your criminal law to be more like that of other western countries.
P.S.
While you’re at it, de-politicize the roles of public prosecutors. Of course if they have to stand for elections they’re going to be loony one way or the other rather than professionals like in the rest of the world.
The real alternative is hiring more cops to prevent crime. Unfortunately I suspect we’re headed for a repeat of the 80s where we don’t hire cops and instead throw a bunch of people in prison while crime continues to rise.
I’d give many things to get the 90s Clinton Democrats and 90s Joe Biden back. Hell even super predators are probably a basically accurate description of how crime works (a tiny percent of people commit a high proportion of the crime)
The pendulum hasn’t really swung that far. US Incarceration is only down by 5-10% and is still many times higher than in the UK or Canada.
And we've seen a larger increase in all categories of avoidable deaths from homicide to drug overdose to car accident. According to the CDC (wonder database, google it) the above all jumped in May of 2020 and hadn't decreased by the end of that year. And the % increases in deaths were biggest in populations that correlate with prison populations and police attention: young, black, male. All 3 categories had the biggest increases in deaths single, but especially in combination.
To give you an empirical and concrete example:
2020 saw an increase in non-disease mortality of 10 per 100k for non-hispanic white males aged 14-24. The increase for non-hispanic black males was 58 per 100k, a 60% increase in non-disease mortality! Contrast that with Asian females, and the increase was only 0.1 per 100k.
Something caused a lot more people to die in traffic accidents, murders and overdoses in 2020, beginning in May 2020. That thing impact young, black, males the most and older, non-black females the least. I don't know what it was exactly, the pullback in incarceration is a very reasonable and empirical hypothesis.
Fines and community service are not a suitable punishment for murderers, rapists, and other people who show callous disregard for others.
I would add serious white collar crimes and, in short , most crimes currently carrying prison sentences …
But that's just tn, the sociology and psychology behind this are extremely well-understood: If I significantly increase the chance of getting caught and punished for a given offense, I can make the punishment more mild, not less.
The only practical way to get to a world in which *fewer* people are incarcerated is to hammer through the skulls of even those with the least self-control and strongest time preferences, that there is no world in which the stupid, illegal thing they're about to do is going to pay off.
Wide-ranging enforcement coupled with an effective, *quick* legal system is the objectively correct answer to both the problems of crime and the problems of mass incarceration. It is the reality of Europe, to which the progressives point. It's the reality of much of East Asia, to which conservatives do. It's the reality that prevailed in the US for a brief golden era between 1940 and 1960, and it works!
> It's the reality that prevailed in the US for a brief golden era between 1940 and 1960
Is it, actually?
Have you, or anyone you care about, ever been the victim of a violent crime? Or is crime merely an abstraction to you?
One of the points that Matt makes well in this piece, is that enforcing rules and laws has a direct effect on the people who are caught in the act, yes. But it also has an indirect (and larger) effect on the decision calculus of others who might or might not choose to break the rule or law in the future.
Hypothetically, I rob someone at gunpoint. I am arrested and convicted. But, since incarceration is so dehumanizing, I don’t go to prison. I reflect on what’s happened. My friends and acquaintances see what happened to me.
What is the likely result, on net…more dehumanization or less dehumanization, going forward?
Thats not what David is saying. There are costs and benefits to locking people up, and people generally underweight the cost. If we lock people up, there should be good reasons for doing so. On the current margin, maybe the guy who had an unregistered gun on him a few weeks ago should be held, but not 6 months ago.
The thing is I think people actually overweight the cost and underweight the benefits. If the median criminal really feared the costs of being locked up they wouldn't be rearrested and reoffend so frequently. The median prisoner has 4-6 prior convictions and double that number of arrests. And death rates for prisoners are much, much lower than their comparable cohorts outside of prison from murder, traffic accidents and drug overdoses
And that's all without taking into account the public safety benefits of holding a criminally violent or larcenous person out of society for a period of time.
"The thing is I think people actually overweight the cost and underweight the benefits."
I think people realize that going to prison is actually pretty terrible. There might be people whose lives outside of prison aren't better, just like being caught in a bear trap isn't as bad as being tortured by the inquisition. But let's not pretend that makes prison a nice place to be.
Speaking only for myself I never said it was nice.
But the argument coming the other way goes something like: "going to prison ruins people's lives" or "is the worst thing that could ever happen to them". You can find versions of it in this thread and elsewhere in this comment section. That's where I'm trying to push back.
If it was so bad for them compared to other options, people would do more to avoid it and recidivism would be a lot lower. Just in my personal experience, I know several fellow graduates of my elite technical school (Caltech) who were busted for DUI. Some took steps to make sure it never happened again, 1 only did that after his first night in jail, 1 died in a DUI accident and 1 went to jail for a month but was un-phased by the experience and still probably DUIs. It's bad but it's not as bad as people are making it out to be.
There is a substantive difference in experience between spending 1-3 nights in jail and going to prison for a year+ of your life. The consequences post incarceration are also dramatically different. People with a DUI are *generally* not significantly impacted in their careers, while being in prison for 18 months for stealing a car will get you excluded from a large number of jobs.
You ignore one key fact. The cost of incarceration falls on the criminal, the cost of of murder falls on the crime victim.
So, I would impose several lifetimes of prison on the guilty, if I could prevent one murder of an innocent.
You’ve raised the good old at what point do utilitarian considerations come into effect question. 
That's just flat wrong. Criminals in the US generally have their basic needs met: food, clothing, shelter. If it was all about needs we'd expect the vast homeless camps in West Coast cities to be the most violent places in America, but they are not. Or we'd expect India to have higher violent crime rates than America, which it does not. Or we'd expect the poorest cities in America to be the most violent, which is not really true either - El Paso is the poorest very large city in American and also nearly our safest.
So fix them?
Saying "prisons suck so we can't incarcerate people" is literally insane. It will disproportionately destroy the lives of the most vulnerable of law-abiding citizens, in every instance.
Lol.
Good, we agree.
My threshold for "have no other option but to incarcerate" is "this individual has threatened or used violence against anyone, repeatedly failed to reform behavior that puts others at risk, or caused large-scale damage to others' or public property."
And we only sometimes incarcerate by that standard.
Property and life aren't so easily separable.
What you rather deter 1 murder or 10 (unoccupied) hospitals being blown up?
It is PUNISHMENT within reason your suffering is a feature not a bug.
To the concept of punishment ? Yeah, that will fly well in never never land
What is the other option that we are not currently using?
I bet 90%+ of the people here, including myself, would like to fund programs like those more, particularly if we can demonstrate that they work.
But there isn't strong evidence that we know how to do those things in ways that reduce crime, especially at scale. We really don't. Instead we get vague hand-waving to Scandinavia, which is about as convincing for me Frigid's handwaving to Singapore probably is for you.
If you can show me those things working, I'll get excited about them. But in the meantime, until they're working and funded, we have to punish people that are assaulting, robbing, molesting, raping and shooting at other people.
If a loved on of your becomes a victim of violent crime, are you going to tell them "it's going to be OK, vote progressive and in 10 years these problems will go away". Or are you going to call the police and press charges?
I can’t really think of anything to say other than “lol.”
That does not at all answer the question.
What if they steal or fight because they enjoy it? If someone comes to your house and starts breaking stuff because they enjoy breaking stuff, are you going to value their freedom over your property?
What if they don't want to go to rehab - are you going to forcefully institutionalize them and for how long? If not, then what are you going to do when they decide the doorway to your business or home is their preferred location to shoot up?
I'm fully in agreement that we generally lock up people for too long, but this idea that force and imprisonment are unacceptable suggests you've never actually had to deal with these situations where you live.
Something you're probably missing is that the "cruelty" of prison doesn't impact each prisoner the same. For hardcore criminals, the cruelty of living outside of prison can be just as bad, or worse. This is backed up in part by statistics that show that the chance of being a murder victim is 10 times less while in prison than on the outside for most gang members, and the chance of dying of a drug overdose is similarly lessened while inside.
In other words, you're probably ignorant of what goes on in the life of a typical reoffender.
Mostly it's not intended to be. But it does weaken the argument that prison should be used less because it's crueler than the alternatives.
But it also suggest, to me, that the state could take a more active role in protecting the most criminal and anti-social members of society from themselves.