Jeff Jones Community Service Society

Criminalizing Poverty

Policing Poverty at the Turnstile

An Update on Fare Evasion Enforcement

Harold Stolper

A version of this post appeared in the Daily News

Local Law 47 took effect in December 2017, requiring the NYPD to publicly release data on the number of arrests and summonses for fare evasion by race, sex and age for every subway station. The intent of this law is clear: to provide transparency on the NYPD’s ongoing practice of targeting black and brown communities for fare evasion enforcement and disproportionately criminalizing poverty in these neighborhoods. The NYPD has yet to comply with this law, a tacit endorsement of broken windows policing as ongoing city policy.

The NYPD has released some data, but it is largely useless for assessing where fare evasion enforcement is happening: no arrest totals are reported for 462 of the 472 stations in the system. And the ten stations that do have reported totals aren’t even clearly identified (there are four stations named 125th St, so it’s anybody’s guess which ones are referred to in the data). The clearest takeaway from the NYPD data is that they don’t want the public to know where they are targeting their fare evasion enforcement.

This week a state Supreme Court judge ordered the NYPD to release data on fare evasion arrests and summonses for every subway station. If Mayor de Blasio is seriously interested in addressing systemic racism and leveling the economic playing field, he needs to instruct the NYPD to comply with this order, and Local Law 47, and end its longstanding practice of aggressive fare evasion enforcement in communities of color.

The court order comes less than a week after a group of anonymous New Yorkers plastered their own revamped ads about fare evasion across the subway system, urging people to take a kinder approach and “swipe it forward” to lend a hand to struggling New Yorkers. These ads were a response to an ongoing MTA ad campaign aiming to “deter – not arrest – fare evaders.”

Here’s the problem: no amount of ads or police can “deter” low-income New Yorkers from their economic struggles. More than 2 out of 5 working-age New York City adults below the federal poverty level say they’re often unable to afford subway and bus fares (according to data from the Community Service Society’s 2019 Unheard Third Survey). The implication that you can deter New Yorkers from evading the fare when they don’t have enough money to make ends meet is not only cruel, it sends the message that their economic struggles are a crime. And discourages them from taking transit to get to work, attend classes, and access healthcare.

The MTA’s fare evasion campaign is expensive. The ads take up scare space that could be used to generate considerable revenue. Instead the MTA is using public resources to shame some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers and encourage the police to go after them. The MTA is also hiring 500 new transit police to address quality of life issues including fare evasion. That’s in addition to 500 officers who were reassigned to address farebeating in June. The Citizens Budget Commission estimates that the new hires alone will cost $56.1 million in the first year, more than doubling by year ten.

Meanwhile, the de Blasio Administration is slowly rolling out half-fare MetroCards to eligible New Yorkers through its Fair Fares program. As of September 24, the city reports 75,122 registered Fair Fares participants. Approximately 700,000 New Yorkers were estimated to be eligible this year. Scarce public resources should be used to support the Fair Fares rollout and make transit more affordable, not to punish vulnerable New Yorkers at the turnstile on the taxpayers’ dime.

Meanwhile the NYPD is making considerably fewer fare evasion arrests, but still punishing more people overall by issuing more and more summonses that come with a hefty $100 fine. In the second quarter of 2019, 16,502 individuals were arrested or issued a summons, up from 13,770 in the fourth quarter of 2017. And they continue to arrest and issue summons to people of color at staggeringly high rates: nearly 89 percent of arrests were of people of color, and 81 percent of summonses.

Arrests are a particularly severe punishment for what is typically a “crime” of poverty, but a $100 fine is not exactly light—or reasonable compared to toll and parking penalties—for an individual that can’t afford $2.75. A fine might not be as devastating as a criminal record, but using summonses to disproportionately punish economically disadvantaged New Yorkers of color for not having enough money to make ends meet still doesn’t resemble a solution to the transit affordability crisis.

In addition to arrests and fines, these police interactions are traumatic for those who are stopped and raise the scope for police misconduct. Since 2010 there have been 2,451 registered complaints of police misconduct that occurred after the NYPD stopped individuals they suspect of a violation or crime on the subways, according to data from the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

And if you’re wondering whether the uptick in enforcement actions is a good indication that fare evasion is on the rise, the truth is that enforcement priorities shift over time and across precincts due to factors unrelated to the number of offenses, such as policing slowdowns, changes in police deployment, claims of quota-driven enforcement, and prosecutorial decisions.

The MTA claims that fare evasion is on the rise and they need to reign it in to provide better service. If fare evasion is on the rise—which is not obvious given the lack of credibility of their survey methods—any viable solution has to address the economic need that drives most fare evasion. And no amount of police can address economic need. Criminalizing poverty only makes it harder for struggling New Yorkers to find work or affordable housing, while diverting scarce public resources away from the neediest New Yorkers. The city and the MTA need to work together to give low-income New Yorkers more support, not use the transit system as a tool to shame and criminalize.

Issues Covered

Legal Justice, The Unheard Third, Workforce