“Jaywalking” Shouldn't Even Be a Thing
What irks me about exposes like this is fallacious reasoning like this:<p>- the only explanation for the proportion of jaywalking tickets to minorities being larger than for other groups is racism or other unfairness<p>- the only explanation for the proportion of jaywalking tickets to 18-25 year olds is a bias against innocent young people.<p>Um. Perhaps in New York, population 8 MILLION, the 316 tickets for jaywalking (representing 0.004%) were just handed to people who <i>really</i> deserved it. I mean if you, and I, and everyone else walks in the street from time to time, you&#x27;d expect about 7,500,000 jaywalking tickets, not 316.<p>Suppose however, whites (non hispanic) make up a 1&#x2F;3 of New York and rarely get tickets. So you&#x27;d still suspect like 5 million tickets given out. Sounds like jaywalking is either very rare (contrary to the author&#x27;s opinion), or tickets for jaywalking are very rare.<p>Here&#x27;s my alternate theory: 18-25 year old certain non-white young men have a much higher propensity to obstruct traffic and walk in the street to a level that they annoy the fuzz, and then refuse to back down to a point of getting a ticket, than do other demographics. It appears tickets are exceedingly rare and must be earned by some extraordinary jackassery, which would certainly explain the 18-25 demographic. Let me go out on a limb and guess that out of 316 tickets about 314 where given to intoxicated males too.<p>You simply CANNOT assume that committing crimes (or in this case trifles) is evenly distributed across demographics. So if &quot;tickets&quot; are not evenly distributed, it does NOT imply bias in enforcement, it could also very simply mean a bias in committing. Certain demographics may like to jaywalk a lot more, the data proves it more than it proves bias.<p>And should this be a crime? Probably, but it isn&#x27;t. It&#x27;s an infraction. Don&#x27;t brazenly walk in the street and obstruct traffic and refuse to budge when the po-po tell you to move if you don&#x27;t like it. Pretty sure doesn&#x27;t matter what color you are, assholes should continue to get ticketed for this.