For those concerned about over-criminalization, the “Case for Legalizing Jaywalking”

I was not aware of the history of the term jaywalking or of the laws criminalizing this behavior.  Thus, I found interesting this new Mother Jones piece fully headlined “The Case for Legalizing Jaywalking: Bans hurt poor people and people of color.  Cities and states are catching on.”  I recommend the full piece, but here is a snippet (with links from the original):

If you regularly walk in any American city, you, too, probably have crossed a street against the signal or outside of a designated crosswalk.  Sure, one could argue that crosswalks were created as a way to protect pedestrians from potentially dangerous automobiles.  But why would transgressing those limits become a petty crime?  Thanks to a century-old automobile industry campaign to push pedestrians out of the streets, jaywalking is now, in most places, punishable by a hefty ticket ranging from $68 in Seattle to as much as $250 in New York City.

This could be consigned to the realm of being merely annoying, but in fact, there’s a serious injustice embedded in the process.  According to research in several cities, policing pedestrian behavior disproportionately affects low-income people and people of color.  Plus, making jaywalking an offense doesn’t keep people safe.  Now, a growing number of cities and states are striking these antiquated statutes from their books….

[D]ata from cities across the country show that Black people are routinely cited for jaywalking at higher rates than white people, making their simple act of crossing the street grounds for potentially dangerous police interactions.  In 2017, a sweeping investigation by ProPublica and the Florida Times-Union (republished with permission on Mother Jones) found that Black people received 55 percent of pedestrian tickets in Jacksonville, despite comprising just 29 percent of the city’s population.  Those tickets were also overwhelmingly focused on residents of poor neighborhoods.

The Jacksonville sheriff’s office admitted that enforcement of rules against crossing on a yellow light, crossing outside the crosswalk, or “failing to cross a street at a right angle” were often an excuse to “stop suspicious people and question them for guns and or drugs.”  Critics of jaywalking laws say that that’s part of the problem. 

Though not mentioned in this piece, I could not help but keep thinking of the emerging debate in Second Amendment jurisprudence related to government claims that “nonlawabiding” people are to be excluded from the protections of the Second Amendment.  I doubt many folks would really think the “crime” of jaywalking should lead to losing some protections of the Bill of Rights, but even that possibility is why concerns regarding over-criminalization can often connect to other kinds of concerns about state power and individual rights.