Streetsblog has a report out on a systematic pattern of racial and ethnic bias in who is ticketed for jaywalking in New York City. The site's Martin Samoylov and Gersh Kuntzman report:

Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 last year, cops issued 316 summonses for walking against a traffic light, or crossing mid-block, and 284 of them — or 89.5 percent of the tickets — went to blacks or Hispanics, according to the city’s own summons data, crunched by Streetsblog. Only 55 percent of the city’s population is black and/or Hispanic. More than half of the tickets — 167, or 53 percent — were issued to people under 25, with 44 percent of the tickets going to people aged 18 to 25, even though that group comprises just 7 percent of the population.

How many of you jaywalk? I'll wait.

How many of you do it on a regular basis? That's what I thought.

My hand was all the way up both times. Especially when I'm in a place like New York where streets are narrow and low-speed and pedestrians tend to outnumber drivers.

Why Do We Ticket for Jaywalking?

We've heard this story before in a different context that has similar implications: routine traffic stops. This is a similar case in which enforcement of the rules of the road is used not in a way that has any clear relationship to actual public safety, but in a way that is targeted at those whose behavior is most often perceived to be deviant—for reasons that involve unconscious bias as well as goals (like surveillance or rooting out other crime) unrelated to speed enforcement.

Strong Towns has called for an end to the routine traffic stop. Not an end to speed enforcement itself, but to pulling over people whose behavior is well within social norms, chosen either arbitrarily or on the basis of visible characteristics like skin color.

But Isn't Jaywalking Dangerous?

The NYPD defines jaywalking as crossing mid-block or against a traffic signal. Let's do a thought experiment. I want you to picture a place you've been where "jaywalking" is extremely common. People just step into the street and casually cross without giving it much thought.

I'm guessing you may be picturing something like this: