In the first three months of 2017, the NYPD arrested 4,600 people for fare evasion, an overwhelming 90 percent of them black or Hispanic. In Brooklyn in 2016, young black men (ages 16-36) made up half of all fare evasion arrests, but represent only 13.1 percent of poor adults. This sort of “broken windows” policing of low-level crimes of poverty has disproportionately targeted poor communities of color—criminalizing young black men in Brooklyn at alarmingly high rates. This report examines fare evasion arrest data from public defender organizations and finds that, in Brooklyn, poor black communities have higher arrest rates for jumping the turnstile than other areas of Brooklyn, even when accounting for poverty and crime.
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