Please note: very strong and possibly offensive language used beneath the fold.

Baltimore Sun, May 22, 2008:

Maryland Transit Administration officials are offering discount cards for area businesses to students who pledge good behavior on city buses, an incentive that transit administrators hope will help curb disrespectful and violent behavior. The discount card will offer 10 percent to 20 percent off purchases at 12 city establishments, including Dunkin' Donuts, Cold Stone Creamery, Shoe City, Downtown Locker Room and other places.

...

"The pledge is no magic panacea for things going on in the community," [MTA Media Representative Jawauna] Greene said. "It's symbolic in its nature. It's not there to be a law enforcement measure or to do anything but take a step to reward good behavior."

...

"How many times do you hear about kids doing great things? I'll take the heat if they say I'm rewarding kids for doing positive things," Greene said.

Red Maryland's Brian Griffiths offering common sense in response:

No, it's really a symbolic gesture to show once and for all that MTA leadership has completely lost their minds. Instead of taking proactive steps to make public transportation safer, they are going to instead try hair-brained schemes to bribe young riders to not act like thugs.

I don't give a full-armed embracing link to Red Maryland often, but Brian has it exactly right. He may even understate the case. His excerpt at Red Maryland did not include what I consider the "money quote," the references to "great things" and "positive things" by Jawauna Greene.

It is not a "positive thing" to fail to commit vandalism, assault, robbery, theft, sex offenses, etc., in the use of public transit. The use of public transit itself is a good; passengers are generally a marginal profit to the system even when the fixed costs remain subsidized, though this becomes less true when vehicles are at full capacity in ridership and usage. Most oil consumed in this country is produced domestically or imported from Canada, but the part that comes from the hellhole of the Middle East is the part that we can reduce somewhat over time, and transit is part of that process. As gasoline prices go up, the marginal value of transit goes up as fuel is a lower input per passenger in transit than in single passenger vehicles or even well-run car pools. However, the reward here is not for teenagers to give up a single-occupant commuter vehicle (very unlikely in the City) and using transit; the reward is for teenagers to refrain from committing crimes on the MTA's bailiwick, whether they walk to school, their part-time job or Grandma's house or take the bus. Failing to commit a rape, a murder, a felony assault, a robbery, a hate crime, a theft on a transit vehicle or installation is not a "positive thing"; it is neutral.

It is not a "great thing" to go a year without battering someone. It is neutral, comparable to not defecating in one's pants for a year for a normal adult. A "great thing" is to go to the House of Ruth and volunteer to help battered women and children escape the violence of their batterers. A "great thing" is to help victims of crime get their lives back in some kind of order. A "great thing" is to organize a students' and citizens' patrol of transit vehicles, replete with cell phone hotlines and phone camera emails, in the city infamous for "Stop Snitching." A "great thing" is to tell young people that they don't have to be what comedian Chris Rock called a "low-expectation-having motherfucker" even if their circumstances are dire growing up.

There's nothing wrong with businesses electing to create a discount card, or to make one and predicate its distribution or availability on compliance with some or all laws. It might actually be a good thing; though I suppose I can think of discounts I would rather see teenagers get than to Foot Locker, it's Foot Locker's business to negotiate its own price and discount structure. But for the MTA to tell its passengers that it will bribe (I say "bribe" because the MTA is expending costs to deliver a benefit to the otherwise-thugs) students not to batter some woman into the ER or to commit a rape or a theft or to stick up a driver is horrific. The MTA should be using criminal justice to fight crime, not bribes. Furthermore, what thug is going to hold a discount card and say, "Gee, I better not mug this old lady at the bus stop, I might lose my discount card"? Bullshit. The thug will mug the old lady, beat her senseless, then run promptly one stop ahead or five blocks over to catch another bus to the mall to get to Shoe City to buy some cool new shoes, 'cause that's what every aspiring thug needs. With the discount card, he can buy some cool socks also, and maybe a donut afterwards, since he will be tired from all the traveling, shopping and ass-whipping.

Now the vast majority of young people who would or could get this card WILL NOT and WOULD NOT commit a crime. The vast majority of students are law abiding as far as classic "criminal behavior" is concerned, even in rough neighborhoods. That's part of why "Stop Snitching" is so needed by hard-core criminals; many more people know or learn of a crime than commit it. But this distribution of discount cards won't reduce crime among those not inclined to commit a crime. Their crime rate will remain constant: zero. They get a freebie for not dying and not battering, two things they were already counting on anyway. When not counterproductive, it's still a waste. The thug who will be deterred by a discount card to Dunkin Donuts has not been born and will never be born, in my view; if I am wrong, please someone show me a concrete example.

Eventually, this program will come to a close. Those who were influenced not to engage in thuggery (if such actually exist) will then have a reason for petty resentment against the MTA. After all, if you are only a discount card away from thuggery, you are already in the world-owes-me-a-living-and-cool-shoes thug mentality. So perhaps we could see an increase in MTA crime, maybe an orchestrated campaign of vandalism, to bring back the bribe or as a spiteful protest against not getting their Downtown Locker Room card. Perhaps there will be copycat actions in Baltimore County against its yellow bus fleet, where the MTA operates to some extent but does not serve as the backbone of the school transportation system.

In DC, the transit cops are plentiful and aggressive. They will arrest a 10-year-old on a Metro platform for eating the lunch her mother prepared for her. DC just raised its maximum one-way fare to almost three times the MTA's maximum fare AND its parking charges (free on MTA), and ridership is still way up. While DC has many advantages that Baltimore doesn't, its system has many challenges that Baltimore's doesn't either. Even in the roughest parts of the City, the Metro is an island of success; a brief tour of the Lexington Market station will reveal an MTA that does not respect itself enough to wipe the grime and soot off of the frames holding the (stupidly designed, with no contact info online or by phone) ads proclaiming the pride of the MTA's Transit Police. Pride means you wash the dirt off, you buy a three dollar bottle of Windex. That station is poorly lit, poorly cleaned as is the decaying neighborhood around it (when I was in law school I thought it was bad, but I was wrong.) A comparison of this pit to the "problem" neighborhoods in DC - rapidly growing Petworth, newly wealthy and bustling Columbia Heights, even weary but hanging on Anacostia - is depressing for any Baltimorean. The apparent solution: give a few thugs and a lot of non-thugs some discounts for Cold Stone Creamery's ice cream so the few thugs will stop thugging and, I guess, the non-thugs will eat cheaper ice cream rather than to start thugging.

Baltimore transit riders have long had reason to be depressed and disgusted, and it's only getting worse. You'd think now that Governor O'Malley's candidate lost the Democratic primary that he could stop looking longingly at the Vice-Presidency and turn his attention to the job denoted on the payee line of his paycheck: governor of Maryland. I won't hold my breath.

Well done, Brian.