Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [176]
The automobile made its first appearance on the streets, for all practical purposes, in the first decade of this century. It was, at the outset, a toy of the rich. But it was an exciting and dangerous toy, and it evoked regulation and police activity early on. In the last three months of 1906, the New York City police made 646 arrests for violations of laws and ordinances relating to motor vehicles.1 As early as 1905 in California, driving an unregistered vehicle was a misdemeanor. Soon afterward, driving without a license became another. In 1925, the minimum age for a driver’s license was fixed at fourteen; and habitual drinkers, drug addicts, and the “feeble-minded” were barred from licensure.2 In 1931, the minimum age was raised to sixteen.3 In New York in 1910, the law required all drivers to drive “in a careful and prudent manner and at a rate of speed so as not to endanger ... property ... or ... life or limb”; any speed over thirty miles an hour, if persisted in for a quarter-mile or more, was “presumptive evidence” of careless, imprudent driving.4 This statute also made hit-and-run driving a felony.5
By 1940, the United States had became an automobile society. The volume of traffic offenses was astronomical: traffic offenses had replaced drunkenness and loitering as the basic fodder of justice. At the beginning of the 1940s, 212 cities with a combined population of 45,420,696 reported more than 6,000,000 violations of traffic and motor vehicle laws.6 Of course, most of these violations were small potatoes. But in California, in the first six months of 1950, 6,407 jail sentences were handed down in motor vehicle cases, 2,377 combinations of fines and jail, 232,079 fines, and 299,214 instances of “forfeitures” (practically speaking, the same as a minor fine).7
The numbers have continued to rise, as automobiles choke the roads and highways, and millions of people, living in the land of suburban sprawl, use the automobile as their lifeline—connecting them to work, shopping, and the outside world in general. Everybody, as we have said, even the most timid and correct of souls, breaks some traffic rules. But there are rules and there are rules. At the bottom end, many traffic offenses are not even treated as criminal; they are handled administratively, and their criminal-law aspects have shriveled to a vestige.
Thus, a person who parks overtime and gets a “ticket” will get an order to appear in court and face the music. But this is not a serious threat: if the car-owner chooses not to contest, she can “forfeit” the “bail” and send in a check instead. This “bail,” of course, is nothing but a small fine masquerading as something else. In Massachusetts, starting in 1965, traffic violators could plead guilty by mail, waive trial, and send in a fine based on a fixed catalogue of penalties.8 In some states, the minor offenses are not called crimes at all but “infractions.” These “infractions,” along with other minor traffic offenses, are staggeringly common. In North Carolina, in one twelve-month period (1989-1990), there were 1,200,000 motor vehicle crimes and infractions in the district courts; this was double the number of all other criminal cases.9 In 1988, in the district courts of Michigan (the base of the judicial system), 633,979 cases of traffic misdemeanor were filed—about twice as many as all other felony and nontraffic misdemeanor put together.10
In many localities, traffic matters got handled by municipal courts, police courts, justices of the peace, and sometimes by specialized departments of municipal court. Large cities often had separate traffic courts.11 By whatever name, such courts were the absolute bottom of the judicial system. Society never saw fit to equip its traffic courts with the trappings of majesty. American courts in general do not go in for ritual and pomp, but traffic courts are the extreme case. Physical conditions in these courts could be quite primitive. In one large southern city, around 1940, the traffic court shared a converted basement with the local jail. The