Law & Society Blog

The recent policy of randomly searching subway passengers pushes the limits of symbolic political action (once again) into the realm of the patently absurd. Why would an attacker ever submit to a search if the search is essentially voluntary? He would either say, “no thanks,” and walk away, or blow himself up right there in the line created by the search. Alternatively, he would enter the subway system early, as searches, even at main points of entry, seem to be confined to rush hour traffic. Or he would go to a shopping mall, a bus terminal, a popular little park or restaurant at lunchtime, etc. What’s so frustrating about all this is that the simplest, most effective, and cheapest measures are not being taken. For example, large crowds make for attractive targets. So dispersing large crowds seems like a good idea. Yet every morning, I see densely packed crowds of commuters patiently waiting their turn to walk up long flights of stairs, mostly single file, because no one cares to fix the escalators. Similarly, why not add some more trains to busy lines at peak times? Or have MTA personnel direct foot traffic in some of the long and narrow tunnels, connecting one station to another? The faster people move through the subway system (or any system of transportation for that matter), the fewer people there are in one place at a time, the lower the casualty count in the event of an attack – an attack that random bag searches are doing woefully little to prevent. Too bad that fixing broken escalators and adding trains doesn’t seem to translate into political capital, because the marginal dollar spent on those measures would surely add more to safety (not to mention convenience) than random bag searches likely ever will.

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