Beller, Anne; Garelik, Sanford; Cooper, Sydney. “Sex Crimes in the Subway” (Vol. 18, No. 1, May 1980: 35-52) Criminology.

  I hope that Ms. Amy Goodman, Executive Producer and Co-Host of Democracy Now!, DemocracyNow.org, The War and Peace Report, finds it helpful.

  ABSTRACT

  This article describes the nature, extent, and empirical ramifications of non-felonious sex crimes on the New York City subway. Non-felonious sex crimes are defined as those offenses designated ‘Sexual abuse’ and ‘public lewdness’ in the revised New York Penal Code of 1967. excluding sexual abuse in the first degree. Offenders are predominantly black and Hispanic: victims white, youthful. and unexceptional in looks. Contrary to psychiatric stereotypes, 50% of recidivists in these crime categories prove to have arrest records for violent crimes. including nonsexual ones: and sexual abuse and public lewdness recidivists tend to commit either offense interchangeably.

   ANNE BELLER Juvenile Diversion Project New York

   SANFORD GARELIK New York City Transit Police Department

   SYDNEY COOPER Juvenile Diversion Project New York

   AUTHORS NOTE: We are grateful to Police Officers Alan Nelson and Christopher Murphy for their invaluable contributions to this study and to Ms. Holly Ochoa for her unstinting editorial assistance.

  SEX CRIMES IN THE SUBWAY

  References to genital exhibitionism have appeared in the medical literature since classical antiquity (Ullerstam, 1966) and references to the act of “frottage” (genital rubbing) since the late nineteenth century (Thoinot, 1930). But it is probably not until the urban congestion of modern times that these two items of sexual behavior have come into their own as a body of quantifiable epidemiological and/or juridicial data. In particular, the development of the complex rapid transit systems of the 20th century seems to have provided a providential econiche for these offenses and the people who commit them. Such behaviors occur with great frequency and predictability in modern subway networks both here and abroad; and one such system recently attracted internationa1 media attention when it introduced the use of sexually segregated subway cars to deal with the problem (“It’s Mexican Stand-Off for Subway Mashers,” 1978).

  As legal entities, neither exhibitionism nor frottage (public lewdness and sexual abuse in New York Penal Code terminology, respectively) are confined to the subways. Theoretically, any crowded place will serve the purposes of the typical frotteur, and exhibitionists are often apprehended in fairly isolated places such as parks, doorway recesses, and so on. But something peculiar to the physical setting of the subway seems to make it a preferred site for both these types of sex offenders, and metropolitan subway systems appear to have become a sort of endemic focus or reservoir for such behaviors in modern urban life.

  New York City’s subway system for its part-with its 137 miles of track, 6,681 subway cars, and normal weekday passenger load of 3.5 million riders daily-has understandably accumulated considerable experience with such behaviors, and New York City Transit Police Department statistics on the non-felonious sex offenses [1] represents a quantifiable body of data probably unequalled in the annals of sexual psychopathology to date.

  LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS

  Generally speaking, sex crime on the transit system, as elsewhere, breaks down into three empirical categories, notably (1) exposure or genital exhibitionism; (2) physical molestation, involving some kind of contact but without serious injury; and finally (3) physical assault, which results in sexual penetration. (In practice, this last category is an extremely rare occurrence on the subway. Rape typically takes place in private or at least secluded places, and by virtue of physical setting alone the subway does not lend itself to this kind of crime.)

  Penal Code arrest categories can and do overlap in individual cases. For example, the following excerpt from a recent arrest report details the antecedents of a multiple charge of sexual abuse and public lewdness:

  Defendant was observed on platform wearing a raincoat (sunny day; temperature 90 degrees) and manipulating his penis. Male boarded train and immediately crowded female complainant and bumped and rubbed his naked penis on her buttocks. Complainant tried to move away and Defendant did grab her by the waist and breast and held her until he ejaculated.

  Similarly, another offender was

  observed to rub his penis in a lewd manner and to make sounds to passing females, causing alarm and fear. Defendant was also observed to crowd various unidentified females boarding trains and bump his erect enclosed penis on their buttocks and with his hand to squeeze their buttocks. [Yeah. Yeah. Be dirty, be dirty.]

  Alternately, sexual abuse can sometimes be found as a secondary charge to robbery, for example, when the incident culminates in purse snatching or pickpocketing, as in the following arrest report:

  Defendant, while acting in concert with one other male not apprehended, did fondle the breasts and buttocks of complainant and did forcibly take her handbag and removed a sum of US. currency.

  In the 18-month period between January 1977 and June 1978, the Transit Police Department recorded a total of 2,529 sex crime complaints and arrests (see Table 1). Of this total, over half fell into the category of public lewdness; somewhat less than half were designated sexual abuse; and there were relatively few cases (95 in total) of rape, attempted rape, and sodomy.

  TABLE 1 Pick-ups, Open Complaints, and Defendants for Sex-Related Crimes in the New York City Subway System January 1, 1977 to June 30, 1978

  * In classifying its crime statistics, the NYTPD records as an open complaint a crime reported by a victim or a witness for which the police have not made an arrest at the time of the crime’s actual occurrence. A pick-up refers to a crime for which one or more arrests were made, either at the time of commission or almost Immediately thereafter.

  ** Where a single arrest results in more than one criminal charge, for statistical purposes, it is encoded for the charge carrying the highest penalty. Thus, sexual offenders arrested for such crimes as robbery or felonious assault in addition to sexual crimes are not reflected in our retrievable data.

Offense Category	Pick-Ups	Open Complaints	Total Crimes Reported	Number of Defendants
Sexual Abuse
Sex Abuse, felony	18	7	25	38
Sex Abuse, misdemeanor	864	222	1086	916
Harassment, violation	2	38	40	2
Total	884	267	1151	956
Rape – Felony
Rape, 1st degree	5	14	19	27
Rape, 2nd degree	0	0	0	0
Attempted Rape	8	15	23	15
Total	13	29	42	42
Sodomy
Sodomy, Felony	7	7	14	19
Sodomy, Misdemeanor	38	1	39	80
Total	45	8	53	99
Public Lewdness – Misd.	918	365	1283	972
Total	918	365	1283	972
Grand Total	1860	669	2529	2069

  MEDICOLEGAL CONSIDERATIONS

  To what extent Penal Code designations for non-felonious sex offenses correspond to the descriptive criteria currently in use in psycho-diagnostic theory and practice remains a problem. Unlike the classic exhibitionist in the traditional psychiatric stereotype (see Ellis and Abarbanel, 1956; Karpman, 1954), the subway exhibitionist is at least as likely to accost adult females as children, and he is by no means as unlikely to establish one-on-one physical contact with his victim as the orthodox psycho-diagnostic criteria demand. In contradiction to the same stereotype, overlapping public lewdness and sexual abuse charges proved to represent upward of 120 New York City Transit Police Department arrests during the 18-month period covered by the present study. Clearly, the act of genital exposure in public is not the badge of sexual passivity that it has been construed to be (Coleman, 1956), at least not in the subways; nor is it as self-limiting and sui generis a form of psychopathology as has been generally reported in the literature (Tappan, 1955).

  As for the crime of sexual abuse itself, this designation as described in the present New York Penal Code has existed in its current form only since 1967. Prior to 1967, the offense was known as carnal abuse and applied only to victims who were statutorily incapable of resisting sexual advances (i.e., by reason of age, mental competence, and so on). When applied to adults, such acts could only be prosecuted when subsumed under the category of rape or assault. The former in particular was extremely difficult to prove and the 1967 New York Penal Law revisions addressed themselves specifically to the legal and tactical problems occasioned by the resulting strictures.

  As it is now on the books, however, the crime of sexual abuse appears to have no exact correlative in the medical and psychological literature at all, unless as a preliminary to some more serious assaultive sex crime such as rape or sodomy. Psychiatric review articles on sexual deviance are largely silent on this point. Marshall’s (1973) article on treatment of sexual offenders deals with a total of 10 cases, including homosexuals, fetishists, rapists, and pedophiles; and Gebhard et al. (1965) study of offenders undergoing rehabilitation in a mid-western correctional institution deals with a similar population. But neither survey contains a single instance of the classical sexual abuser as he is known to a substantial number of female subway riders and urban criminal court justices.

  EMPIRICAL CONSIDERATIONS

  Low-level sex offenses on the subways are pervasive and redundant, and it is in the very nature of such acts that they can best be performed in the presence of a large, shifting, and chronically distracted population. The subway is full of transients; probably at least half of them are women; and the subway sex offender encounters these women at a moment in time when they are at least temporarily without the protection of family, employer, school, or companions. In addition, these women are more than likely to be blinkered and goal-oriented, en route to work in the morning and homeward bound at night; and therefore perhaps less likely to bring much bureaucratic pressure to bear on the situation once they are away from it than they might have been in another setting.

  From our review of the retrievable data as well as the subjective impressions of police officers specializing in this work, we have reason to believe that the offenders are well aware of the logistics of their behavior and of the tactical considerations involved. Exhibitionists, for example, prefer to commit their acts during the system’s off-hours when they are more apt to be able to target a particular woman and zero in on her attention. They may repeat the same behavior sequence several times in the same day; and the behavior itself is not only premeditated but often also painstakingly programmed, costumed, and staged. For example, according to a recent arrest report, one offender was:

  observed to manipulate his erect penis and make remarks to passing females causing alarm and fear. Upon search of the prisoner he was found to have a nylon stocking stuffed with foam rubber and made into the shape of a penis stuffed into his pants.

  Another offender, arrested in the act of rubbing his victim’s buttocks with one hand while he manipulated himself with the other, said:

  I do this to her a couple of times this week and she likes it. I wait for her at Fulton Street in the morning.

  Other examples of the lengths to which some offenders are willing to go in order to get ready for the enactment of their subway sex rituals include (1) tying a handkerchief from the belt of the pants to the penis in a sort of sling arrangement to catch the semen at the moment of ejaculation and (2) using a rolled-up T-shirt inside the trousers to (as one offender put it) “turn the women on.”

  Sexual abuse offenders prefer the crowded rush-hour trains and platforms, probably because crowding maximizes the possibility of physical contact and can even provide a more or less credible cover story for the less obvious forms of it that this kind of offense classically entails. For this reason, perhaps, certain subway routes are more prone to such complaints than others. In our sample, female riders on the Lexington Avenue line appear to be at especially high risk, with 70% of all sexual abuse arrests occurring on this line in 1977, and a preponderance of them occurring in midtown. And Manhattan with its dense matrix of interconnecting lines, mezzanines, and transfer points is the borough of choice for non-felonious sexual offenders at all points of the Penal Code spectrum.

  OFFENDERS

  An 18-month sample (January 1, 1977 to June 30, 1978) of New York City subway sex offenders is demographically distinctive. (Recidivists differ in some respects from the total offender population and will therefore receive additional discussion in the following section.) As a group, offenders cluster in the 20 to 40-year-old range, with age cohorts between 20 and 40 accounting for 66% of all such arrests on the system. The sample is also predominantly non-white, with blacks and Hispanics accounting for 45.8% and 37.7% of such arrests, respectively, whites for 22.8%, and other ethnic groups comprising the remaining 1.7% of the sample. (How closely these figures conform to the demographics of the subway riding public as a whole is not known; accurate samplings of the city’s ridership do not exist at the present time.)

  Interestingly, New York City Transit Police statistics on offender demographics fail to bear out the psychiatric stereotype of the exhibitionist as repressed, white, middle-age, and middle-class (Ellis and Abarbanel, 1956; Karpman, 1954). Rather a subsample of 307 men arrested for public lewdness on the New York City subway system in the first nine months of 1977 revealed that almost half were black and only 54% were employed; substantially more were single than married (63.9% vs. 36.1 %); and a considerable minority were characterized by the arresting officer as either “sloppy” or “dirty” (16.9% and 26.596, respectively). [It means what it means.]

  Significant demographic differences exist between the two subtypes of sex offenders. Sexual abusers, for example, were more apt to be married (51.5%) and employed (65.4%) than public lewdness offenders arrested during the same period. They also differed somewhat from public lewdness offenders with respect to age, with 17.4% of sexual abusers being under 20 years old, as opposed to only 8.6% in the same age cohort among public lewdness offenders. Only 4.6% of sexual abuse offenders are characterized as “sloppy” by arresting officers, as opposed to 26.5% of public lewdness offenders so characterized (see Table 2).

  TABLE 2 Comparison of Characteristics of Sexual Abuse and Public Lewdness Offenders January 1,1977 to September 30,1977

Characteristics	Sex Abuse Offenders		Public Lewd Offenders
	Number	Percent	Number	Percent
Race
Black	110	41.6	150	48.8
Hispanic	106	40.0	108	35.2
White	42	15.8	45	14.7
Other	7	2.6	4	1.3
Uncoded	0	-	0	-
Total	265	100.0	307	100.0
Age
Under 20	46	17.4	26	8.6
20-29	85	32.1	104	34.4
30-39	86	32.4	99	32.8
40-49	44	16.6	48	15.9
50-59	4	1.5	16	5.3
60+	0	-	9	3.0
Uncoded	0	-	(5)	-
Total	265	100.0	302	100.0
Marital Status
Married	134	51.5	108	36.1
Single	126	48.5	191	63.9
Uncoded	(5)	-	(8)	-
Total	260	100.0	255	100.0
Employment Status
Employed	144	65.4	137	53.7
Unemployed	49	22.3	97	38.2
Student	27	12.3	18	7.1
Other	0	-	3	1.2
Uncoded	(45)	-	(52)	-
Total	220	100.0	255	100.0
Appearance
Neat	176	68.0	153	52.8
Well dressed	3	1.2	4	1.4
Uniform	2	0.8	1	0.3
Dirty	12	4.6	49	16.9
Hippie	5	1.9	6	2.1
Sloppy	61	23.5	77	26.5
Uncoded	(6)	-	(17)	-
Total	259	100.0	290	100.0

  RECIDIVISTS

  Heavy recidivists among our offenders comprise a population that is somewhat different [2] from the larger offender sample in which it is embedded. For example, recidivists as a group had a high rate of prior arrests for assaultive sex crimes, with 20 incidents of rape or sodomy attributable to them, yielding an assaultive sex crime rate for this group of about 13%. Although this figure may be misleading in that one arrestee in the subset was responsible for 6 and another for 2 of the total 20 incidents of assaultive sex crimes in the group’s aggregate arrest records, the number of such crimes is nevertheless surprisingly high for a group of offenders commonly considered by the lay public and the psychiatric profession alike to be relatively harmless, passive, and non-assaultive (see Table 3).

  TABLE 3 Criminal Records of a Sample of 150 Sex Crimes Recidivists* by Category of Offense

  SOURCE: NYTPD Files supplemented by miscellaneous arrest reports (e.g. out of state; NYPD).

  * Records extend back in time from June 30, 1978 as far as available for each individual.

  ** There are fewer arrests than offenses, since some arrests involved more than one charge.

Sex Crimes	Number	Percent
Sex Abuse	177	26.5
Public Lewdness	460	69.0
Rape	19	2.8
Sodomy	11	1.7
Total	667	100.0
Crimes of Violence
Assault	124	60.8
Robbery	72	35.3
Kidnapping	7	3.4
Homicide	1	0.5
Total	204	100.0
Non-Violent Theft
Larceny	130	50.6
Jostling	93	36.2
Burglary	34	13.2
Total	257	100.0
Drug Offenses (ALL)	88
Total	88	100.0
Miscellaneous
Felonies	50	7.0
Misdemeanors	376	52.9
Violations	286	40.1
Total	712	100.0
Total Offenses	1928
Total Arrests:	1363

  This finding is further underlined by data emerging from state-wide arrest records (“rap sheets”) which indicate that among them, our subset of 150 recidivists turn out to have committed a total of 221 violent nonsexual crimes, in addition to their respective arrests for rape and sodomy. This figure is again at odds with the common psychiatric and criminological stereotypes. What is perhaps even more surprising is the fact that, when both sexually and non-sexually assaultive crime arrests are combined, over 50% of the group prove to have been arrested for an assaultive crime at one time or another (see Table 4). Finally, and perhaps most interesting, is the fact that among those recidivists who turned out to have had prior or subsequent arrests for rape or sodomy, the original non-felonious sex charge was just as likely to have been public lewdness as sexual abuse. Here again, the stereotype of the physically innocuous and relatively passive exhibitionist does not hold up, since our data suggest that just as many of these supposedly sexually passive exhibitionists turned out to be capable of committing more violent sexual crimes as those individuals who had originally been arrested for the presumably more “active” crime of sexual abuse.

  TABLE 4 Violent Crimes Committed by Sample of 150 Sex Crimes Recidivists by Offender Type

  SOURCE: NYTPD arrest reports supplemented by miscellaneous arrests reports (e.g., out of state, NYPD) as of June 30, 1978.

 

Type of Sex Crimes Committed	Number of Offenders	Number who committed Violent Crime(s)	%
Sex Abuse	23	12	52
Public Lewdness	62	31	50
Both Sex Abuse & Public Lewdness	65	33	51
Total	150	76	51

  VICTIMS

  While committed to establishing a more realistic typology of offenders, modern police work is increasingly committed to establishing a workable typology of victims as well. When we speak of the victims of sex offenses on New York City’s subways, it is understood that we are speaking primarily about offenses against females: For a nine-month period beginning in October 1977 and continuing through June 1978, fully 97% of the cumulative total of 1,370 non-felonious subway offenses involved a male offender and a female victim.

  Of the 819 victims for whom we have retrievable data in this category, roughly half were between the ages of 20 and 29, with two other major segments falling into the 10 to 19-year-old age group and the 30 to 39-year-old age group. Together, these three cohorts accounted for an overwhelming majority (733 out of 819) of the encoded cases. Above age 40 there were only 86 such incidents and our report forms do not code for ages below 10 (see Table 5). Unlike the offender sample for such crimes, the victim sample is predominantly white (478 out of a total of 854), with the remaining non-white population divided almost evenly between black and Hispanic victims. Besides being overwhelmingly female, youthful, and white, the victim sample is predominantly able-bodied and normal-looking.

  TABLE 5 Characteristics of Victims of Non-felonious Sex Crimes in the New York City Subway System October 1, 1977 to June 30, 1978

  SOURCE: NYTPD arrest reports. Uncoded data is high in this sample of victims, since the arresting officer often acts as complainant in offenses he/she observed (such as public lewdness) and does not complete this section of the arrest report.

  NOTE: Totals and percentages refer to coded data only, although the number of Uncoded reports is indicated in parentheses.

Race	Number	Present	Age	Number	Percent
White	478	56.0	10-19	194	23.7
Black	205	24.0	20-29	391	47.7
Hispanic	145	16.9	30-39	148	18.1
Other	26	3.1	40-49	54	6.6
Uncoded	(516)	-	50-59	23	2.8
Total	854	100.0	60+	9	1.1
			Uncoded	(551)	-
			Total	819	100.0
Occupation	Number	Percent
Employed	547	72.0	Attire	Number	Percent
Unemployed	65	8.6	Well dressed	434	59.3
Student	148	19.4	Casual	297	40.6
Uncoded	(610)	-	Poorly dressed	1	0.1
Total	760	100	Uncoded	(638)
			Total	732	100.0

  Our report protocol as presently constructed does not contain any positive assessment criterion for appearance other than “youthful.” But other victim appearance criteria, which might be construed as negative (such as “deformed” or “unfeminine”) or debilitating (e.g., “handicapped,” “drugged,” or “intoxicated”) are conspicuous by their virtual absence among this population. Of a total of 453 victims for whom we have encoded data in this sample, only 7 fall into any of these categories. With respect to clothing, 434 of a total of 732 victims are described as “well dressed” by the attending officer; 297 are described as “casually dressed”; and only 1 is described as “poorly dressed.”

  While relatively few non-felonious sex crimes result in any kind of serious physical injury, arrest reports and police memo books reveal that those that do usually result from the victim’s decision to defend herself, verbally or physically, against the offender. Of the relatively few serious physical injuries for which victims received medical attention to this sample, a surprising proportion of them were sustained around the head and face as opposed to the genitals and torso, vitiating to some extent the impression of these crimes as uniquely erotic in character. And although only five of the victims in the present sample were sufficiently seriously injured to require removal to a hospital, a substantial minority (21%) did appear to the responding officer to require some sort of support and/or assistance at the scene or at the district office of the Transit Police-underlining the emotionally, if not the physically, traumatic nature of such incidents for many of the women who suffer them.

  Out of a total subset of 729 victims for whom we have data recorded in this category, almost all were accosted by strangers, perhaps a distinguishing characteristic of subway crime as opposed to crime on the streets, and one which points up the unique features of both victims’ and criminals’ “tunnel mentality.” Unlike assault, murder, and larceny, sexual abuse and public lewdness arrests are noted for their stranger-oriented, “exogamous” character; the victim is at most known to the offender by sight, but not from previous acquaintance. [3]

  A majority of victims in the present sample were encountering such experiences for the first time, but a substantial minority had been victimized previously. Our present victim sample only reflects incidents in which a complainant was directly involved; it seems reasonable to suppose, however, that if the aggregate included cases in which there was no complainant and the arresting officer made the arrest on his own initiative, the number of previously victimized women might prove to be even higher.

  DISCUSSION

  With regard to the existing data pool, certain general cautions are in order. In the first place, like all police statistics, the present aggregate probably represents an unknown fraction of the incidence of the crimes in question. While all crimes, with the possible exception of murder and insured thefts, are no doubt seriously underreported both locally and nationally, sex crimes at this level are probably even more seriously underreported than others.

  The victim’s nagging thought that she may have provoked the incident in some unknown way is a leitmotiv of the extant literature on the subject and may contribute to her reluctance to lodge a complaint. Furthermore, the experience is (sometimes literally) a sullying one, and many prefer not to relive it either in the courts or in filing the preliminary investigative report.

  In addition, as has been amply demonstrated elsewhere (Cooper, 1970), police statistics are generally skewed to areas and times where officers are assigned to observe the crime in commission and are available for immediate processing of the complaint and apprehension of the offender. Such skewing can often be attributed to local crime control strategies and priorities and will tend to confound all incoming data unless it is corrected for statistically.

  Moreover, the principle of indeterminancy must be invoked at least as fastidiously in the social sciences as in physics: By the very act of observing something we are bound to have some impact on the phenomenon being observed. To what extent, for example, do proactive police surveillance and arrest procedures affect the overall accuracy of our demographic data, particularly with respect to race and social class? Is the high proportion of non-whites in our current recidivist sample and our 1977 Crime Report file an accurate reflection of the criminal population or does it reflect bias and for stereotyping on the part of the apprehending officer?

  Major questions about victims also remain unanswered, over half of the incidents recorded by the Transit Police do not involve an actual complainant but result from police observations of the act in commission, and are therefore presumably unbiased with respect to the victim herself. But in those cases which do involve a civilian complainant, it would be interesting to know how changes in women’s expectations, attitudes, and working lives since the late 1960s may be affecting either the incidence rate of these crimes and/or women’s willingness to prosecute when such crimes occur. Longitudinal data in this area are therefore clearly needed before we can begin to sort out the sociological parameters from the criminological variables in both the victim and offender population.

  Last but not least, with regard to the offenders themselves, major overriding questions remain. We suspect from informal canvassing of court personnel and individual offenders that at present there is little if anything being done for this group, at least in a programmatic sense, in terms of social and psychiatric referrals. [4] Does this stalemate reflect therapeutic theory and practice with respect to this kind of deviant behavior? Or is it merely a reflexive application of judicial (and psychiatric) laissez-faire?

  These are among the questions raised by the everyday experience of Transit Police Officers and riders in New York City’s subway population. But even with questions such as these still outstanding, certain conclusions can tentatively be drawn with respect to non-felonious sex crimes on New York City’s subway system. First, we are reasonably certain that our victims constitute a kind of special or target population. They all appear to share certain occupations, appearance characteristics, and dress styles. Statistics suggest that age constitutes a definite risk factor in victimization; so does ethnicity; and informal interviews with offenders give reason to believe that such details may indeed be predisposing factors in the victim population.

  Second, it appears that for at least 50% of the recidivist sex-offender sample, the relatively innocuous psychiatric and criminological stereotype of non-felonious sex offenders is erroneous. Among the 150 recidivists in our population identified to date, there was a 50% incidence of assaultive crimes (i.e., robbery, battery, rape, sodomy, and homicide), or a total of 234 such charges. This represents a numerical average of more than one assaultive crime per offender and must therefore cast serious doubt on previous typological assumptions about the harmlessness of such offenders.

  Finally, it is clear from comparison with New York Police Department crime statistics that there are indeed significantly more non-felonious sex crimes on the subways (adjusted for daily population) than there are on a proportional basis above ground. In 1977, for example, Transit Police Department statistics accounted for roughly 75% of New York City’s total sexual abuse and public lewdness arrests, with figures for the first five months of 1978 following a similar pattern. Figures for 1976 are also comparable. It is therefore our strong impression that sex crimes on the subway constitute a virtually indigenous and perhaps unique problem of urban underground “ecology” and one for which indigenous solutions may well prove to be advisable. 51 of more than one assaultive crime per offender and must therefore cast serious doubt on previous typological assumptions about the harmlessness of such offenders. Finally, it is clear from comparison with New York Police Department crime statistics that there are indeed significantly more non-felonious sex crimes on the subways (adjusted for daily population) than there are on a proportional basis above ground. In 1977, for example, Transit Police Department statistics accounted for roughly 75% of New York City’s total sexual abuse and public lewdness arrests, with figures for the first five months of 1978 following a similar pattern. Figures for 1976 are also comparable. It is therefore our strong impression that sex crimes on the subway constitute a virtually indigenous and perhaps unique problem of urban underground “ecology” and one for which indigenous solutions may well prove to be advisable.

  NOTES

1.       Although sexual abuse in the first degree is a Class D felony, it rarely occurs in the setting of the New York City subway system and for purposes of this report, sexual abuse, public lewdness, and the lesser degree of other sex crimes are referred to as non-felonious sex crimes.

2.       Quantifiable information on recidivists to date consists of data on 150 repeaters whose names have appeared more than once in our arrest files since January 1975.

3.       In keeping with Kolarsky’s and Madlafousek’s (1972) commentary on the psychological antecedents of this kind of predilection for sexual encounters with nonconsenting and social strangers, it should be noted that most acts of sexual abuse involve approaches from the rear, without any face-to-face encounter, verbal exchange, or eye contact.

4.       Drs. Gene Abel, Judith Becker, and Linda Skinner’s Sexual Behavior Clinic, formerly under the aegis of the University of Tennessee, has recently relocated to the New York Psychiatric Institute of the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and is currently treating a limited number of Transit Police Department non-felonious sex offenders.

  REFERENCES

1.       COLEMAN, J. D. (1956) Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foreman.

2.       COOPER, S. C. (1970) Bronx Robbery Study. New York: New York Police Department.

3.       DENZER, R. G. and P. McQUlLLAN (1967) Practice Commentary: McKinney’s ELLIS, A. and A. ABARBANEL (1956) The Psychology of Sex Offenders. Spring

4.       GEBHARD, P. H., J. H. GAGNON, W. B. POMEROY, and C. U. CHRISTENSON “It’s a Mexican Stand-Off for Subway Mashers” (1978) New York Post (September 11).

5.       KARPMAN, B. (1954) The Sexual Offender and His Offenses. New York: Julian Press.

6.       KOLARSKY, A. and J. MADLAFOUSEK (1972) “Female behavior and sexual arousal in heterosexual male deviant offenders.” Mental Diseases 155: 110-1 18.

7.       MARSHALL, W. L. (1973) “Modification of sexual fantasies: a combined treatment approach to the reduction of deviant sexual behavior.” Behavior Research and Theory, 11. Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press.

8.       TAPPAN. P. W. (1955) “Some myths about sex offenders.” Federal Probation 19: 7-12.

9.       THOINOT, L. (1930) Medicolegal Aspects of Moral Offenses. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis.

10.   F. A. ULLERSTAM, L. (1966) The Erotic Minorities. New York: Grove Press.

  Anne Beller is Assistant Director of a joint John Jay Transit Police Department project to divert youthful offfenders from formal court processing. She is the author of Fat and Thin, a Natural History of Obesity (Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1977) and Bed and Board, the Economics of Love, Fear, and Dependency (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, in press). Her research on urban neonates was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1976).

  Sanford Garelik has held positions as Chief lnspector of the New York Police Department. City Council President of New York City, and Chief of the New York City Transit Police Department. He has held Adjunct Professorships at Adelphi College and John Jay College and has supervised numerous research and operational projects in the field of criminal justice.

  Sydney Cooper, formerly Chief of Inspectional Services, Chief of Personnel, and Chief of Internal AfJairs of the New York City. Police Department, has held the post of Senior Research Associate at the New, York City. Rand lnstitute and Director of Criminal Justice Programs and Associate Vice President of the New York Institute of Technology. He is currently Project Director of a joint John Jay College Transit Police Department program to divert juvenile offenders from formal court processing. He is the author of Juvenile Justice and the Police: A Training Manual (Transit Police Department. 1977), Manual for School Security Officers (New York Board of Education, 1975), and A Study of Private Security Agencies in Two New York Communities (New York City Rand Institute. 1973).