Turnstile justice

To spare poor people and immigrants the burden of criminal records, and unclog courts thronged with penny-ante cases, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance says that come September he’ll no longer prosecute subway turnstile-jumpers except in instances where there’s a public safety reason he should.

Acting Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez, running for a full four-year term, echoes that he’ll do much the same. How compassionate. And how concerning. Compassionate for reasons vividly evident: all for want of a measly $2.75, criminal records follow New Yorkers, many still in their teens, many trying to get home, or to find work, and, almost invariably, impoverished.

The Daily News has joined the “Fair Fares” call for half-price MetroCards for poor New Yorkers, for a fighting chance to find work and get ahead in a too-costly city.

Concerning, because the climate within an already teetering subway system, where crime is up slightly this year over last, may hang in the balance.

Vance, Gonzalez and the NYPD must get that balance exactly right, or be prepared to transfer routes.

Consistent and aggressive law enforcement against turnstile-jumping proved crucial more than two decades ago in bringing under control rampant crime and lawlessness underground, starting under the visionary leadership of now-retired Police Commissioner Bill Bratton.

So-called broken-windows policing, exemplified by an end to tolerance for turnstile-jumping, made possible the safety in the subways and city today taken for granted.

Fittingly, when Bratton’s NYPD teamed up with Vance last year to announce a slew of quality-of-life crimes that Manhattan prosecutors would thenceforth handle with tickets, not arrests, turnstile-jumping was nowhere on the list of go-easy offenses.

Now that Vance has leapt ahead, the NYPD will have to make sure, against the odds, that public safety suffers not a whit.

As it is, the vast majority of fare-beaters never see handcuffs or the inside of a courtroom, instead receiving summonses from the MTA with a fine of up to $100.

But the NYPD arrests about 1 in 5, about 10,000 a year in Manhattan — 89% of them black or Latino — for outstanding criminal warrants, chronic turnstile-jumping or lack of ID.

Vance would send many to a kind of school for turnstile-jumpers, to be taught the error of their ways. Those without ID could wait at the precinct for someone to bring it.

Only those suspected of more serious crimes or caught carrying a weapon, or who failed to show for reeducation, would proceed to arraignment and criminal prosecution.

Vance argues that the above fulfills the public safety purposes intended by broken windows, by screening scofflaws for the possibility of dangerous criminal activity and nailing the bad guys — while letting the little fish mercifully go.

But that is to flush away a key to broken-windows policing’s success underground: conquering the public perception that the subways are a realm of lawlessness where anything goes.

If the message rings loud and wide that paying the fare is merely optional, brace for a bumpy ride.