SIVACRACY.NET: Traffic Court

There is a lighthearted article about Traffic Court in today's NYT, from which one learns:

"Anyone with flagging faith in the resourcefulness of New Yorkers need only pay a visit to any of the eight buildings in five boroughs that make up the traffic court system. Started in the 1970's to help unclog the city's criminal courts, traffic court is one of New York's best free shows. It is stand-up improv at its most creative with an occasional James Bond-like tale or even a violent plot, all in search of that one shimmering, often elusive dream, the dismissed ticket.

"The show, which includes a total of 50 judges, plays weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and later on Thursdays. Each trial takes about 10 minutes, and judges hear from 50 to 100 cases a day. In all, the courts process about 1.3 million traffic tickets a year."

"If they tell you a story you've never heard before, they seem to think this makes it more believable," one judge said. "It doesn't."

"Doctors, as an unspoken rule, are treated gently. As one judge put it, "You'd hate to be lying on an operating table, and have him say, 'Hey I remember you.' "

But I also have some serious questions. Based on my own very limited observations, Traffic Court defendants in my part of the world are disproportionately female. If one rejects the possibility that women are less law abiding than men when operating cars, and I do, this suggests that either women are ticketed at higher rates, or that they contest traffick tickets at higher rates. I've also been told that there may be race based disparities in ticketing rates, and also with respect to fines. Last time I was in traffic court I had to spend most of the day there before my case was called, and it did seem like there were strange variances. For example, the fine for going through a red light ranged from $50 to $90 for no reason that I could discern other than race, but admittedly I was a Traffic Court observer for less than a day, and did not have access to the written materials before the judge. Anyone know of any research on this?