Sagging Jeans gets a Ticket

Many years ago, while recruiting in the Bronx, I remember taking a young man aside and counseling him on his approach to recruiters. He had saddled up to my table and said, "Yo, what's up?" I took him aside and counseled him as to the correct approach to recruiter's tables. I told him it was a good idea that he go up to the table, gave the greeting of the day, and ask, tell me what specializations your law school is most famous for. There are a myriad of questions that prospective students can ask recruiters and I went over many with him. I also told him that while it wasn't my job to take him aside that I thought it important for him to know this information in anticipation of future recruiting events. While this young man was initially taken aback by my correcting him, he called me the next day to thank me. I sometimes wonder if we all did this to for our young people if it wouldn't make a difference in their behavior.

I think a similar stance should be taken with sagging pants. In this article by the New York Times, we read about sagging jeans becoming a criminal offense in many municipalities. In Louisiana, lawmakers have decided that, "pants worn low enough to expose underwear poses a threat to the public." And thus they have passed indecency ordinances to prohibit the wearing of sagging pants. While I absolutely hate this style, if you want to call it a style, I don't agree that it should be criminalized. I don't think we need to legislate everything that people even when some of those things are stupid. You cannot legislate stupidity. Plus if you criminalize this behavior what's next? In any event, I don't think this is an issue for law enforcement but one for parents and the community. If we all said something maybe the trend would end.

In the article, we read that the "style" is that of hip hop artists but more disturbing is that it began in prison. And if we took it one step forward, we are told that the majority of people who wear this style are black and thus the legislation is picking on black men. Of course I don't buy that part of the article and would rather stick with some of the more constructive statement like that of Councilwoman Annette Lartigue and Ben Chavis - "The focus should be on cleaning up the social conditions that the sagging pants comes out of." Here, here and maybe instituting school uniforms would help as well.