I think public transport should be free. That solves the whole problem because it makes no sense to dis-incentivize the use of public transport to begin with and the fares are disproportionally hard on the lowest earners.

Fare jumpers absolutely need jail - the sort of person who jumps the faregate is also much more likely than the average person to be a nuisance or a violent threat to other people on public transit. I think it's more important to jail fare jumpers than a lot of other types of petty criminal, because enclosed public transit is one of the most important areas in a city to control crime; people need to feel safe on public transit in order to want to use it to get around. The sort of person who fare-jumps is extremely often homeless, mentally-ill, or a gang member - not someone who is capable of being compelled to do a minor chore for the station without way more coercive effort than the station employees can be expected to provide. The right response to fare-jumpers is to have police - uniformed specialists in using violence or the threat of violence to enforce public order - physically remove them from the public transit station and keep them in a locked room under guard where they can't harm someone else.

Or make the transportation free, then you don't have to worry about policing infractions and instead spend the low effort policing money on cleaning, security, and improvement.

The cop made me call my mom on a pay phone and 40 years later I still have to hear about it. Cruel and unusual.

> Make them clean the station and pick up trash...

This should just be an established way to pay your fare.

The real crime is you thinking public transportation should cost the individual money.

Then charge them cleanly and don't artificially try to inflate charges. It is the duty of any jury to let someone off when they feel its malicious prosecution.

Police, Prosecutors, and Judges all openly use their discretion. Each of them could have quashed the charge before it got to a jury. The jury is the last line of discretion. Police, prosecutors, and judges love to call it "jury nullification" but its the same power that police, prosecutors, and judges use multiple times a day.

The only crime I see is that police arrested an innocent person on false evidence, prosecutors charged someone based on false evidence, and a judge is actually allowing this case to proceed all based on evidence that everyone knows is false.

"it's unfair to law-abiding people" is a terrible reason to force more people to abide the law if you think the law is unfair

There should be some teeth, but also we should be prepared for a small amount of "unfairness" baked into the system. If there are no controls, everyone will cheat. But if there's too many obstacles (turnstiles, checkpoints, conductors, cameras, etc) then people won't want to ride.