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On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City Paperback – April 7, 2015
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A RIVETING, GROUNDBREAKING ACCOUNT OF HOW THE WAR ON CRIME HAS TORN APART INNER-CITY COMMUNITIES
Forty years in, the tough on crime turn in American politics has spurred a prison boom of historic proportions that disproportionately affects Black communities. It has also torn at the lives of those on the outside. As arrest quotas and high tech surveillance criminalize entire blocks, a climate of fear and suspicion pervades daily life, not only for young men entangled in the legal system, but for their family members and working neighbors.
Alice Goffman spent six years in one Philadelphia neighborhood, documenting the routine stops, searches, raids, and beatings that young men navigate as they come of age. In the course of her research, she became roommates with Mike and Chuck, two friends trying to make ends meet between low wage jobs and the drug trade. Like many in the neighborhood, Mike and Chuck were caught up in a cycle of court cases, probation sentences, and low level warrants, with no clear way out. We observe their girlfriends and mothers enduring raids and interrogations, "clean" residents struggling to go to school and work every day as the cops chase down neighbors in the streets, and others eking out a living by providing clean urine, fake documents, and off the books medical care.
This fugitive world is the hidden counterpoint to mass incarceration, the grim underside of our nation's social experiment in punishing Black men and their families. While recognizing the drug trade's damage, On The Run reveals a justice system gone awry: it is an exemplary work of scholarship highlighting the failures of the War on Crime, and a compassionate chronicle of the families caught in the midst of it.
"A remarkable feat of reporting . . . The level of detail in this book and Goffman's ability to understand her subjects' motivations are astonishing―and riveting."―The New York Times Book Review
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPicador
- Publication dateApril 7, 2015
- Dimensions5.57 x 0.81 x 8.27 inches
- ISBN-101250065666
- ISBN-13978-1250065667
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Extraordinary.” ―Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker
“A remarkable feat of reporting…The level of detail in this book and Goffman's ability to understand her subjects' motivations are astonishing--and riveting.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“Necessary… Goffman's lively prose--communicated in a striking voice rare for an academic--opens a window into a life where paranoia has become routine… She goes beyond her street-level focus to argue something more profound.” ―Baltimore City Paper
“Alice Goffman's On the Run is the best treatment I know of the wretched underside of neo-liberal capitalist America. Despite the social misery and fragmented relations, she gives us a subtle analysis and poignant portrait of our fellow citizens who struggle to preserve their sanity and dignity.” ―Cornel West
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Product details
- Publisher : Picador; Reprint edition (April 7, 2015)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1250065666
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250065667
- Item Weight : 9.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.57 x 0.81 x 8.27 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #332,393 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #298 in Sociology of Urban Areas
- #1,189 in Criminology (Books)
- #1,557 in African American Demographic Studies (Books)
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But I found it really informative and worth reading, especially in light of recent events in Ferguson, Staten Island, etc.—lots of poor black people are getting killed by the police for no good reason, and the police are getting away with it. I didn't know nearly enough about the interactions of the criminal justice system with poor black communities, so I feel like I learned a lot from this book. There's mention of how young children get entangled in the criminal justice system, like one boy who's maybe 11 and is riding in a car with his older brother; it turns out the car is stolen, so the 11-year-old is treated as an accomplice to a crime and the process begins. There's also discussion of how police threaten and intimidate women to make them inform on their sons, brothers, or boyfriends: in poor neighbourhoods, where living conditions aren't always great, it's easy to say that their homes are unacceptable and threaten to take away their children, or just arrest the women themselves for various secondary crimes like obstructing justice etc. There are plenty of violent police raids. The pressure to inform creates an atmosphere of distrust and rips apart the social fabric; men who are wanted by the police have to make a habit of being unpredictable, not letting anyone know where they'll be at a given time, and so on. I also had no idea just how many types of warrants there are for various offenses: besides actually committing crimes, people are often wanted for things like not paying court fees. And men who often have multiple warrants out for their arrest can't take advantage of basic services like medical care; showing up at the hospital when they've suffered a serious injury or their partner is about to give birth can result in arrest, so it's often too risky.
So there's lots of thought-provoking material here, and I feel like I learned a lot about a world that was completely unfamiliar to me. My only complaint is the organization of the book in thematic sections; the lack of a continuous narrative made it easy to set the book down, so I didn't read it straight through, and I often found myself wanting to read more about Alice herself and her place in this world. But there's a lengthy afterword where she does talk more about her own experiences, which was also really interesting. She had taken her project so far that she avoided any media that her friends in the neighbourhood weren't also reading or watching, with the result that she had trouble interacting with people in graduate school after missing out on years of typical undergrad experiences. She had developed a fear of young-ish white men with short hair—i.e., people who could potentially be police officers—which made it difficult to interact with some of her professors. Etc.
I'm glad I read this one.
I am no expert, but I think this will be a classic ethnography in American anthropology and sociology.
There are some things that Goffman does not talk about, but these were beyond the charge of her research. Specifically, while the presence of police brutality is documented, I was left curious about how the young police officers were inculcated into this blue culture. What holds their "blue family" together? What do police officers do with their fear (other than try to "take control")? At what point of induction into being a police officer does fear and stereotypy become the motif of life?
Add (9-30-18) I did find a good book on this question: Moskos, Peter (2008) Cop: My year policing Baltimore's Eastern District. Princeton Press. Available on Amazon. Moskos graduated from college and joined the Baltimore police force as a rookie. He is scathing about his six-month training, which taught him nothing outside of legal strictures and how to write reports. One of his observations is how police cars detract from getting to know a neighborhood, but all police hate foot patrolling (it is hard, no computers, no flashing lights, seen as a punishment) and thus police really do not know the people of the area. The final chapter is "Prohibition: Al Capone's revenge," a comment on how prohibition actually makes the border between police and the people far more difficult than would legalized drugs and medical care.







