Abstract
This book is a dramatic and illustrative account of how the practice of mass conviction and incarceration has seeped into impoverished African American communities. Alice Goffman spent six years living in a poor Black neighborhood in Philadelphia to study the economic and social life of its residents, and documenting their perceptions of the criminal justice system. This book is a visceral account of how a group of Black men have adapted to living under constant surveillance, sleeping, working (or not), and socializing in the shadow of the contemporary criminal justice system. This story provides strong evidence for the importance of a national discussion about the intent and purpose of the various ways the criminal justice system has extended its reach into the lives of those who are racially and economically marginalized in our society.
As a consequence of the get-tough-on-crime movement, the expansion of sentence types and lengths, and the resulting rise of criminal convictions and incarceration, Goffman describes how the criminal justice system has come to control the daily routines and social interactions of inner-city Black men. As Pettit and Western (2004) have documented, incarceration has for many Black men become a new life course transition, and as such, once released, many remain in a state of liminal legality as a result of court imposed probation conditions and financial legal debt. Any misstep, failure to report to a probation officer, a “dirty” urinalysis, or failure to make a regular payment toward one’s monetary sanctions, could result in a warrant being issued, and one returned back to jail or prison. Set within this context, Goffman explores how Black men in one neighborhood live.
Through her descriptive stories of hanging out with these men on “6th Street”, she develops analytic categories identifying “clean” and “dirty” people; those who have no criminal justice contact or warrants pending, versus those who are “wanted” by the criminal justice system. She also outlines the techniques these young men developed to avoid detection by the criminal justice system, such as avoiding going to hospitals, applying for legal jobs, or applying for official state issued identification. Goffman also describes how young men teach each other “how to run” from the police. Ironically, she describes, that while there are a great deal of police officers around 6th Street, because of their precarious legal standings, many young men become easy targets, are labeled as “hot” and are avoided by other residents. “The police are everywhere, but as guarantors of public safety, they are still out of reach” (p. 31). In response, the men who Goffman studied had to develop strategies for “passing” as legal, obtaining illegal identities, or relying on “clean” people as front names for apartment leases or obtaining utility services. She also describes an underground economy that has developed by those who seek to profit from the illegitimate status of their fellow neighbors (e.g. providing “clean” urine samples for probation tests, making illegal identifications, and even providing payments to witnesses).
On the Run provides great detail on how her subjects’ lives have come to be socially organized as a result of their involvement with the criminal justice system. Goffman advances our understanding of not only the adaptive techniques these young men have developed in hopes of staying free, but also expands our understanding of descriptive categories of people living in these communities. For example, Goffman expands on Anderson’s (1999) typology of “street” and “decent” with overlapping subjects’ fugitive states of “dirty” and “clean”. And, she furthers our understanding of the ways legal debt shapes and impacts debtors’ lives.
I do have several questions about the methodological approach and framing of the research. The first set of questions revolves around Goffman’s presentation of her methods. She offers a great reflexive accounting of her choice and entry into the field site in her methodological note. I appreciate the detail in her considerations of her race, gender and class positioning and the ways her identity may have hindered or helped the collection and analysis of data. Yet reading the book before the methodological appendix, I had an ongoing nagging question: given the young men’s intense motivation to evade the police, why would they allow this young White woman—a complete outsider—to observe, ask questions of, and record their every (legal and illegal) actions? The appendix helps the reader address this line of questions. Knowing a bit more about her entry and motivations at the front end of the book would have helped to assuage methodological questions the reader might have while reading it.
Further, additional discussion could have been included about her interviews with police officers and the surveys she collected. How many police officers did she interview? Were they from the precinct that worked 6th Street? Did she interview any police officers that she observed while at her field site? Regarding the survey, how did they recruit participants? What were the survey questions? What did the characteristics of the population look like? How did their survey responses compare? There were several references to the police interviews and surveys, but no information about data collection or analysis was provided.
Finally, had Goffman contextualized the rich detail of her subjects’ lives with current sociological and criminological research on felons, the book would have pushed our theoretical understanding of the system further. For example, Becky Pettit and Bruce Western’s work suggests that criminalization is a new transition point for many Black men in the United States, and that many of them go under counted in official statistics. How do Goffman’s findings inform these processes? We can assume that she is describing what this transition is like, as more of an ongoing (perhaps lifelong) perverse relationship with the criminal justice system, versus a discrete period of incarceration. Yet, she does not discuss a theoretical or conceptual framing for these overarching processes and outcomes. Had she made a more explicit connection or engaged in a conversation with, for example, the work of Nikki Jones, Devah Pager, Victor Rios, Chris Uggen, or the work I have done on monetary sanctions, the book would have had a much richer framework to situate its empirical findings.
All that being said, this book is an original and important contribution to the criminological research on mass conviction and incarceration. Moreover, its vivid writing and accessibility also enables it to be an effective vehicle with which to inform a non-academic audience and the policy debate around these very issues. For that, Goffman has accomplished an impressive achievement.