Tim Newburn is impressed by Alice Goffman's book On The Run: a look at the lives of the young African American men who are caught up in a web of warrants and surveillance in a neighbourhood in Philadelphia. As a work of ethnography it is outstanding. As a piece of social science information technology is refreshingly and gloriously readable –how often tin one say that of folklore these days? And every bit an insight into the reach and consequence of the contemporary penal land on the day-to-day lives of Black urban America it is unparalleled.

On The Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. Alice Goffman. Academy of Chicago Printing.

Observe this volume:amazon-logo kindle-edition

In that location are currently 2.3 million people incarcerated in American prisons and jails. There are a further v 1000000 or more under some course of penal supervision – mostly parole or probation. Such is the scale of imprisonment (America'southward rate is close to five times that of England, and we are at record levels), and the disproportionate nature of its bear on (one in xv African-American males aged eighteen or older is incarcerated compared with one in every 106 white males of the same age) that scholars have started to refer to what is occurring as mass incarceration. This unprecedented social 'experiment' has generated some wonderful, critical scholarship, nearly recently in the form of Michelle Alexander'due south The New Jim Crow and Becky Pettit's Invisible Men, both published in 2012.

Indeed, such has been the scale of academic piece of work prompted by American penal expansion you lot might be forgiven for thinking that in that location was fiddling new to say, and few new ways in which it might be explored. Any such concerns are nonetheless quickly dispelled by Alice Goffman'due south boggling new volume. On The Run is, past some distance, the most powerful work of ethnography that I have read for a very, very long fourth dimension. The story of its genesis is nearly as remarkable as the story at the heart of the volume. But permit'southward get out that for now and begin with the substance of the book itself.

This is a study of some of the people – mainly the young men, but in important ways the women, sometime and immature, likewise – in a small poor, Black neighbourhood in Philadelphia. Located close to the Academy of Pennsylvania, where Alice Goffman was an undergraduate when she began the fieldwork for this book, '6th Street' is an surface area of about five blocks. Modestly prosperous in the 1950s and 1960s, by the early 2000s it had fallen on much harder times, though every bit Goffman says it was 'not the poorest or the most dangerous neighbourhood in the large Black section of Philadelphia of which it is a role'. That said, given Philadelphia has a homicide charge per unit over ten times that of London, this is hardly especially reassuring.

The core of Goffman's ethnography revolves around a small number of young men – Chuck, Mike, Tim, Reggie, Alex and ane or ii others – and tells the story of their legal entanglements, their 'wars' with other young men from neighbouring territories, their attempts to atomic number 82 some sort of life, to establish themselves as men and, more than anything else, to attempt the incommunicable chore of avoiding the occupying force: the police. These are young men who have grown upwards knowing nothing else, for whom running from the cops is a set of skills that must be caused very early on on, and for whom a 'straight' life is and then difficult to imagine it is rarely even a dream.

As Goffman acknowledges, the phrase 'on the run' but captures one half of these young men'south experiences. Yep, they are regularly seeking to avoid authority in almost all its forms, especially the police and the courts, and the strategies they employ for keeping their heads downwards are described in detail. But the phrase 'on the run' is used interchangeably with the term 'caught upwardly'. For the other problem these young men face – and this is actually the kernel of the Goffman's thesis – is that once known to the system it is very hard to escape. Arrested, charged and mayhap imprisoned, certainly under penal supervision, these young men became, in Goffman'due south terms, 'legally compromised'. Their lives were at present subject to a series of rules and regulations nigh where they could exist seen, what they could do, and who they could be seen with. Any infraction – or, crucially, any alleged infraction – would likely mean an immediate return to prison or the escalation of punishment in some other form. It is this that and then disfigures daily life for nigh everyone in the neighbourhood (though Goffman has some occasional, powerful tales of those struggling to maintain their 'straight' lives. For Mike, Tim, Reggie and others (Chuck was shot and died), life is lived in the main without the basic accoutrements of citizenship. It is a life on the border. It is a fragile life in which 'freedom' could come to an terminate at any time, and for almost whatsoever (or seemingly, no), reason.

In essence, this is a written report of the extraordinary accomplish of the penal system – a reach that goes far beyond the simple affect of the formal systems of prison house, probation, parole and even policing, to go something that influences and infects almost every aspect of a neighbourhood'due south life. In curt, in places like 6th street, the penal system has come to be, after the family unit possibly, the establishment that marks and moulds the lives of poor African-Americans in the 21st Century. The modern carceral state has turned neighbourhoods like this all over America into what Goffman calls 'communities of suspects and fugitives'. Nowhere perhaps is this clearer than in the pressures placed on the women in these communities: on the one hand to protect or defend their men confronting police inquiries (to 'ride'); and on the other to requite them up to the constabulary. In the latter regard in that location seemed almost no limit to which the constabulary would non get to persuade, threaten, or bribery the women into providing information about their husbands, partners, and sons. They were threatened with arrest, prosecution, imprisonment, or with the arrest of other family members if they didn't co-operate, or they were threatened with having their jobs compromised or their benefits removed. About dramatically, and by no means unusually, they were also threatened with having their children removed into care. That it is a precarious life for the men and for the women simply doesn't practice it justice.

As communities of suspects and fugitives these were neighbourhoods that were of course extraordinarily heavily policed. Ironically, they were simultaneously extremely under-protected. The legal entanglements surrounding and then many neighbourhood residents hateful that the constabulary cannot easily, for which read pretty much ever, be contacted for 'help'. As Goffman puts it, pithily, the 'law are everywhere, just equally guarantors of public prophylactic, they are still out of reach'.  The same can be said of other social institutions, for the potential presence of the police – on the lookout man for 'suspects' – makes omnipresence at funerals, hospitals, fifty-fifty workplaces a dangerous activity for the legally compromised. In places similar half dozenth Street an informal wellness care organization has consequently come up into being to provide a broad variety of services that some community members can no longer access via public health care. In one episode, i of the young men, Eddie, breaks his arm and Goffman'southward description of the resetting of the damaged limb – in his female parent's kitchen – is an eye-watering illustration of the impact of beingness caught upward/on the run.

Like all expert ethnographies it is sometimes the small details – from the plates of corn bread and craven offered in part-bounty to the local nurse who reset Eddie's arm, to the nearly throwaway manner in which Goffman reports witnessing the police strangle a young man to death – that sets it apart from other work.  This, and the sheer scale of the enterprise, is what distinguishes On The Run. At the end of the book there is a fifty-folio 'methodological note' in which Goffman begins to reveal the extraordinary lengths she took to immerse herself in half dozenth Street. Beginning as an undergraduate educatee, rather serendipitously she began to tutor two children in the neighbourhood and gradually, by edifice friendships with Chuck, Mike and others, almost imperceptibly became function and parcel of 6th St life. Over the years and so immersed did she become that she left behind much of her previous life and, indeed, much of her previous identity, and she talks movingly, if briefly, about the consequences of this.

Goffman'southward approach – as an educated white woman attempting ethnography in a poor Black customs – was to 'take up equally fiddling social space' as she could. This 'invisibility' translates into her writing. There were numerous occasions when I wanted to know more than near her, to hear more almost her thoughts and feelings, to feel the authorial presence more strongly. But this is not her style. In the methodological note, however, Goffman puts her head a petty above the parapet, beginning for the first time explicitly to hash out the endeavor involved in the work, the risks and dangers she faced, and some of the upstanding dilemmas involved. This 'note' is terrific, and every bit far from a dry out methodological appendix equally it is possible to imagine. Indeed, information technology ends on a notation that is both hugely important and very shocking (deliberately so). I won't spoil it by revealing what she says, and when yous read the book you should wait until the cease also.

This book is already making a pregnant name for itself – and deservedly so. The best part of a decade's work has gone in to it, and the dedication of the ethnographer concerned goes beyond anything one could reasonably wait, or was probably sensible. In an historic period where ideals committees and the increasingly instrumental nature of academic life are making imaginative and risky work less and less possible, one can only exist thankful that in that location are (very) occasional Alice Goffmans around to remind u.s.a. just what tin be achieved by folklore at its best. Every bit a work of ethnography it is outstanding. As a piece of social science information technology is refreshingly and gloriously readable –how frequently tin can i say that of folklore these days? And as an insight into the reach and upshot of the contemporary penal country on the day-to-twenty-four hours lives of Black urban America it is unparalleled.

—————————–

Tim Newburn is Professor of Criminology and Social Policy, London Schoolhouse of Economic science. He is the writer or editor of virtually 40 books, including: Policy Transfer and Criminal Justice (with Jones, Open University Press, 2007); and, Criminology (Routledge, 2012). He is currently writing an Official History of post-war criminal justice (with David Downes and Paul Rock) and, with the Guardian'southward Paul Lewis, a book based on their joint projection, Reading the Riots. He tweets at @TimNewburn. Read more than reviews by Tim.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email