She wants readers to understand the inequities these African American boys of 6th Street face, and she shows how the criminal justice system (both law enforcement and the justice/prison system) are not working. While it reads a bit more like a book than a scholarly publication, readers can glean her methodological approach through the footnotes. This quality piece of ethnographic research is a page turner. Mike adopts her as a younger sister, and she comes to live with these boys-studying their every move. She gets a part-time job tutoring an African American girl, Aisha, and soon befriends the boys of 6th Street (pseudonym). Review: Inspired by a college course in her sophomore year, Alice Goffman seeks an ethnographic experience in inner-city Philadelphia. While not denying the problems of the drug trade, and the violence that often accompanies it, through her gripping accounts of daily life in the forgotten neighborhoods of America’s cities, Goffman makes it impossible for us to ignore the very real human costs of our failed response-the blighting of entire neighborhoods, and the needless sacrifice of whole generations. We watch as the pleasures of summer-evening stoop-sitting are shattered by the arrival of a carful of cops looking to serve a warrant we watch-and can’t help but be shocked-as teenagers teach their younger siblings and cousins how to run from the police (and, crucially, to keep away from friends and family so they can stay hidden) and we see, over and over, the relentless toll that the presumption of criminality takes on families-and futures. All find the web of presumed criminality, built as it is on the very associations and friendships that make up a life, nearly impossible to escape. Goffman introduces us to an unforgettable cast of young African American men who are caught up in this web of warrants and surveillance-some of them small-time drug dealers, others just ordinary guys dealing with limited choices.

Arrest quotas and high-tech surveillance techniques criminalize entire blocks, and transform the very associations that should stabilize young lives-family, relationships, jobs-into liabilities, as the police use such relationships to track down suspects, demand information, and threaten consequences.Īlice Goffman spent six years living in one such neighborhood in Philadelphia, and her close observations and often harrowing stories reveal the pernicious effects of this pervasive policing. Summary: Forty years in, the War on Drugs has done almost nothing to prevent drugs from being sold or used, but it has nonetheless created a little-known surveillance state in America’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Published: by University Of Chicago Press On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City

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