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On the Run
- Fugitive Life in an American City
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
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On the Run
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Publisher's Summary
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 livings 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.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Gordon Hardy
- 2022-02-19
On The Run From Grim Facts
I listened to this book with an open mind because John McWhorter had made some favorable comments about the author, Alice Goffman. As a white Canadian, I knew little about the lives of young black men, their families, and friends in poor Black American communities.
As much as Gottman tries to portray the young men she befriended in the most postive light, the book is instead a damning indictment of the criminal pathology affecting the community that she describes. It is true, as she observes, that the 6th Street boys grow up in extremely troubling situations characterized by poverty, drug-addicted mothers, and mostly-absent fathers. It is little wonder then that, by their early teens, the boys get juvenile records for fighting and petty drug trafficking. After they become adults, they continue to commit crimes like assault, robbery, and more serious drug trafficking. As a result, they have criminal records or are on the run from the police because of open arrest warrents. Even when the justice system gives them a break - such as conditonal probation or time in a half-way house - they seem unable to meet their probation conditions,such as avoiding drugs or observing curfews. According to Goffman, these young men live precarious lives because they are on the run but the true story is that they are repeat criminal offenders.
What is even more disturbing is the negative effects these men have on their lives of the women around them, their mothers, their baby moms, and their girlfriends. As described by Goffman, these women spend their lives attending court dates, visiting prisons, and gathering money to send to their men in prison. For them, it is a matter of motherly love and loyalty to support these men in everything they do.
Goffman does decribe some young Black men who, despite growing up in the same neighborhood, who manage to stay "clean" (unemcumbered by legal problems, arrest warrents, etc.) who have regular lives. They do this by avoiding "dirty" persons. They have jobs, stay off the streets, and reasonable prospects for a good life. These are the people to be admired. Goffman's sympathy for the "legally compromised" young men she befriends is misplaced.
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