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Book Cover
E-book
Author Goffman, Alice, author.

Title On the run : fugitive life in an American city / Alice Goffman
Published Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2014

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 277 pages)
Series Fieldwork encounters and discoveries
Fieldwork encounters and discoveries.
Contents The 6th Street boys and their legal entanglements -- Techniques for evading the authorities -- When the police knock your door in -- Turning legal troubles into personal resources -- The social life of criminalized young people -- The market in protections and privileges -- Clean people -- Conclusion: a fugitive community -- Epilogue: leaving 6th Street
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. 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. Alice 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. 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. 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references
Notes Print version record
Subject Criminal justice, Administration of -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
African American youth -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
African American youth -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia -- Social conditions
Discrimination in criminal justice administration -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
Racial profiling in law enforcement -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
Imprisonment -- Social aspects -- United States
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Criminology.
Criminal justice, Administration of
Discrimination in criminal justice administration
Imprisonment -- Social aspects
Racial profiling in law enforcement
Feldforschung
Kriminalität
Unterschicht
Straffprocess.
Diskriminering.
Afro-amerikaner.
Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
United States
Philadelphia, Pa.
Verenigde Staten.
Förenta staterna -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780226136851
022613685X