Alice Goffman's On The Run: Fugitive Life In An American City

On The Run: Fugitive Life in an American City The author Alice Goffman does a remarkable job with the details and really goes above and beyond to understand the subjects at hand. Goffman’s motivation for her study on the fugitive life in Philadelphia caught my attention right from the start. On the Run serves as a kind on eye opener for the war on drugs in the United States. The war on drugs was aimed mostly at young African American men. This destroyed any trust between residents of an urban community and African American’s, especially young men. People that lived in an urban communities felt as if young African American men were just out on the street dealing drugs and causing trouble. This is all because of how the media has us portray young African American men. After six years of very up-close and personal fieldwork in a black working-class neighborhood, 6th street, Goffman became so a part of this community that she started become harassed by the police. She witnessed first-hand police raids, car chases, guns shootings, drug deals, arrests, and saw people being beat by cops or other neighbors. She had to come to realization with this culture quickly. Finding out in her research these young African American men went
When Goffman made her way to the hospitals, furiously taking notes, she found out why a lot of these young men form 6th street do not go to the hospital to get help. She shortly found out that these men when hurt do not get proper care from the hospital because they feel as if they are being “hunted”. The police sometimes lurk around the emergent room looking to find any potential African American male that might have a warrant out for their arrest. I agree with the statement that Goffman makes by pointing out that in America our “parole and probation system is set up for people to fail”. Come to find out by her interviews, most of the boys use jail just as a safe