Alice Goffman
The University of Chicago Press
277 Pages
Reviewed by John Engelman
On the Run, published in 2014, begins like a good crime novel. It is midnight. Alex and two other friends of the author are outside playing dice. After the game, Alex starts to walk home. He is robbed at gunpoint. The robber pistol-whips him, takes his money, and smashes his face against a concrete wall, knocking out several of his teeth.
Alice Goffman pleads with Alex to go to a hospital. Alex refuses. The police wait at hospital emergency rooms looking for people who have warrants out for their arrest. Being out at midnight is a violation of Alex’s terms of parole. He is supposed to be home by 10:00 pm.
Alice Goffman can write. She is a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin. On the Run is based on her PhD thesis. Her research is based on observations and experiences she had while living in a low income, high crime, black neighborhood as she attended the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate, and a graduate student at Princeton.
Miraculously she was not a crime victim while living in that neighborhood. Liberals usually need to be the victim of at least one black criminal before the high rate of black crime becomes more than a statistic for them.
Perhaps because I have been a victim of black crime, I lack Alice Goffman’s sympathy for Alex. Why was he out at midnight? The terms of parole said he should be home by 10:00 pm. Rules should be obeyed.
I have never been on parole. Nevertheless, in the crime ridden black neighborhood I live in, in one of the most dangerous cities in the United States I would never be out at midnight. I am rarely out at 10:00 pm. I like to be in by two thirty in the afternoon. That is when the juvenile delinquents stop harassing their teachers, leave school, and begin to look for people to rob.
A more serious question I had was: what did Alex do to be on parole? Alice Goffman does not say. Much of the book consists of accounts of young black men who get into trouble for violating terms of parole, missing court dates, and being on the run for having warrants out for their arrest. She rarely tells us what they did to come to the attention of the criminal justice system.
When she does it is usually for something fairly trivial, like getting into a fight in school, or being given a ride in a stolen car. I strongly suspect that the majority of the young black men for whom Alice Goffman feels concern and expects us to share her concern are muggers, armed robbers, burglars, rapists, and perhaps even murderers.
Another factor that impedes the concern Alice Goffman expects me to feel for the youths she writes about is that many of them have children. None of them have wives. Few of them do anything to support their children.
Failure and poverty can happen to anyone. Nevertheless, there is no excuse for crime. There is no excuse for having illegitimate children and expecting the tax payers to support them on welfare.
Alice Goffman compares “the current treatment of poor Black people in US cities,” to that of “persecuted groups throughout history,” such as “the Jews in Europe.”
OK. Lets discuss what happened to “the Jews in Europe.” Hundreds of thousands of them came to the United States during the turn of the last century after suffering over a thousand years of persecution, deportation, pogroms, and efforts at extermination. Most came to the United States with little formal education, no marketable job skills, and all of their belongings in one or two beaten up suitcases.
Many settled in the lower east side of Manhattan. The lower east side became known for tuberculosis, rheumatism, and grinding poverty. It was not known for crime, illegitimacy, and venereal disease. It was also known for the large number of library cards that were issued.
During the 1960’s San Francisco’s Chinatown was the location of a higher percentage of unemployment, tuberculosis, low education, and bad housing than any other neighborhood in San Francisco. In the entire state of California only five people of Chinese descent were in jail in 1965.
Alice Goffman does not admit it, but the methods she complains about have been effective. During the 1960’s the prison population declined. Poverty also declined because of a steady decline in the unemployment rate and War on Poverty programs. But the crime rate doubled. Since 1980 anti poverty programs have been scaled back. Poverty has increased because of that as well as the decline in production jobs with strong unions. But the prison population has tripled. Guess what, the crime rate has also declined by one third.
In the United States there are millions of young men who will not or cannot conform to the demands of civilization. What does Alice Goffman want us to do with these youths? Does she really think that more social welfare spending would transform them into skilled blue collar workers, technicians, and high tech professionals? We already tried that after 1964 with the War on Poverty. The results of the War on Poverty are what Alice Goffman writes about in On the Run.
Alice Goffman mentions in passing that during the 1950’s and 1960’s the neighborhood she writes about was the home of middle class Jews. These in turn were the children and grandchildren of the destitute immigrants I mentioned earlier. She does not mention it, but I am sure that these Jews were not on the run for breaking the terms of parole, and because there were warrants out for their arrest. I am confident that the neighborhood was safe to walk in after dark. I am sure that the adults who lived there were married to the fathers and mothers of their children.
The problem with asphalt jungles is not the neighborhood per se. Many of these neighborhoods look like Georgetown in Washington DC did before it became gentrified. The problem is with the neighbors. Slums are the products of the people who live in them. The Jews who lived in the neighborhood Alice Goffman writes about did not move because of irrational color prejudice. They moved because when the young men Alice Goffman cares about moved in, the crime rate moved up. As the neighborhood became an asphalt jungle, the schools became blackboard jungles.
Toward the end of her book Alice Goffman has a chapter entitled “Clean People.” These are lower income blacks who live in the neighborhood Alice Goffman writes about, but who do not commit crimes. These are not on the run. They are not bothered by the police. They do not fear going to the emergency room of a hospital if they need to.
Unfortunately, Alice Goffman does not praise these clean people for playing the game by the rules, even though they rarely win the prizes. Instead she assumes that “their friends and family go in and out of prison.” She does not acknowledge that these clean people are the primary beneficiaries of the vigorous, effective anti-crime policies she complains about throughout her book.
Blacks do not only have the highest crime rate of any race in the United States. They are most likely to be crime victims. Most violent street criminals ply their trade close to home. Clean people live and work in dangerous neighborhoods. They often get off work from their low wage jobs after 8:00 pm, and have to walk home, or they wait at bus stops where any criminal can find them and rob them.
Like many liberals Alice Goffman is uncomfortable with the concept of individual moral responsibility. She writes, “The question of why some young men wind up in prison and others do not is an age-old one, and I can’t pretend to fully speak to it.” Let me speak to it. The clean people are good people. They deserve to be protected from criminals.
Every black person I have ever liked has been a clean person. Many have probably been victims of more black criminals than I have been. They have not shared Alice Goffman’s sympathy for young black men who are on the run.
Those of Alice Goffman’s persuasion complain about the War on Drugs. I am in favor of legalizing marijuana and de-criminalizing the possession of hard drugs for personal consumption. I do not care if the youths Alice Goffman cares about sell and use illegal drugs. I do not even really care if they shoot at each other, as long as they do not hit innocent bystanders. What bothers me is that they rob, beat up, shoot, kill, and rape people who do not deserve to be treated that way.
Consequently, I lack Alice Goffman’s concern for the large number of criminals in prison. I worry about the large number of criminals out of prison. One of them might murder me later on today when I carry out the trash. I want those criminals to be put into prison. I want them to be kept there until they are too old to commit crimes. I want them to be treated harshly enough to convince their friends in the hood to stop committing all those crimes.
The high cost of incarceration can be reduced by the thorough exploitation of prison labor, the frequent use of capital and corporeal punishment, and the end to educational and recreational opportunities. Criminals have done nothing to earn remedial education and job training. They have debts to pay society.
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Alice Goffman pleads with Alex to go to a hospital. Alex refuses. The police wait at hospital emergency rooms looking for people who have warrants out for their arrest. Being out at midnight is a violation of Alex’s terms of parole. He is supposed to be home by 10:00 pm.
Alice Goffman can write. She is a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin. On the Run is based on her PhD thesis. Her research is based on observations and experiences she had while living in a low income, high crime, black neighborhood as she attended the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate, and a graduate student at Princeton.
Miraculously she was not a crime victim while living in that neighborhood. Liberals usually need to be the victim of at least one black criminal before the high rate of black crime becomes more than a statistic for them.
Perhaps because I have been a victim of black crime, I lack Alice Goffman’s sympathy for Alex. Why was he out at midnight? The terms of parole said he should be home by 10:00 pm. Rules should be obeyed.
I have never been on parole. Nevertheless, in the crime ridden black neighborhood I live in, in one of the most dangerous cities in the United States I would never be out at midnight. I am rarely out at 10:00 pm. I like to be in by two thirty in the afternoon. That is when the juvenile delinquents stop harassing their teachers, leave school, and begin to look for people to rob.
A more serious question I had was: what did Alex do to be on parole? Alice Goffman does not say. Much of the book consists of accounts of young black men who get into trouble for violating terms of parole, missing court dates, and being on the run for having warrants out for their arrest. She rarely tells us what they did to come to the attention of the criminal justice system.
When she does it is usually for something fairly trivial, like getting into a fight in school, or being given a ride in a stolen car. I strongly suspect that the majority of the young black men for whom Alice Goffman feels concern and expects us to share her concern are muggers, armed robbers, burglars, rapists, and perhaps even murderers.
Another factor that impedes the concern Alice Goffman expects me to feel for the youths she writes about is that many of them have children. None of them have wives. Few of them do anything to support their children.
Failure and poverty can happen to anyone. Nevertheless, there is no excuse for crime. There is no excuse for having illegitimate children and expecting the tax payers to support them on welfare.
 |
| Goffman: Black criminals being policed is another Shoah. |
OK. Lets discuss what happened to “the Jews in Europe.” Hundreds of thousands of them came to the United States during the turn of the last century after suffering over a thousand years of persecution, deportation, pogroms, and efforts at extermination. Most came to the United States with little formal education, no marketable job skills, and all of their belongings in one or two beaten up suitcases.
Many settled in the lower east side of Manhattan. The lower east side became known for tuberculosis, rheumatism, and grinding poverty. It was not known for crime, illegitimacy, and venereal disease. It was also known for the large number of library cards that were issued.
During the 1960’s San Francisco’s Chinatown was the location of a higher percentage of unemployment, tuberculosis, low education, and bad housing than any other neighborhood in San Francisco. In the entire state of California only five people of Chinese descent were in jail in 1965.
Alice Goffman does not admit it, but the methods she complains about have been effective. During the 1960’s the prison population declined. Poverty also declined because of a steady decline in the unemployment rate and War on Poverty programs. But the crime rate doubled. Since 1980 anti poverty programs have been scaled back. Poverty has increased because of that as well as the decline in production jobs with strong unions. But the prison population has tripled. Guess what, the crime rate has also declined by one third.
In the United States there are millions of young men who will not or cannot conform to the demands of civilization. What does Alice Goffman want us to do with these youths? Does she really think that more social welfare spending would transform them into skilled blue collar workers, technicians, and high tech professionals? We already tried that after 1964 with the War on Poverty. The results of the War on Poverty are what Alice Goffman writes about in On the Run.
Alice Goffman mentions in passing that during the 1950’s and 1960’s the neighborhood she writes about was the home of middle class Jews. These in turn were the children and grandchildren of the destitute immigrants I mentioned earlier. She does not mention it, but I am sure that these Jews were not on the run for breaking the terms of parole, and because there were warrants out for their arrest. I am confident that the neighborhood was safe to walk in after dark. I am sure that the adults who lived there were married to the fathers and mothers of their children.
The problem with asphalt jungles is not the neighborhood per se. Many of these neighborhoods look like Georgetown in Washington DC did before it became gentrified. The problem is with the neighbors. Slums are the products of the people who live in them. The Jews who lived in the neighborhood Alice Goffman writes about did not move because of irrational color prejudice. They moved because when the young men Alice Goffman cares about moved in, the crime rate moved up. As the neighborhood became an asphalt jungle, the schools became blackboard jungles.
Toward the end of her book Alice Goffman has a chapter entitled “Clean People.” These are lower income blacks who live in the neighborhood Alice Goffman writes about, but who do not commit crimes. These are not on the run. They are not bothered by the police. They do not fear going to the emergency room of a hospital if they need to.
Unfortunately, Alice Goffman does not praise these clean people for playing the game by the rules, even though they rarely win the prizes. Instead she assumes that “their friends and family go in and out of prison.” She does not acknowledge that these clean people are the primary beneficiaries of the vigorous, effective anti-crime policies she complains about throughout her book.
Like many liberals Alice Goffman is uncomfortable with the concept of individual moral responsibility. She writes, “The question of why some young men wind up in prison and others do not is an age-old one, and I can’t pretend to fully speak to it.” Let me speak to it. The clean people are good people. They deserve to be protected from criminals.
Every black person I have ever liked has been a clean person. Many have probably been victims of more black criminals than I have been. They have not shared Alice Goffman’s sympathy for young black men who are on the run.
Those of Alice Goffman’s persuasion complain about the War on Drugs. I am in favor of legalizing marijuana and de-criminalizing the possession of hard drugs for personal consumption. I do not care if the youths Alice Goffman cares about sell and use illegal drugs. I do not even really care if they shoot at each other, as long as they do not hit innocent bystanders. What bothers me is that they rob, beat up, shoot, kill, and rape people who do not deserve to be treated that way.
Consequently, I lack Alice Goffman’s concern for the large number of criminals in prison. I worry about the large number of criminals out of prison. One of them might murder me later on today when I carry out the trash. I want those criminals to be put into prison. I want them to be kept there until they are too old to commit crimes. I want them to be treated harshly enough to convince their friends in the hood to stop committing all those crimes.
The high cost of incarceration can be reduced by the thorough exploitation of prison labor, the frequent use of capital and corporeal punishment, and the end to educational and recreational opportunities. Criminals have done nothing to earn remedial education and job training. They have debts to pay society.
Become a Patron!
