Alice Goffman > Quotes

“Together, the chapters make the case that historically high imprisonment rates and the intensive policing and surveillance that have accompanied them are transforming poor Black neighborhoods into communities of suspects and fugitives. A climate of fear and suspicion pervades everyday life, and many residents live with the daily concern that the authorities will seize them and take them away. A new social fabric is emerging under the threat of confinement: one woven in suspicion, distrust, and the paranoiac practices of secrecy, evasion, and unpredictability.”
― Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City

“Thus, the great paradox of a highly punitive approach to crime control is that it winds up criminalizing so much of daily life as to foster widespread illegality as people work to circumvent it. Intensive policing and the crime it intends to control become mutually reinforcing. The extent to which crime elicits harsh policing, or policing itself contributes to a climate of violence and illegality, becomes impossible to sort out.”
― Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City

“On a hot afternoon in July, Aisha and I stood on a crowded corner of a major commercial street and watched four officers chase down her older sister’s boyfriend and strangle him. He was unarmed and did not fight back. The newspapers reported his death as heart failure.”
― Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City

“Staying on top of a son’s legal matters and supporting him through the legal process can be a heavy burden, but it can also be a rewarding way for women to spend their time. It is partly through their efforts to keep their sons out of jail and to support them once they have been taken that women fulfill their obligations as mothers.”
― Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City

“find.”
― Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City

“Sometimes women, too, used jail as a safe haven, calling the police on their sons or partners when they decided the streets had become too dangerous.”
― Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City

“call me later to ask if Marie had shown”
― Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City