On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. By Alice Goffman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 261 pp. $25.00 hardcover.

• Published date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12224
• Date: 01 September 2016

On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. By Alice Goffman.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 261 pp. $25.00

hardcover.

Reviewed by Robert Costello, Criminal Justice Department, State

University of New York Nassau Community College

For an undergraduate ethnography class, author Alice Goffman

chose to work in a campus cafeteria where she met Miss Deena, a

30 year employee who supervised it. Goffman quit her job once the

class concluded, but she remained in touch with Miss Deena and

even offered to tutor her grandchildren Ray and Aisha who were

high school students. She began to tutor them two or three nights

per week in Miss Deena’s home, which afforded her a close perso-

nal relationship with the teenagers and over the ensuing months

their family members. Goffman furthered her relationship with

these family members from tutor to neighbor and friend by moving

into the neighborhood of Aisha’s mother. Goffman eventually met

Aisha’s cousin Ronny, a 14-year-old freshly released from a juvenile

detention facility, who lived about 15 blocks away on 6th Street.

Ronny played matchmaker and set up a date between Goffman and

Mike who grew up on 6th Street next door to Ronny’s grand-

mother. Goffman primarily agreed to go on the date to pacify the

concerns of Aisha’s family as to her motivation for spending so

much time with the adolescent, but Mike continued to remain in

contact with her afterward even though there was no romantic link.

Goffman soon began visiting Mike and his circle of friends on 6th

Street, and in March 2003 Mike agreed to Goffman’s request of

allowing her to use his life as the subject of her undergraduate the-

sis due the next year. Eventually, she spent 8 years on 6th Street liv-

ing and socializing with young urban black males who are the

subjects of this fascinating book.

In an Introduction that references Sociologists David Garland,

Loic Waquant, and legal scholar Michelle Alexander, Goffman links

the rise of mass imprisonment to life on 6th Street with special

emphasis on the distinction between “clean and dirty” people. The

difference pertains to the risk of arrest, and those who assist or

remain with “dirty” people such as grandmothers, mothers, and

girlfriends who are called “riders.” The first opening chapters

revolve around people considered “dirty” as they consistently face

arrest for various reasons. Chapter One introduces the young men

she observed—Chuck, Tim, Mike, Reggie, Anthony, Ronny, and

Alex who are all African American living at or below the poverty

level. Goffman informs readers about the scope of this problem—

living on the run—by reporting on a household survey she

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