Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support the IDS in College Media Madness! Donate here March 24 - April 8.
Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Author speaks on mass incarceration stigmas

Alice Goffman, a sociology professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, speaks about her book. "On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City" on Wednesday in the SPEA Atrium. Goffman's book shares stories from her experiences while living in a disadvantaged neighborhood in Philadelphia.

Living a double life for six years, Alice Goffman was a typical Ivy League undergraduate at University of Pennsylvania during the day and transformed to a “home girl” of the young men on Sixth Street at night.

In order to collect research for her book, “On the Run,” Goffman spent the greater part of six years of her life on an inner-city stoop in the streets of downtown Philadelphia. Starting as a freshman undergrad, Goffman witnessed a firsthand account of the alleged mass incarceration and the dangers of ineffective, overused police raids.

Goffman, an author and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, read an excerpt of her book “On the Run” and lead a discussion on mass incarceration in America, particularly directed to young African American males, Wednesday in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs atrium.

Sharing the life story of the Taylor family, Goffman described both accounts of mass imprisonment and racial discrimination. The story started with George Taylor as a young boy, working on a plantation in order to have enough money to eat.

She led the audience through Taylor’s major life events, from joining the military in 1959 to provide for his family to being honorably discharged right before the start of the Vietnam War.

The journey continued when Taylor was left to care for his daughter, Linda, when her mother abandoned them and they moved to Sixth Street as the only black family in the neighborhood. Goffman described the street as a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood exemplifying the civil rights movement that slowly became a highly segregated area, even after the times of legal segregation.

“The ghetto that (Taylor) was trying to escape was built around him,” Goffman said.

Later in the book, the men Linda dated were involved in the low level of the crack business, and her addiction started at a young age. Shortly after, she had three sons, which created even more of a financial burden for her and her family.

One son, Chuck, was arrested on aggregated assault charges for pushing another boy in the snow in the school yard during his senior year of high school. Because he was unable to pay his bail of a couple hundred dollars, he was not able to finish his senior year and failed to graduate from high school. This charge haunted him and his family for nearly the rest of his life, leading to other petty charges that brought on ?serious jail time.

The first time Chuck got out of jail, he tried tirelessly for months to find a job to provide for his family and was forced to sell petty amounts of crack to get by and have food to eat, Goffman said.

“It broke my belief in American society as a place for opportunity,” ?Goffman said.

The story concluded with Goffman asking if anyone had a constant fear of being seized by police. Goffman was immersed in a community for six years where this scenario was a never-ending reality for most individuals.

“What I’ve sketched here today is a system of governance,” Goffman said. “We use the uselessness of protection from authorities regardless of the omnipresence.”

The event was made in response to the recent report released by the United States Justice Department deciding not to press charges on police officer Darren Wilson for his involvement in the fatal shooting of teenager Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014, in ?Ferguson, Mo.

The discussion following the story focused on the bipartisan effort that is being made toward criminal justice reform. Goffman said we need to build a new criminal justice system with an emphasis on the word ‘justice.’

Through her book and research, Goffman wanted to be a voice for those who are targeted by police that are tough on crime. She wanted to shift the conversation to the other side of policing that a lot of Americans do not see, exposing the outrages of ?police violence.

As for the civil rights movement of our time, Goffman said she hopes students feel engaged enough to be involved and become part of the movement to end mass incarceration in this very ?racial project.

“We tend to think about justice in a very narrow way,” Goffman said. “Injustice is when you are not rightfully punished.”

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe