Forty years in, the War on Drugs has done almost nothing to prevent
drugs from being sold or used, but it has nonetheless created a
little-known surveillance state in America’s most disadvantaged
neighborhoods. Arrest quotas and high-tech surveillance techniques
criminalize entire blocks, and transform the very associations that
should stabilize young lives—family, relationships, jobs—into
liabilities, as the police use such relationships to track down
suspects, demand information, and threaten consequences. Alice Goffman
spent six years living in one such neighborhood in Philadelphia, and
her close observations and often harrowing stories reveal the
pernicious effects of this pervasive policing. Goffman introduces us
to an unforgettable cast of young African American men who are caught
up in this web of warrants and surveillance—some of them small-time
drug dealers, others just ordinary guys dealing with limited choices.
All find the web of presumed criminality, built as it is on the very
associations and friendships that make up a life, nearly impossible to
escape. We watch as the pleasures of summer-evening stoop-sitting are
shattered by the arrival of a carful of cops looking to serve a
warrant; we watch—and can’t help but be shocked—as teenagers
teach their younger siblings and cousins how to run from the police
(and, crucially, to keep away from friends and family so they can stay
hidden); and we see, over and over, the relentless toll that the
presumption of criminality takes on families—and futures. While not
denying the problems of the drug trade, and the violence that often
accompanies it, through her gripping accounts of daily life in the
forgotten neighborhoods of America's cities, Goffman makes it
impossible for us to ignore the very real human costs of our failed
response—the blighting of entire neighborhoods, and the needless
sacrifice of whole generations.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780226136851
Publisert
2018
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
University of Chicago Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter