Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs

Book Review: Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. New York: Picador, 2014. ISBN: 978-1250065667 (Paperback). 279 Pages. $16.00.[Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2016 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]In her book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, sociologist Alice Goffman provides readers with an eye-opening and evocative examination of how urban young men become hopelessly entangled in the criminal justice juggernaut. To conduct her ethnographic study, the author spent seven years living in an impoverished neighborhood to which she refers throughout the book as 6th Street, in Philadelphia. According to Goffman, 93% of the residents in this neighborhood are African American, and virtually all of the families in the community receive some type of governmental assistance. Throughout her book, Goffman documents the various methods by which law enforcement personnel seek to control the urban poor. The author candidly discusses how young men living within these inner city areas are often subjected to police harassment, and she claims to have witnessed numerous acts of police brutality. As she writes in the opening of her book, "I watched the police punch, choke, kick, stomp on, or beat young men with their nightsticks" (4).One aspect of Goffman's book that may be of particular interest to many scholars is the differentiation she makes between clean and dirty residents, namely young men, who live in and around 6th Street. The author contends that if an individual is clean, he does not have any impeding legal entanglements and therefore has the ability to successfully navigate his way through the neighborhood with little or no interference from authorities. Goffman contends that, all-too-often, however, most residents of 6th Street and the adjoining neighborhood blocks are dirty, a term which indicates that officials will likely seize this individual if they come into contact with him. In addition to having runins with law enforcement authorities, Goffman also asserts that young men who are dirty are often taken advantage of other people living within impoverished communities. For example, she provides one example in the book involving two residents inviting a man who was on the run to their home for the sole purpose of robbing him at gunpoint. Goffman remarks that this individual was an easy mark, namely because he had a warrant out for his arrest which virtually guaranteed he would not contact the police after he had been victimized.In On the Run, Goffman also informs her readers that residents who are wanted by the authorities (or those considered to be dirty), may avoid seeking medical attention. She writes that on a slow night, police officers stake out hospitals, which are hotspots where they can often find young men who are wanted by the criminal justice system. Goffman even claims in her book that police routinely investigate the names of individuals who visit the hospital as well as those who are admitted. For instance, she writes, "It is standard practice in the hospitals serving the Black community for police to run the names of visitors or patients while they are waiting around and to take into custody those with warrants or those whose injuries or presence there constitutes grounds for a new arrest or a violation of probation or parole" (34). Goffman also provides readers with real-life examples she witnessed, involving young fathers unwilling to be present at the birth of their child out of a genuine sense of fear that they might be arrested or detained should they go to the hospital. I found this aspect of the book to be particularly unsettling, especially in light of the fact that by federal law, medical facilities are required to grant patients a certain amount of confidentiality.In her book, Goffman also asserts that one of her subjects, "Chuck," a divorced father, was reluctant to visit his child on Sundays at a courtsupervised day-care site. …

On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City

All prisoners have their identity stripped from them and, ultimately, reconstructed by the institutions in which they are incarcerated. However, for life and indeterminately sentenced prisoners the...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1462474518822487

‘Always gotta be two mans’: Lifers, risk, rehabilitation, and narrative labour:

Over the past two decades, two converging social trends have jeopardized the welfare of some of the nationʼs most troubled—and vulnerable—youths. Beginning in the 1980s, a rising tide of teenage violence led virtually every state to pass laws mandating severe penalties for violent young offenders and reducing the discretion of juvenile court judges to screen out those with mental disorders. At the same time, state after state saw the collapse of public mental health services for children and the closing of residential facilities for disturbed youths.

Double Jeopardy: Adolescent Offenders with Mental Disorders

Prisons under protest

The article explores how teenage boys (aged 15–18 years old) in an English young offender institution (YOI) engage in and construct prison violence. Focusing on the relationship between violence and the performance of adolescent prison masculinities, it presents three key findings. First, there are key differences between juvenile and adult prison violence (behaviour that is framed in terms of being a ‘real man’ or a ‘little boy’). Second, the performance of masculinity is complicated by the striking vulnerability of child prisoners and masks the real problems that all young people experience ‘handling jail’. Third, the performance of ‘manhood’ is an unfinished, negotiated and incomplete work where young people exist in a state of liminality and ‘kidulthood’, catapulted into premature adulthood but retaining aspects of their childhood sensibilities and needs. Thus, gendered performances are mediated and constructed in accordance to youth and adulthood.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1748895817741519

'Kidulthood': Ethnography, juvenile prison violence and the transition from 'boys' to 'men'

The use of physical restraint with children in penal custody has been the source of widespread concern following the restraint-related deaths of two teenage boys in 2004. Eleven years later, deep disquiet remains. Drawing upon empirical research conducted in an English young offender institution, this article assesses the key problems associated with the use of restraint and the extent to which forthcoming reforms will address the identified concerns. It argues that, thus far, the treatment of child prisoners has not given appropriate recognition to the status of the child prisoner as a child and independent rights holder with the effect that physical restraint has been used inappropriately, routinely and, in the worst cases, unlawfully, exposing children to harm. Notwithstanding the intended reforms, further legislative, policy and systemic change is required to give primacy to the status of child prisoners as children and fulfil the State's obligations under international human rights law.

Who needs restraining? Re-examining the use of physical restraint in an English young offender institution

The death of a child in penal custody is an infrequent, but particularly tragic, event. In seeking to explain such events, the tendency has been to focus on individual pathology or vulnerability. This article begins from the premise that in order to better understand child deaths in penal custody, it is necessary to move beyond such explanations and consider the wider systematic, cultural, operational, and policy issues. It contributes to the debate by exploring the specific ‘pains of child imprisonment’ as narrated by teenage boys (aged 15–17 years) in an English young offender institution (YOI). It is argued that, trapped in ‘kidulthood’, the dual status of child prisoners poses experiential, conceptual, and practical complexities, but it also produces pains, losses, and burdens that are unique to childhood.

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A Childhood Cut Short: Child Deaths in Penal Custody and the Pains of Child Imprisonment

This paper offers a consideration of the origins and rise of the civil ‘gang injunction’ (CGI) in England and Wales (often dubbed the ‘Gangbo’ in the news media). In contrast with other disposals which blur civil and criminal process (such as the Antisocial Behaviour Order) the Gangbo has received very little scrutiny. In examining recent cases of gang related violence, this paper raises questions about the purpose and efficacy of such disposals as currently used. Specifically, it asks: if the CGI is targeted at criminal activity, then why is a civil order being used, and how useful and purposeful will it be as one element of a wider anti-gang strategy? Additionally, it questions the potential negative consequences associated with the expansion in use of CGIs, especially given that ‘youth’, ‘crime’ and ‘gangs’ are increasingly being connected in official political narrative and the burdens of evidence for a CGI are not made under the higher threshold of the criminal standard.

An ASBO for violent gangsters or just continuing criminalisation of young people? Thinking about the value of “Gangbo”’

During the last 30 years, the way in which children give evidence in the criminal justice system in England and Wales has been radically transformed. These reforms have, however, neglected child su...

/pdf/what-happens-in-the-beginning-matters-in-the-end-achieving-1ooa55f0xs.pdf

Kate Gooch

Papers

'Kidulthood': Ethnography, juvenile prison violence and the transition from 'boys' to 'men'

Who needs restraining? Re-examining the use of physical restraint in an English young offender institution

A Childhood Cut Short: Child Deaths in Penal Custody and the Pains of Child Imprisonment

An ASBO for violent gangsters or just continuing criminalisation of young people? Thinking about the value of “Gangbo”’

What Happens in the Beginning, Matters in the End: Achieving Best Evidence with Child Suspects in the Police Station: