The ghetto archipelago?

[vaskidmark]

http://reason.com/archives/2014/11/30/the-ghetto-archipelago

For six years, starting as a University of Pennsylvania sophomore, the sociologist Alice Goffman lived in a black Philadelphia neighborhood that she calls 6th Street. (The place name is a pseudonym, as are the names of the people Goffman describes.) There she immersed herself in the family lives and legal woes of people whose experiences were far removed from her own. In On the Run, her book about the experience, Goffman concludes that the neighborhood is molded by its young men's relationship with the criminal justice system and that such places constitute an archipelago of racially tense police states within a larger liberal democracy.

The police presence in 6th Street is pervasive. Residents, young black men in particular, can expect to be frequently stopped, questioned, and searched. Many initial arrests are for drugs, often possession of marijuana. After that, as Goffman records, the system takes on a horrible logic of its own. Criminal records make employment hard to find, and recurring court dates devour time that might be devoted to work, job searches, or family responsibilities. Without regular income, court fees add up and may prove unpayable. Many of the people Goffman writes about are essentially constant low-level fugitives, hunted by police for missed appointments. Some end up committing additional crimes to pay their accumulating debts to the courts.

...

Goffman's book has won both praise and pushback. Some of the questions its critics have posed are almost inevitable for a work at the intersection of sociology and advocacy journalism. Is the author just recording observations or is she trying to reveal a larger truth? And what about her very palpable presence in the lives of the people under scrutiny-eating alongside them, helping them out of jams, even professing unlikely ignorance under police questioning? How does that influence the final result?

...

The world Goffman captures is not one amenable to easy solutions-though backing off the heavy-handed law enforcement would be a good start.  ....

There are days when I want to travel from university to university, lining up the faculty and kicking them, one by one, in the jimmies.  And then find everyone who took a course from them in the last 25 (or so) years and kicking them in the jimmies, too.

Apparently the closest to personal accountability she comes is discussing how involvement in/dodging the criminal justice system provides an excellent excuse for why someone in that situation cannot find/hold a job, support their spawn, establish a solid relationship with one person to spawn with, etc., etc., etc.

stay safe.

[Boomhauer]

I know plenty of people with criminal records who hold jobs.

The thing is, they actually wanted to get a job, vs. an excuse...same goes for other life responsibilities.

[lupinus]

The scary part is these mental midgets aren't joking.

They are dead nuts serious.

[Ron]

How does a nation go about destroying a failed broken sub-culture and integrate them into mainstream society?

A growing black middle class shows it is happening but at a slower than optimal pace. In the meanwhile the mainstream culture we want to integrate them into is decaying and falling apart.

[AJ Dual]

I think I can agree with "less rigid enforcement" on victimless crimes. Not even on a basis of "social justice", simply because I'm damn tired of paying for the enforcement and incarceration that doesn't change anything. And then yes, once a felon, or someone simply that much less likely to be self supporting because of a tangled web of misdemeanors, fines, and warrants, it turns them into someone with nothing to lose, who is then just that much more likely to cost me more tax money.

Hell, while I still support it as a "good shoot" 100%, if it's true Officer Wilson initially interacted with Brown simply over walking in the street instead of the sidewalk, and not on a BOLO/description for the convenience store robbery, I can't help but think that a blip from the siren and driving on by would have saved us this whole mess.

I still agree that keeping a lid on the ghetto with a "broken windows" theory of policing is important, but only based on crimes and infractions that actually has some component of mens rea and demonstrable harm to someone else. 

Both the American Left and the Right suffer from the most dangerous political affliction, (yes, ultimately the electorate is to blame) of having to look like they're doing something.