On The Run: Fugitive Life in an American City

While the categories of clean/dirty and hot/cool focus on a person’s risk of arrest or a place’s likelihood to draw police attention, residents also draw distinctions among themselves according to how a person treats the legal entanglements of others. Those who continue to have dealings with a young man once he becomes wanted, who protect and aid him in his hiding and running, or who support him while locked up are known as riders—a term signaling courage and commitment. Those who turn on a man once the warrant has come in, or who fail to support a partner or family member once that person is sent to jail or prison, are said to be “not riding right.” Those who go a step further and provide the police with information about the whereabouts or actions of a legally precarious person are known as “snitches” or “rats.” Designations such as the clean person, the dirty person, the hot person, the snitch, and the rider have become basic social categories for young men and women in heavily policed Black neighborhoods.

The first chapters of the book concern the dirty world: the young men spending their teens and early twenties running from the police, going in and out of jail, and attempting to complete probation and parole sentences. These chapters reflect my attempt to understand this world through the eyes of Mike and Chuck and their friends—young men living with the daily fear of capture and confinement. Because the reach of the penal system goes beyond the young men who are its main targets, later chapters take up the perspective of girlfriends and mothers caught between the police and the men in their lives; of young people who have found innovative ways to profit from the legal misfortunes of their neighbors; and finally of neighborhood residents who have managed to steer clear of the penal system and those enmeshed therein. The appendix recounts the research on which this work is based, along with some personal reflection about the practical and ethical dilemmas of a middle-class white young woman reporting on the experiences of poor Black young men and women.

Together, the chapters make the case that historically high imprisonment rates and the intensive policing and surveillance that have accompanied them are transforming poor Black neighborhoods into communities of suspects and fugitives. A climate of fear and suspicion pervades everyday life, and many residents live with the daily concern that the authorities will seize them and take them away. A new social fabric is emerging under the threat of confinement: one woven in suspicion, distrust, and the paranoiac practices of secrecy, evasion, and u