Sociologist Alice Goffman, author of the forthcoming On The Run: Fugitive Life In An American City, found that the fear of prison keeps urban criminals out of steady jobs, long-term relationships, and other conventional institutions:
Goffman argues that the system encourages young men to act shady – “I got to move like a shadow,” one of [research subject] Mike’s friends told her – because a stable public routine could land them back behind bars.
Take work. Once, after Mike was released on parole to a halfway house, he found employment at a Taco Bell. But he soon grew fed up with his crowded house and decided to sleep at his girlfriend’s. That resulted in a parole violation. When Mike went back to the Taco Bell to pick up his paycheck, two parole officers arrested him. He had to spend another year upstate.
Goffman’s research subjects avoided hospitals for similar reasons. One night Mike and his friends Alex and Chuck were shooting dice. On the way home, a man robbed Alex, pistol-whipped him, and pounded his face into a concrete wall. When Goffman and Mike got to Alex, he was drenched in blood, searching for his teeth on the ground. His nose and chin were broken. Yet Alex vehemently resisted being taken to the hospital. Police crowd the emergency room, running the names of young black men through their database, Goffman explains. Alex was on parole, close to completing his two-year sentence. He feared that the police would arrest him or slap him with a parole violation. That would send him back to prison.
The Dish 