Reddit reviews On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (Fieldwork Encounters and Discoveries)

You could show them the Fair Sentencing Act which was to re-mediate the damages of sentencing laws for possession of crack versus possession of cocaine. This issue was both heavily race and class based.

> In the three decades prior to the passing of the Fair Sentencing Act, those who were arrested for possessing crack cocaine faced much more severe penalties than those in possession of powder cocaine. While a person found with five grams of crack cocaine faced a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence, a person holding powder cocaine could receive the same sentence only if he or she held five hundred grams. Similarly, those carrying ten grams of crack cocaine faced a ten-year mandatory sentence, while possession of one thousand grams of powder cocaine was required for the same sentence to be imposed.

In the book Ain't No Makin' It, Jay Macleod reveals how his study participants were more inclined to do crime or not had a lot of impact on whether family members or people within their in-groups had been to jail or not. This doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with the overall question, but it's an important qualitative aspect that needs considered when thinking about how we view inter-generational crime. It's kind of analogous to how economists have found the representative trend is children earn about the same amount the families they are born into[1] [2]. All in all, the idea is: families pass on skills they've accrued to their own offspring - aka if you're from a wealthy family you pass on ins and outs of not doing crime (or doing white collar crime). If you're from a poorer, crime background family you pass on ins and outs of doing crime.

important detail that isn't opaque

There is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander where she went into her research completely against the idea that there is still a racial caste system in the U.S. The most prominent things she discovered were court cases that upheld random street or bus searches where police harassed (on a daily basis) poor or/and communities of color. Another one is that prisoners count as 3/5ths a person for a lot of census counts. Further from that is that many prisons are being built and located continually further and further away from communities.

There is On The Run by Alice Goffman who conducts ethnographic research on poor, black subjects she tutored and how they conducted their everyday lives, from criminal to non-criminal, and why they were so active in learning to run from law enforcement (as well as teach youth how to).

Note: Idk if tutor is the right word here, light verbatim

I'll address a glaring issue on how the legal system works both structurally and socially: Have you ever texted while driving? Have you were drank underage? Have you ever been suspended in school? Etc etc - depending on who you are, where you live, your race, class, and a myriad of other things impacts the reportability scale. The likelihood that an authority figure is apt to instruct you not to do something or access the system to punish you. Like with the Fair Sentencing Act, another dimension of the crack versus cocaine dynamic was that people who could afford powder cocaine was they were giving lesser sentences and less likely to be reported (aka let go). The biggest take from this is: the legal system works differently both on a structural level and on a social level. For many people who exit prisons, they are still treated as pariahs even though they've "paid their debt to society."

There's also a dialogue on why Prohibition of heroin, marijuana, and alcohol had a lot of racial tones to it. I can't remember my research sources off the top of my head, but I remember during my studies how political slogans and people would speak out during attempts to get the Harrison Act passed that heroin, "inflames the negro to rape" and marijuana was something that made the Mexican immigrant lazy. Interesting note: white, rural women were more likely to use heroin as noted by documents of them being admitted for treatment (before it being outlawed), doctors using heroin on them for treatment, and individual diaries.

All in all, there is a lot to consider. I'll leave with this: given the circumstances and plight of PoC in the U.S., we should think about why they commit crime or why certain things they do [or people think they do] are disproportionally outlawed? As well as a broader question, what is a crime? What makes something or someone criminal?

> You start to break that cycle by letting James have a decent house to raise his family instead of a desperate life that might lead him to self medicate and perpetuate history.

It's not, unfortunately, this simple. As you pointed out, James was born to a heroin addict mother. His IQ is 93, he dropped out of school at the age of 15, and he wasn't doing particularly fantastic in school before then. He wears clothes the way the rest of the people on the street do, his speech is heavily slurred, and he has hard time doing basic skills like showing up on time to keep even the most trivial job. When they nab him for pot at 18, they have to prosecute because he is breaking the terms of his plea deal for the previous violation, and the public defender does not have time for him.

This is a good book to read: https://www.amazon.com/Run-Fugitive-Fieldwork-Encounters-Discoveries/dp/022613671X

It is written by a person who deeply sympathizes with the people in poor black communities, but does expose life there like it is. It is eye opening.

https://www.amazon.com/Run-Fugitive-Fieldwork-Encounters-Discoveries/dp/022613671X

This book gives a pretty clear idea of why running from the cops is a good idea. Innocent or guilty, the chances that an interaction with the police will come out well for a black man are poor.