
The American Police State - danso
http://chronicle.com/article/The-American-Police-State/142965/
======
spodek
> _Men like him lived a paradox. The penal system was supposed to shape them
> up. But its tentacles had become so invasive that the opposite happened.
> Goffman argues that the system encourages young men to act shady— "I got to
> move like a shadow," one of 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._

This passage described a poor black man in Philadelphia -- the tip of the
iceberg in the story. Today I happened to read about Toronto's mayor and
couldn't help compare the two.

Toronto's mayor is on video smoking crack, is drunk and disorderly in public,
shoves (assaults?) a grandmother, more, and _isn 't even removed from office,_
let alone arrested.

How can anyone have faith in such a system with such gross inequalities? The
differences in cities and countries pale in comparison to the differences in
treatment between the two people.

EDIT: a couple comments point out the differences between the U.S. and Canada
police forces. Fair enough, but as different as Toronto and Philadelphia may
be and as different as Canada and the U.S. may be, I can't imagine those
differences are lost on the men jailed for smaller infractions, asking "What
does it take for a rich, white guy to have to go to jail? ... Why should I
bother trying to stay out if nothing I can do can keep me out?" I'm sure we
could just look at police on Philadelphia's Main Line, maybe ten minutes away,
to find similar effects to avoid the U.S./Canada comparison.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>How can anyone have faith in such a system with such gross inequalities?

The system is working as designed and as intended.

I think people need to rid themselves of this romantic notion that the
government serves "the people" and cops in particular are supposed to protect
the innocent. Both of them are ridiculously childish beliefs. The reality is
much harsher. Adam Smith laid it out more than two centuries ago in his book
Wealth of Nations:

 _" Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property,
is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of
those who have some property against those who have none at all."_

~~~
johnchristopher
> I think people need to rid themselves of this romantic notion that the
> government serves "the people" and cops in particular are supposed to
> protect the innocent. Both of them are ridiculously childish beliefs. The
> reality is much harsher.

That may be so. But if we don't stick to these ideals and try to enforce them
again, and again, and again we'll end up for sure in a much worse situation.

~~~
tokenizer
What ideals? The institutions' roles? The government's structure and
architecture? The people working for the government? The policies being
passed?

The ideals you reference are vague. Do you mean Democracy? Surely you don't
think hierarchical/technocratic institutions legitimized in the use of force
is a necessary arm of Democracy or Liberty?

The idea that any of these institutions commit any morals good is hilarious.
There are people, and there is power. Some people commit acts of moral good
with power (Some Police, Most Firefighters, Most Medics, Some Teachers, Some
Doctors, Some Lawyers, etc..) but many abuse that power to dangerous levels.

But sure. Let's assume the people at the absolute top fight for our interests.
I would much rather have a discussion on power/authority, and what the
absolute minimum is we need to function.

~~~
johnchristopher
> What ideals? The institutions' roles?

Yes, the Institutions' roles.

> Do you mean Democracy? Surely you don't think hierarchical/technocratic
> institutions legitimized in the use of force is a necessary arm of Democracy
> or Liberty?

Are you referring to the US democracy or the democracy I have in my european
country ? What are you really talking about ?

> [..] But sure. Let's assume the people at the absolute top fight for our
> interests.

Not what I said. Don't make it look like I mistake people who abuse ideals for
those ideals, thank you.

edit: Do you really think life was so much better before humans came up with
some institutions to rule themselves ? The outback isn't that far.

PS: of course ideals are vague. We aren't some machines that would just need
the right code to run as an "ideal" society.

~~~
tokenizer
Ultimately, the whole thing comes down to trust.

My point was that power corrupts, and that centralizing that power will only
serve to expediate the process.

That said, if you trust your government, then the whole thing is awesome.
Central planning leads to tough decisions being made to benefit the collective
as a whole.

The problem with this is that I see this collective force being used to
subvert the populace putting it's time/money into it. I know you're probably
coming from a different perspective, but I'm talking about Western Politics in
general.

I understand the goal of trying to make government work, but I just can't see
people having any effect on the government's decisions in Britain and the US
at present time.

Again, I'm mostly speaking in economical terms. The people do get social
progress from time to time with protest and reform. But all economic policy
since the labour uprisings of the 20's/30's/40's, the upper most classes have
been tearing down all of what our (again general Western politics) ancestors
fought for.

~~~
johnchristopher
Ah, I now understand your outlook on these matters a bit clearer. I do agree
with all your points, our governments are failing and betraying us.

Frankly, it would take me thousands of words to express my opinion on the
subject but in the end it would just amounts to "I don't know if it can be
fixed or if humane nature will prevent us forever to live together".

------
eof
In 2003 I was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt; I was in Saratoga NY; I
had just moved out of my apartment.. having gone to school in Troy, NY and I
was working as a "quality assurance analyist" looking for bugs in some lotus
software. My license plates were from TX because I never registered in NY; I
probably was supposed to, I just never did.

The cop pulled me over and was immediately convinced I was running drugs from
Canada to TX. I had been across the border somewhat recenctly, maybe he could
see that(?). I had no previous convictions other than a speeding ticket. My
car was dirty and filled with crap; but I was pretty clean cut and just came
out of an office job like 3 minutes earlier.

I did in fact have a couple pipes and a couple grams of mid grade bud; and I
was dumb and didn't insist on my rights and essentially "let" him search my
car. I made my mistake when he found the little jar and I got cocky; as NY had
recently decriminalized.. so I just told him to give me the ticket and leave
me alone.

He promptly arrested me for "driving while ability impaired"; impounded my
car, nicked my license, I spent the night in jail, was humiliated, I still
can't go back to Canada; I had been detained for 3 hours by the time I was
given a 'sobriety' test; I was literally in the police station by then..
reflecting on it, it was clear I was being fucked with; walking a line with my
arms spread out, bent ninety degrees at the waist, told to turn around without
lifting my feet.

I hired the only lawyer I could afford, who basically did nothing but show up
for me; paid him 500 bucks and about that in fines; but it has haunted me ever
since.. and I was literally 100% sober in every way. I have never trusted cops
since then as a whole; though I have personally come to know a couple that
have eased my deep hatred somewhat.

My story here I know isn't directly related to the article; but it was an
extreme abuse of power by a cop exerting his authority over what was genuinely
a punk-kid; and I just wasn't in a position to do anything about it, both
financially and because I didn't know then what I know now.

~~~
rdtsc
> I have personally come to know a couple that have eased my deep hatred
> somewhat.

I have quite the opposite experience if you wish. I was never personally
abused or treated unfairly by the cops during a stop. But, I still distrust
cops. If anything because of the ones I met in an informal settings. In my
extended family and network of acquaintances there are 3 cops. And 2 of them
physically abuse their wives and kids, are very brutal and scary. In fact if I
didn't know they are cops they could just as well fit the profile of street
thugs.

~~~
blhack
Just to throw another anecdotal counterpoint your way: I also know several
cops (detectives and a Sergeant, actually), and they are the definition of
good people. the conversations I have with them generally either revolve
around the stuff they're doing with their kids (and me trying to get them to
some of the youth programs I help with), and them dealing with the frustration
of not being able to do enough.

not all cops are good, maybe most of them aren't good. But they definitely
aren't all bad, and the good ones hate the bad ones at least as bad as you and
I do.

~~~
dethstar
The good ones might hate the bad ones but theres nothing they can do, or
nothing theyll do. Look at that stop and frisk video from new york, they
interview a "good" cop, he admits theres lots of wrong things but hey, thats
how things are, thats what makes the "good" cops as bad as the other. In the
end theyre just dogs for the states and are trained to follow orders.

~~~
saraid216
They're people who have been trained to be afraid of normal citizens and feel
an obligation to protect those who understand their stresses and burdens from
those who don't.

You want sympathy from a cop? You want to get the good cops to push out the
bad ones? Show them that you understand what they go through. Show them that
you're not exceptional in that respect. Show them that they have nothing to
fear from you and yours. Show them that you'll back them up if they do the
right thing.

It's like hackers. They're all spoiled white neckbeards living in their
parents' basements slobbily eating pizza, right? Just like all the cops are
donut-munching bullies cruising around in their cars banging on doors because
it's funny, right?

~~~
anonyHN
I don't understand how LEOs have been trained to be afraid of normal citizens?
Do you perhaps mean criminals when you say citizens? I'm struggling to think
of any reason a LEO would be afraid of a normal citizen, or any instance in
recent memory of a normal citizen's complaint compromising a LEOs
position/lively hood.

Your comment might make sense, and the attitude you suggest might be
appropriate, if police ever took the initiative to take care of the abuses
within their own departments. Unfortunately time and time again its been shown
not to happen. When it takes people like Frank Cerpico to get anything done
(at great risk to themselves) the sort of attitude you propose doesn't really
cut the mustard.

------
Amadou
_Yet Alex vehemently resisted being taken to the hospital. Police crowd the
emergency room, running the names of young black men through their database_

Seems to me that the hospitals that _let_ this happen in their ERs have
forgotten their mission -- to heal people. They may have come up with some
rationalization that says it is not a technical violation of doctor-patient
confidentiality, but it sure as shit is a violation of the intent of that
precept which is if you can't trust your doctor you won't get medical
treatment.

As a comparison, after the PATRIOT Act was passed librarian associations stood
up to the surveillance state by starting to redesign their computerized
lending systems to be resistant to national-security-letter searches. Instead
of keeping a lending history, as soon as a book is returned all records of it
being borrowed are purged. That privacy is important for exactly the same
reason, a borrowing history can be very revealing - medical books, law books,
financial books, they can reveal quite a bit of personal information and if
people feel like they are being watched, they simply won't borrow the books
they need. You'd think doctors would stand up for their patients at least as
much as librarians.

[http://www.ila.org/advocacy-
files/pdf/Confidentiality_Best_P...](http://www.ila.org/advocacy-
files/pdf/Confidentiality_Best_Practices.pdf)

------
sologoub
>"In modern history," Goffman writes, "only the forced labor camps of the
former U.S.S.R. under Stalin approached these levels of penal confinement."

That's actually a pretty offensive comparison. Stalin's regime resulted in an
untold number of completely innocent people being worked to death. There was
no due process, no hope of any humane treatment. Just terror and dumb luck
that kept people from being picked out of a crowd.

Maybe my views are biased by growing up in Russia, but such rhetoric seems to
use horrors of the past to advance a particular agenda, that has little to do
with the horrors themselves. It also denies the respect and dignity to those
innocents that died.

The very introduction admits that there were drugs and guns in the apartment,
so crimes happened and unfortunately, people are being prosecuted with
somewhat questionable methods. But how is this the same as NKVD coming for you
in the middle of the night and you are never heard of again?

~~~
declan
>"There was no due process"

If you have an unjust law on the books, you can have all the due process you
want while being arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced, and jailed, and that
doesn't help you one whit.

~~~
loxs
Actually, that was exactly the case in the Eastern Block. All those laws for
"crimes against the state" were on the book. Most of the GULAG prisoners were
in fact jailed after a "due process". And I think it's the same now with the
US. Tons of laws that you can never be sure you are not breaking. Tons of laws
that everyone is breaking (copyright law, anyone?) etc. Every empire will
collapse eventually. Under its own weight.

~~~
sologoub
The laws were on the book, but the due process, as understood in the western
societies, includes the presumption of innocence and proof of the crime.

For most victims of the GULAG, the charges were false, confessions obtained
with force, and witness testimony made up. Essentially, if I don't like
somebody, I just make an anonymous report to NKVD, and 99% chance is that
they'll disappear. That doesn't sound like the due process we all know in the
US...

~~~
declan
You're missing the point. If the crime on the books is "criticizing the
government," you can have all your procedural due process safeguards of
presumption of innocence and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But I'll still
get you convicted and thrown in prison for the rest of your life, Gulag-style.

Again, folks: it's necessary to ensure that criminal laws on the books are
just and reasonable (see malum prohibitum vs. malum in se) and that due
process is followed when enforcing those laws. Due process when enforcing a
law that's unjust leads to unjust results.

------
pstuart
And a keystone of this madness is the War on Drugs. End it, and the police
will have a _lot_ less to do...

~~~
Amadou
Even if the War on Drugs was cancelled today, we'd still be dealing with the
criminal effects for decades. When prohibition was repealed, all the criminals
who had been bootlegging didn't decide to start living straight lives, they
switched to other criminal enterprises. Prohibition was a big part of how the
mafia got a foothold in the US.

Its even plausible that massive decriminalization would lead to more work for
the police. I'd like to think it would be more productive work though, instead
of just hassling easy targets like so many do now.

~~~
pstuart
Yeah, the criminals will become bankers.

------
xacaxulu
Alice Goffman might be one of the bravest women of our generation. She's a
true revolutionary.

~~~
tga_d
I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, she was very brave for
wilfully going into that sort of an environment, and a very intelligent
person. But remember that there are thousands who live in a similar manner in
just that city alone - people who have been living in these environments for
their entire lives, and who come to much of the same conclusions that she has,
only without academic language or a parent's name. After a run-in with law
enforcement that left me with a bitter taste (I was arrested for a crime I
wasn't guilty of), and seeing first hand many of the horrors of the justice
system I had only heard or read about, I asked a friend of mine who had spent
a decent amount of time in jail what he thought the justice system believed it
doing for him by sentencing him. He responded that jail time was never about
changing the people inside, it was about how everyone else felt outside. This
is arguably the entire premise of Goffman's work: the police crack down on
frankly minor charges in predominantly black areas has nothing to do with
actual safety or reform for those individuals. "But after braving violence and
intimidation to get this story, Goffman now faces a different challenge. How
can she keep the focus on black poverty, and not her own biography?" Indeed.
No, Alice Goffman is neither the "one of the bravest women of our generation"
nor a "revolutionary," she's an academic who is well-off enough to get in the
paper and sell books. Who knows, maybe her book could be the "Silent Spring"
of the prison-industrial complex, but don't deify her like that - it belittles
the people who actually do get coerced, imprisoned, and killed for living
their lives.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Honestly I'm sure it's great and all that but these conclusions are hardly
earth shattering. They are basic conclusions educated and uneducated but
streetwise people have held for years anyway. Nothing groundbreaking. Sorry to
say but the story is what is interesting, not the revelation of the war on
drugs or whatever.

------
st0neage
> "What her research shows is that these institutions may be self-defeating
> and may carry very significant social costs," Western says. "And so the
> whole effort to improve public safety through criminal-justice supervision
> and through incarceration may have significantly backfired, and may in many
> ways have contributed to the ongoing poverty and shortage of opportunities
> that we see there. That's a fairly new story."

Everybody with half a brain has known this forever.

~~~
FedRegister
So what do we do? It's all good and well that we've made this observation, but
what do we do about it?

------
rurounijones
Kind of ironic that the article talks about how she is annoyed that the story
is focusing on her.

At which point the article basically starts focusing on her.

------
austinl
On a similar topic, I would highly recommend the book The Birth of the Prison
by Michel Foucault. [http://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Punish-The-Birth-
Prison/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Punish-The-Birth-
Prison/dp/0679752552)

------
john103141
I hold a degree in Sociology but I lack the teary eyed outlook on life which
seems a requirement if one if going to make a name for themselves in the field
of Sociology in this era. For that reason I also earned a degree in
engineering and opted for a steady income instead. But, like so many other
sociology majors, I read nearly everything Erving Goffman ever published. For
a time I was a nearly complete fanatic of his work and style. Unfortunately,
Alice Goffman's writing lacks the depth of her father's studies; indeed
American Police State is just another Martinique Hotel handwringer complete
with all the hopelessnes and despair as the subtext. Why can't sociology
majors ever concentrate on the individuals who grow up in ghettos and get on
with life? Surely they must represent the majority.

I believe that as long as sociologists continue to write in the Martinique
Hotel manner an undue number of tears will be shed without any real work being
done. In physics such a machine would be one-hundred percent entropic, i.e.
fuel in, nothing out. Or, in the case of Alice Goffman's piece, tears in,
nothing out. It is time for a new generation of sociology majors to
concentrate on the winners and do research on them to see what makes them
different, i.e. such as making the right decisions before acting.

Pitiless in Seattle

------
wrongc0ntinent
This is a pretty misleading title. As to its actual subject, best of luck with
the book.

edit: Just pointing out the clickbait aspect. It's hyperbole, not the
technical usage.

------
tootie
Not to make light of this serious subject, but this isn't what a Police State
is. A Police State refers to use of the police for political ends. Like
arresting dissidents or placing armed guards next to voting booths. It does
not refer to overly aggressive enforcement and certainly not to the
enforcement of laws some people don't like. Drug prohibition was a response to
public outcry and we live in a democracy.

~~~
tehwalrus
It is argued in one of the comments (on the link) that this is a response to
the civil rights movement of the '60s - if you can't legally exclude the
Minority Ethnic community from voting, lock them all up instead.

I'm not saying that's a true analysis, but it's certainly one way to make this
story seriously political. Even if you just make it about stopping poor people
voting, instead of some other subdivision, it's still leaks out of the "law
and order" debate.

~~~
tootie
That's a roundabout argument and I don't think you can prove any criminal
intent about that. Unless you can prove that the political process encourages
the targeting of minorities, then it's just an enforcement issue. And not
every state will ban you from voting for a non-violent offense.

~~~
tehwalrus
It doesn't have to be "criminal" on the part of the law makers/enforcers to be
a political issue - your bar is too high there. cf "institutionally
racist"[1].

On the point of who bans you from voting, I think that's hardly the point -
the types of crimes that are common in these communities are felonies.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism)

------
tsotha
I can't help wondering what the black women in the neighborhood thought of
Miss Goffman.

------
squozzer
It's quite possible the purpose of the criminal justice system is to remove
the young male (and dare I say black?) population from the breeding cycle.

Is that a falsifiable hypothesis?

~~~
anoncowherd
Well, they _do_ breed just fine even in the current system.

------
l33tbro
Bad conversion strategy for the publisher. I was on Amazon ready to buy. Maybe
don't publicize this until it's available to the public (book comes out in
April next year)

------
thenerdfiles
Right. Okay, Upstartuppers, let's play _Reconstruction of the Bottom Line_.

> Men like him lived a paradox. The penal system was supposed to shape them
> up. But its tentacles had become so invasive that the opposite happened.
> Goffman argues that the system encourages young men to act shady—"I got to
> move like a shadow," one of Mike's friends told her—because a stable public
> routine could land them back behind bars.

If an African American man walked into your startup, given some negligible*
felony history and a "shady look", but showed you an SPA he built in prison,
how would the "culture fit" measure factor in your decision procedure to hire
him?

*: And [if] you do hire him, do you poke and prod for social metadata until you discover this feature of his personality?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Depends on the felony. Selling drugs? Fine by me. Theft, fraud, or something
involving dishonesty or harming people against their will? Not a chance.

I probably will subject him to extra scrutiny given that different criminal
behaviors tend to be correlated, i.e. P(dishonest|drug dealer) > P(dishonest).

In contrast, if they have a postmodernist epistemiology [1] (or even worse, an
inconsistent one), they've got no shot. A die hard frequentist would also have
a hard time compared to an honest drug dealer.

[1]
[http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/regiftedxmas12.html](http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/regiftedxmas12.html)

~~~
freshhawk
Thanks for that link, I've found explaining that difference to people to be
difficult sometimes. There is some helpful stuff in there.

------
mortyseinfeld
Yeah, this is what happens when people defer to government authority as a
consequence of looking to government to solve all their problems. This leftist
shift will only make the situation worse.

~~~
enraged_camel
Hilarious.

Would you rather leave this to capitalist corporations or the free market? I
mean, maybe we should just have lots of Blackwaters running around performing
"protection" services for the highest bidder.

~~~
aric
> _" capitalist corporations"_

"Capitalist corporations" are the direct result of corporate states serving
corporate law. The irony in your comment is strong. Blackwater and its
derivations became powerful specifically because of [the many] having their
labor (e.g. taxation) and choice (e.g. systemic control) forcefully deferred
to [the few] of _the state (in its singular, arbitrary version of existence)_.
The rest of the US military is already nearly _wholly_ dependent on so-called
private interests. Realistically, there is no difference between private and
public entities on this same platform. Either an entity is accountable to such
oligarchical 'control' or it is not.

> _Free market_

Like most terms that become distorted and perverted through political
propaganda, a "free market" can have wildly different meanings. You may find
that you support a freer market.

A free market as some people define it is one in which groups of trade
(businesses) are _less powerful_ because "corporations" would not exist in
law. People would exist. Business would exist. Legal buffers from
responsibility of actions would not exist. Those buffers currently afford the
largest corporations of today the luxury of exploiting people and land through
the use of government -- not only protecting directors from their violent
actions but also increasing the platform where police/military force serves
their corporate law. In a free market where abstract entities are not state-
protected, all actions fall under the same domain of scrutiny. Frameworks of
law as far as business is concerned would be relegated to protecting people
_from_ direct contractual fraud or abuse, only to the extent financial or
physical damage is _actually_ taking place. Therefore, egregious economic
fines and prison sentences for non-violent actions that disobey corporate law
would be a token of more brutal eras. Systems of this sort are often paired
with models that give people, the public, more direct control over the flow of
their own labor/money, thereby making it harder for abusive or surreptitious
entities (e.g. every war/surveillance company) to gain vast power through the
current top-heavy, centralized money pools of a government's taxation. A
transition to more human freedom such as this isn't possible overnight; but it
is worth aspiring to in the evolution of governmental systems. That's
humanist.

Other people define a "free market" as a system in which corporations are
still greatly protected yet even less susceptible to recourse by people.
That's problematic.

~~~
primroot
There are few comments without links that are worth reading. I think this is
definitely one of them.

~~~
aric
Thank you. I truly appreciate your kind words.

------
groupthinker
This submission is not "Hacker News".

~~~
bananacurve
It is how HN is now. It is not up voted because because they want America to
improve, it is upvoted because they want to pretend America is failing. I can
sort of understand the attitude as Europe should really have more power in the
world but don't for reasons that are unclear.

------
Grue3
Did I accidentally stumble onto /r/politics on reddit or what? A bunch of
first worlders complaining about "police state" in their first world country.
Give me a break.

