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

A good book, full of important information. It really opened my eyes to how problems with the law can affect not only the young urban black men who first commit an infraction, but their families and loved ones, and for their entire lives. The book showed me that while it's easy for an outsider to dismiss their problems as being of their own making, the justice system really does make it harder for affected people to go clean and better their situation once they've committed an infraction, nearly no matter how small.

The book itself started out strong, but weakened in the middle, with (I thought) relatively little new information being provided, or at least no information that rivalled the power of that in the early chapters. And I never really felt like the book was building to a unified conclusion. As a result, it was slow going for a while, to the point where I considered not reading the research methodology at the end. I'm glad I stuck it out, though, as this section was nearly the most engaging.