In class, I brought up the example of Tim’s brush with the system as a convincing example of Goffman’s point that the influence of the incarceration system in the neighborhood was encompassing and unavoidable. Khytie made an additional point that Tim’s story contributed to a theme of loss of childhood and innocence throughout the book. Given the questioning of Goffman’s ethics in writing her ethnography, especially the claim that Tim’s arrest as an accessory was outlandish and unlikely, I’d like to think through this specific case some more.

The situation was this: Tim is named as an accessory to the stealing of the car, and as, a mere eleven-year-old, thus enters the cycle of the incarceration system. Goffman makes a point to note his age. Now, later research claims that this situation was entirely falsified and that there is no way that Tim would have been charged. The article on the ethics of ethnography suggests that such a claim is perhaps less the fault of Goffman and more so the fault of the way this research is traditionally conducted. Goffman was charged with writing a truthful and factual account of the experiences of these young men who lived on the run, but the reality of maintaining the anonymity of these subjects may have resulted in strange inconsistencies in her book. This could explain the Tim story; Goffman was well aware of the ease in which little clues like the details of a case could let a reader to figure out the identity of a subject, but would she have purposefully changed these details so much? It’s possible that Goffman, so deeply emotionally and socially entrenched in the lives of her subjects, was told a story and never bothered to look up its legitimacy, in the same way her telling of hospital stakeouts seemed overly dramatic.

I actually find the squabbling around small inaccuracies like Tim’s story to be unproductive. It could be that the response to Goffman’s book might be a thorough scrubbing of what is real and what isn’t, but I sincerely think her goal was to tell the story of a group of young men she befriended and awaken the general public to a way of life, perhaps talked generally about, but never really seen. If there are inaccuracies in her telling, then maybe it would be helpful to go into why there were such divergences between the reality of the tactics of the police force and the impression that they had on the neighborhood community. Perhaps a larger reformation of the ethics of ethnography in general should be considered. If it is agreed that, by-and-large, her book is a realistic account, then let us move forward with addressing the implications of having a population of this country that lives on the run.