The American Police State
> 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.