Policing addiction in a new era of therapeutic jurisprudence -- Drug court paternalism and the management of threat -- Today is the first day of the rest of your life : rehabilitative practice within therapeutic communities and the history of Synanon -- Control and agency in contemporary therapeutic communities -- Gender, sexuality and the drugs lifestyle -- Retrenchment and reform in the war on drugs.
Summary:
Situating drug courts in a long line of state projects of race and class control, Kerwin Kaye details the ways in which the violence of the state is framed as beneficial for those subjected to it. He explores how courts decide whether to release or incarcerate participants using nominally colorblind criteria that draw on racialized imagery. Rehabilitation is defined as preparation for low-wage labor and the destruction of community ties with "bad influences," a process that turns participants against one another. At the same time, Kaye points toward the complex ways in which participants negotiate state control in relation to other forms of constraint in their lives, sometimes embracing the state's salutary violence as a means of countering their impoverishment. Simultaneously sensitive to ethnographic detail and theoretical implications, Enforcing Freedom offers a critical perspective on the punitive side of criminal-justice reform and points toward alternative paths forward.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.