Judging Addicts: Drug Courts and Coercion in the Justice System

Alternative Criminology

by Rebecca Tiger

The number of people incarcerated in the U.S. now exceeds 2.3 million, due in part to the increasing criminalization of drug over 25% of people incarcerated in jails and prisons are there for drug offenses. Judging Addicts examines this increased criminalization of drugs and the medicalization of addiction in the U.S. by focusing on drug courts, where defendants are sent to drug treatment instead of prison. Rebecca Tiger explores how advocates of these courts make their case for what they call “enlightened coercion,” detailing how they use medical theories of addiction to justify increased criminal justice oversight of defendants who, through this process, are defined as both “sick” and “bad.”

Tiger shows how these courts fuse punitive and therapeutic approaches to drug use in the name of a “progressive” and “enlightened” approach to addiction. She critiques the medicalization of drug users, showing how the disease designation can complement, rather than contradict, punitive approaches, demonstrating that these courts are neither unprecedented nor unique, and that they contain great potential to expand punitive control over drug users. Tiger argues that the medicalization of addiction has done little to stem the punishment of drug users because of a key conceptual overlap in the medical and punitive approaches—that habitual drug use is a problem that needs to be fixed through sobriety. Judging Addicts presses policymakers to implement humane responses to persistent substance use that remove its control entirely from the criminal justice system and ultimately explores the nature of crime and punishment in the U.S. today.

Genres: Nonfiction, Drugs

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2012

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's some critical sociology for you to chew on. 'Judging Addicts' explores the glaring contradictions of an ever expanding criminal legal system, testing its hand at curing a 'medical disease' through coercive behavior modification. No, it's not a Clockwork Orange reprise. This is simply a re-examination of the highly celebrated and widely proliferated 'drug courts.'

Professor Rebecca Tiger tackles the almost ubiquitous conception that drug courts are 'radical revisions' to the criminal legal system, that they are truly an 'alternative' to the otherwise mainstream handling of drug use by the legal system, and that this reform is not only somewhat enlightened, but is actually remarkably effective. Rather than taking these tenants as a given and going forward, Tiger explores the commitment to these perceptions and their seeming inconsistencies.

She argues that in fact, the criminal legal system has always been expanding and 'reforming,' using benevolence as a mere guise for gaining greater social control over a larger population and more aspects of defendants' lives. She also challenges the notion that drug courts are an alternative to mass incarceration, as this tenant inherently presumes that mass incarceration is simply the primary way of dealing with criminalized drug use, which it need not necessarily be. Tiger further elucidates the contradictions between a medicalized notion of drug use and addiction and the fact that drug courts wrestle the treatment for this 'disease' away from the medical field. In turn, by managing this behavior in court, drug courts continue to stigmatize and punish the 'bad' people who use drugs (or, at least people who use 'illegal' drugs and are funneled into the system through hyper-discriminatory policing practices).

While 'Judging Addicts' does not levy an all out assault on drug courts, Tiger does force the reader to adopt a more critical view of these specialized mechanisms that undoubtedly increase the responsibility and scope of a criminal legal system. She challenges the justifications for this practice and suggests that rather than asking 'how to deal with the problem of drug use,' we instead query 'why do we decide that this type of drug use is a problem.' Only by doing so can we adequately understand the harms that these courts aim to address and thus approach them in a realistic way, not through a demand for sobriety and abstinence, as defined by moral righteousness, but rather through a model that promotes health, happiness and well-being for all.

A very interesting and powerful read for anyone working in the criminal legal system or touched by the war on drugs, which, as Tiger and others have noted, is really all of us.

[Sheri Fresonke Harper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rebecca Tiger gives a somewhat slanted overview of the Drug Courts with good descriptions of what happens in the courts and how it affects participants. This might be a good choice for those considering their options of going into drug court or taking their chances with the standard courts system if they suffer from addiction and are found guilty of a drug related offense. Also for families. The author seems offended by the idea that courts would regulate treatment programs rather than the medical community but despite her medical background, she seem to consider illegal drugs in the same light as prescriptions that doctors use to alleviate the problems. This last point may be true, but in the case of prescription drugs, there's been a long history of testing, assessment of how potency affects humans, and careful preparation and monitoring to help prevent addiction. Many medicines target problems or specific areas of the bodies, while with pot and cocaine etc. the user takes their chances.

[Garth Wolkoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book not only changed the way I think about the prison industrial complex, but about myself. I now understand how complicit I am in “judging addicts” and my own thought process behind who is a prisoner and what freedom really means. I am a changed man.

[Aaron Ferguson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read. I have been through the whole drug court thing and this was right on the money.