TY - CHAP
T1 - Diagnosing the criminal addict
T2 - Biochemistry in the service of the state
AU - Whetstone, Sarah
AU - Gowan, Teresa
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - Purpose - Since the mid-20th century, drug addiction in America has increasingly been redefined as a disease and diagnosed as a widespread yet treatable disorder. The idiosyncrasies of addiction as a disease, however, have tended to block the journey of the addict from stigmatized moral failure to therapeutic reprieve. Centering in on the process of the "courtled diagnosis" of addiction, this qualitative case study uses ethnography and interviewing at a county drug court and one of its "partner" therapeutic communities to examine the process in detail, from the first negotiations between treatment and court personnel over the eligibility of the client, to the gradual inculcation of an addict identity by means of intensive cognitive education and behavioral modification. Methodology/approach - Qualitative: ethnography and interviews. Findings - We demonstrate that a shift from moral judgment to therapeutic sympathy is particularly unlikely for the fast-growing mass of criminal offenders whose diagnosis is spearheaded by the state in the form of the therapeutic jurisprudence of the drug court. For this group, the emphasis on the need for comprehensive resocialization and the close cooperation between the intimacies of therapeutic "rehab" and the strong arm of criminal justice "backup" not only maintains, but intensifies, moral tutelage, and stigmatization. Social implications - The convergence of drug treatment and criminal justice tends to produce yet another stigmatizing biologization of poverty and race, lending scientific validity to new forms of criminalizing and medicalizing social hardship.
AB - Purpose - Since the mid-20th century, drug addiction in America has increasingly been redefined as a disease and diagnosed as a widespread yet treatable disorder. The idiosyncrasies of addiction as a disease, however, have tended to block the journey of the addict from stigmatized moral failure to therapeutic reprieve. Centering in on the process of the "courtled diagnosis" of addiction, this qualitative case study uses ethnography and interviewing at a county drug court and one of its "partner" therapeutic communities to examine the process in detail, from the first negotiations between treatment and court personnel over the eligibility of the client, to the gradual inculcation of an addict identity by means of intensive cognitive education and behavioral modification. Methodology/approach - Qualitative: ethnography and interviews. Findings - We demonstrate that a shift from moral judgment to therapeutic sympathy is particularly unlikely for the fast-growing mass of criminal offenders whose diagnosis is spearheaded by the state in the form of the therapeutic jurisprudence of the drug court. For this group, the emphasis on the need for comprehensive resocialization and the close cooperation between the intimacies of therapeutic "rehab" and the strong arm of criminal justice "backup" not only maintains, but intensifies, moral tutelage, and stigmatization. Social implications - The convergence of drug treatment and criminal justice tends to produce yet another stigmatizing biologization of poverty and race, lending scientific validity to new forms of criminalizing and medicalizing social hardship.
KW - Addiction treatment
KW - Biomedicalization
KW - Drug court
KW - Punishment and social control
KW - Sociology of diagnosis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84864784958&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84864784958&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1108/S1057-6290(2011)0000012018
DO - 10.1108/S1057-6290(2011)0000012018
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:84864784958
SN - 9780857245755
T3 - Advances in Medical Sociology
SP - 309
EP - 330
BT - Sociology of Diagnosis
A2 - McGann, P.J.
A2 - Hutson, David
ER -