Overview

In 1989, the first drug-treatment court was established in Florida, inaugurating an era of state-supervised rehabilitation. Such courts have frequently been seen as a humane alternative to incarceration and the war on drugs. Enforcing Freedom offers an ethnographic account of drug courts and mandatory treatment centers as a system of coercion, demonstrating how the state uses notions of rehabilitation as a means of social regulation. 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.

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9780231172882

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Kerwin Kaye examines how American institutions that govern illegal drug use, especially drug courts and treatment programs, define and treat 'addiction.' This book offers new findings that show how efforts at drug control regulate citizenship and reflect racial and gender politics, ultimately revealing the intimate character of neoliberal state governance. -- Allison McKim, author of <i>Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration</i> Kerwin Kaye not only explodes the neoliberal mythology of the beneficence of drug courts and other diversion schemes, but lays bare their continuing coercive and even brutalizing potential. Supporters and skeptics of drug courts alike will find much to consider in this forceful ethnography. And all of us who are interested in envisioning a post-War on Drugs United States should consider seriously Dr. Kaye's suggestions. -- Samuel Kelton Roberts, Jr., author of <i>Infectious Fear: Politics, Disease, and the Health Effects of Segregation</i>

Kaye examines how American institutions that govern illegal drug use, especially drug courts and treatment programs, define and treat 'addiction.' This book offers new findings that show how efforts at drug control regulate citizenship and reflect racial and gender politics, ultimately revealing the intimate character of neoliberal state governance.--Allison McKim, author of Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration

Kaye examines how American institutions that govern illegal drug use, especially drug courts and treatment programs, define and treat 'addiction.' This book offers new findings that show how efforts at drug control regulate citizenship and reflect racial and gender politics, ultimately revealing the intimate character of neoliberal state governance. -- Allison McKim, author of <i>Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration</i> Kerwin Kaye not only explodes the neoliberal mythology of the beneficence of drug courts and other diversion schemes, but lays bare their continuing coercive and even brutalizing potential. Supporters and skeptics of drug courts alike will find much to consider in this forceful ethnography. And all of us who are interested in envisioning a post-War on Drugs United States should consider seriously Dr. Kaye's suggestions. -- Samuel Kelton Roberts, Jr., author of <i>Infectious Fear: Politics, Disease, and the Health Effects of Segregation</i>

Author Information

Kerwin Kaye is associate professor of sociology, American studies, and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies at Wesleyan University.

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