NCJ Number
217157
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 47 Issue: 1 Dated: January 2007 Pages: 42-60
Date Published
January 2007
Length
19 pages
Annotation
Utilizing research on two operational drug treatment courts in Canada, this paper explores the relationship between therapy and law revealing that a therapeutic enterprise can have punitive effects.
Abstract
The drug treatment courts (DTCs) are assembled networks in which therapeutic and legal knowledges are exchanged among the different personnel rendering the courts spaces of both justice and therapy. Participation in the network allows the actors to maintain their old interests but redefine them so as to have them met through the technologies and practices of the DTC. Through the translation in the DTCs, cure and control becomes synonymous. The courts are recruited in the progressive project of curing addiction. DTCs maintain the same old practices of justice and punishment, only now they are known by different names. Detention translates into therapy; a warrant is now an incentive and appearance in a criminal court a chance to process a drug-use relapse. Drug treatment courts are part of a broader phenomenon born out of a theoretical movement called therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ). TJ is applied to all kinds of legal practices in which a crossover between law and therapy is possible. TJ that does center on the courtroom however offers accounts of courtroom dynamics and reforms to legal processes that mandate the interplay of legal and psy knowledges (coming from psychiatry, psychology and social work). The DTC arm of TJ is popular throughout the United States and is expanding globally. This paper maps out the knowledge exchanges between law and psy in the two DTCs operating in Canada: Toronto and Vancouver. Courtroom observations were conducted from 2003 to 2006 in both courts, as well as interviews with key practitioners in both settings. References