Book review: Allison McKim, Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration (Critical Issues in Crime and Society)
| Author | Maria Fotopoulou |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1748895818822545 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895818822545
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2019, Vol. 19(4) 512 –516
© The Author(s) 2019
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Book reviews
Allison McKim, Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration
(Critical Issues in Crime and Society), Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, 2017; 246 pp.:
9780813587622, £59.63 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Maria Fotopoulou, University of Stirling, UK
DOI: 10.1177/1748895818822545
Addicted to Rehab by Allison McKim aptly explores how treatment programmes for
women – with their various constraints and philosophies – construct and produce ver-
sions of addiction and consequently of the women attending their services. By focusing
on definitions and practices used to manage the ‘problem’, McKim calls attention to the
gendered and racialized nature of such processes and the tangible implications for wom-
en’s lives.
The book is based on an ethnographic study of two treatment modalities in the United
States; an alternative to prison, state funded facility and a non-state funded treatment
programme, the Gladstone Lodge. McKim’s analysis is informed by observations, inter-
views with staff members and analysis of programme documents. Through rich descrip-
tions of ways of working and analysis of collected data, McKim effectively highlights
the ways in which the two ‘[programs] have to define what is wrong with their clients,
determine what it means to be a normal woman’ and what to do to achieve normalcy’ (
p.3). Although both facilities are shown to be agents of social control that seek to ‘nor-
malize’ deviant women, there are distinctive differences between the two.
The Gladstone Lodge is discussed as an example of a health service, receiving fund-
ing and clients through an employment-based system or privately. As a result, the service
is limited in what it can offer and do; McKim’s analysis illuminates how limitations here
did not only refer to the length and breadth of interventions offered but – most impor-
tantly – to the lack of coercive power on women. The Lodge is discussed as also being
typical of most private-paying treatment facilities in that it follows the 12 step methods
and philosophy. In such a context and setting, recovery is defined as sobriety, and as a
health service, the Lodge aims to change lifestyles and teach coping skills. Although
addiction is viewed as a ‘unique ontological state’ (p. 115), it does not stem from a
flawed inner self. The Lodge thus does not aim to reform diseased individuals but redeem
‘working class people afflicted by addiction’ (p. 109). Quite differently, women enter the
822545CRJ0010.1177/1748895818822545Criminology & Criminal JusticeBook reviews
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