Rebecca Tiger, Judging Addicts: Drug Courts and Coercion in the Justice System
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474513499601 |
| Author | Arie Freiberg |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
academics, policy makers, politicians, and people committed to providing a more
promising future for young people.
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Barry Feld
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Rebecca Tiger, Judging Addicts: Drug Courts and Coercion in the Justice System,
New York University Press: New York, 2013; 197 pp. (including index): 9780814784075, $79
(cloth), $19 (pbk)
Over 200 years ago Voltaire observed that the perfect could be the enemy of the
good. In the endemic battle between the Utopian and the realistic, pragmatism
tends to triumph because the ideal, while admirable, is generally unachievable.
More recently David Rothman (1980) wrote that in the clash between con-
science and convenience, the latter won and when treatment and coercion met,
coercion won. It is Rothman’s, not Voltaire’s, philosophy that is the leitmotif of
this work. But on the road to Utopia there are many way stations.
In Judging Addicts: Drug Courts and Coercion in the Justice System Rebecca
Tiger, a sociologist with a background in public health and a one-time advocate of
the disease model of crime, presents a sustained and trenchant critique of the US
drug court movement. Adopting a sociology of knowledge approach and writing in
the critical criminology tradition, this book relentlessly catalogues the failings of
US drug courts and mounts a powerful argument that they possibly do more harm
than good. Drawing on the history of the Progressive era reforms she argues that
rather than reducing crime and providing cures for the problems of addiction, they
have resulted in net-widening and a greater degree of coercion of those who fall
within their jurisdiction.
The number of counts on her indictment is large. She alleges that drug courts
increase the number of people who are arrested for low level offenses and for whom
576 Punishment & Society 15(5)
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