Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780813587639)

Winner of the 2018 Book Award from the American Society of Criminology's Division of Critical Criminology and Social Justice
Winner of the 2018 Book of the Year Award from the American Society of Criminology's Division on Women and Crime ​

After decades of the American "war on drugs" and relentless prison expansion, political officials are finally challenging mass incarceration. Many point to an apparently promising solution to reduce the prison population: addiction treatment.

In Addicted to Rehab, Bard College sociologist Allison McKim gives an in-depth and innovative ethnographic account of two such rehab programs for women, one located in the criminal justice system and one located in the private healthcare system--two very different ways of defining and treating addiction. McKim's book shows how addiction rehab reflects the race, class, and gender politics of the punitive turn. As a result, addiction has become a racialized category that has reorganized the link between punishment and welfare provision. While reformers hope that treatment will offer an alternative to punishment and help women, McKim argues that the framework of addiction further stigmatizes criminalized women and undermines our capacity to challenge gendered subordination. Her study ultimately reveals a two-tiered system, bifurcated by race and class.

Author: Allison McKim
ISBN-10: 0813587638
ISBN-13: 9780813587639
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Language: English
Published: 07/03/2017
Pages: 246
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.06lbs
Size: 8.87h x 6.38w x 0.87d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2018