To cure the offender
Subtitle: drugs, users and the Canadian criminal justice system.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 255
Description: Theoretical tools derived from governmentality, Foucault's notion of the 'care of the self', Latour's 'actor-network theory' and cultural studies are deployed as analytic tools to study sites in which drug use and drug users are intervened upon by agents of the Canadian state. A historical analysis of the rise of addiction treatment for those in conflict with the law in Ontario contests current suggestions that 'rehabilitation' is waning. Research in both Toronto's drug treatment court as well as a therapeutic program run by Ontario Probation and Parole offers new ways of thinking about how knowledges and practices of therapy and law intertwine and are exchanged within legal settings also attempting to achieve therapeutic ends. The practices and mentalities of these legal-therapeutic settings are also shaped by the actions of the users subject to control and intervention as well as 'illicit' substances themselves. In Chapter 3 the 'drugalities' of certain substances are shown to have generative capabilities that shape the operations of the criminal justice system. Individuals in conflict with the law have different understandings of themselves than those constituted by criminal justice officials. These contested identities also play generative roles in the criminal justice project. Within the realm of criminal justice, this thesis concludes that rehabilitative ideals (theorized through the term 'project of change') are enduring features of Canadian penal institutions. The practices and mentalities mapped in this thesis speak to broader practices in which the people and things under a project of rule are not actionless but rather, have generative capabilities. Social institutions are not 'pure', they are not informed and directed by only one set of actors, ideas or disciplines. These spaces, instead, borrow from different logics, knowledges, disciplines and experiences in order to cobble together practices and rationalities.
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Electronic version licensed for access by U. of T. users.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-06, Section: A, page: 2396.