Attitudes toward crime, criminals, and rehabilitation have shifted considerably, yet the idea that there is a causal link between drug addiction and crime prevails. As law reformers call for addiction treatment as a remedy to the failing war on drugs, it is also time to consider the serious implications of joining legal and therapeutic practices in an assumedly benevolent bid to cure the offender. Case studies from drug treatment courts and addiction treatment programs illustrate the tensions between law and psychology, treatment and punishment, and conflicting theories of addiction. By looking curiously on the criminal addict as an artefact of criminal justice, this book asks us to question why the criminalized drug user has become such a focus of contemporary criminal justice practices.

Dawn Moore's profile page

Dawn Moore is an assistant professor in the department of Law, Carleton University.

Criminal Artefacts is an important book for the simple fact that it offers unparalleled insight into current practices of governing the criminal addict in Canada. More than this, Criminal Artefacts is an elegant and concise study of the criminal justice system in action, from the postwar period to the present day; focusing on the criminal addict, the book offers a close look at the therapeutic/rehabilitative project and its evolution in the wake of neoliberalism. Moore bases this discussion on solid theoretical and empirical ground and, as a result, Criminal Artefacts will be an important source for critically minded sociologists, anthropologists, and criminologists interested in drug law and addiction, as well as theoretically minded counsellors, therapists, and legal professionals.

It provides readers with useful background information on the rise of therapeutic initiatives to treat drug and alcohol addiction within the Canadian criminal justice system. It also offers a unique analysis of the role that cultural perceptions of drugs and their users play in the formation of governing strategies. The book is most compelling, however, due to Moore’s critical analysis of new and relatively unexplored criminal justice interventions like DTCs.

Canadian Journal of Sociology, 2008, Vol. 33, Issue 4