Therapeutic Justice in Drug Courts: Crime, Punishment and Societies of Control

In this paper I examine some of the legal and cultural implications of developments within the brain sciences, particularly in relation to changing conceptions of crime, criminality, punishment and justice. I describe how, within the United States, a brain-targeting medication has come to form a key element within emerging 'drug court' strategies for managing repeat offenders that shift from imprisonment and supervision toward more direct control over biological processes. This case study illustrates aspects of the changing logics of control that characterize contemporary industrialized societies of the West, in which new forms of 'postsocial control' are replacing or supplementing traditional forms of social control. I draw upon and develop Deleuze's notion of 'societies of control' to historically situate how drug courts are beginning to reformulate addiction, desire, behavior and justice along biological lines, and are yielding new technological and practical forms of governance that are transforming the ways that institutions understand and manage their subjects.