Judging Addicts: Drug Courts and Coercion in the Justice System. By Rebecca Tiger. New York & London: New York Univ. Press, 2013. 208 pp. $23.00 paper.

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12113
• Date: 01 December 2014
• Published date: 01 December 2014

important lessons for law and development scholars, particularly

those interested in fragile or war-torn states. Finally, this book will

be essential reading for anyone hoping to understand Sudanese

history or contemporary politics, particularly following the seces-

sion of the South.

Reference

Ginsburg, Tom, & Tamir Moustafa, eds. (2008) Rule by Law: The Politics of Courts in

Authoritarian Regimes. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

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Judging Addicts: Drug Courts and Coercion in the Justice System.By

Rebecca Tiger. New York & London: New York Univ. Press, 2013.

208 pp. $23.00 paper.

Reviewed by Erez Garnai, Department of Sociology, University of

Minnesota

Drug courts began to proliferate in the mid-1990s, following the

War on Drugs, at a time when the prison boom was at its peak. The

ailing criminal justice system, faced with a mass of drug-related

offenders, high recidivism rates, and a general feeling that “nothing

works,” needed a cure. Drug courts were established as a potential

remedy. By now, celebrating their 25th anniversary, there is a rare

consensus on the success of drug courts within a criminal justice

system often criticized for being either “soft on crime” or overly

punitive. In Judging Addicts, Rebecca Tiger, a professor of socio-

logy at Middlebury College, traces the roots of this consensus.

Grounded in a sociology of knowledge perspective, the book delin-

eates the success of drug courts by focusing on the development

of our ideas about addiction. Drug courts, claims Tiger, are a

manifestation of the “historical triumph” of the disease model of

addiction. Moreover, it is a triumph that certifies the formal inte-

gration of the medical model into the heart of the state’s judicial

procedure—profoundly altering the character of “judgment.”

From a philosophy of punishment perspective, the rise of

drug courts in particular, and problem-solving courts in general, is

somewhat perplexing, given the collapse of the rehabilitative ideal in

the 1970s and the proliferation of extremely punitive forms of

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