Criminal Artefacts: Governing Drugs and Users (review)

In Criminal Artefacts: Governing Drugs and Users, Dawn Moore problematizes the constellation of knowledges, power relations, and governmental strategies that produce the category of the criminal addict. Moore also demonstrates that a range of contingencies—from the shift to cognitive behavioural therapy in the Canadian penal system to the preference for quantitative measures of success in government—has shaped contemporary understandings of the drug–crime nexus and of addiction. She argues that best practices in addiction treatment rely on contestable, if not problematic, assumptions, correlations, and relationships from across a range of disciplines to explain why drugs cause people to offend. In particular, Moore offers a searing critique of the intersection of depersonalized risk profiling and individualized notions of responsibility—for addiction and for criminal activity—brought forward in neo-liberal modes of criminal management. Moreover, she reveals broader processes of marginalization that often underpin the treatment dynamic. For example, Moore shows how standards of parenting and appearance are applied to assess female clients in Canada's drug courts, while male clients escape such gendered forms of scrutiny.

This book is conceptually rich. Drawing upon leading social theorists such as Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Nikolas Rose, and Bruno Latour, Moore explores with rigour such complex issues as the construction of identity, the roles of structure and agency, power, the management of risk, the politics of truth, and the criminal addict as a social artefact. She does so in a manner that makes a distinct contribution to the growing literature on governmentality and biopolitics while remaining accessible to those not as well versed in these recent turns in critical social theory. In addition, Moore provides an interesting conceptual discussion of the types and spaces available for resistance in the treatment programs within the Canadian criminal justice system. Of special interest are her conclusions regarding the ways in which resistance is understood by "addicts" and the process through which resistance is rendered pathological—as opposed to political—by treatment authorities.

Moore's empirical case studies are the drug treatment courts in Toronto and Vancouver and Ontario's Substance Misuse Orientation Program for probationers. She is both rigorous and reflexive in detailing her method of analysis and the difficulties she encountered in her fieldwork. The interviews and courtroom observations that underpin her case studies are well presented and informative. They greatly help to illustrate why conceptual issues raised earlier in the book are vital to understanding the treatment networks currently in place, as well as helping to show why Moore's own refinements to these theories are necessary. By drawing upon the conceptual discussions noted above, Moore is able to render the familiar unfamiliar within the case studies; that is, she judiciously disrupts the taken-for-granted assumptions that constitute addiction treatment, allowing the reader to gain a new appreciation of the power relations at play.

Moore's work should serve as a catalyst for further comparative studies in Canada as well with other state jurisdictions. In particular, it would be interesting to see Ontario's practices of addiction treatment in the criminal justice system given a more sustained comparison to places that have also overtly adopted aspects of the harm-reduction discourse, such as the Netherlands or the United Kingdom.

Given all the strengths noted above, Criminal Artefacts is an important book that should be of interest to academics and practitioners in the areas of law, political science, criminology, sociology, medicine, psychology, and security studies. Moreover, with the recent changes to the criminal justice system initiated by the Conservative government, Moore's call for a critical transformation of the very foundations of how we understand criminal justice is increasingly sage advice.