‘No ability to choose freedom’: a qualitative study on people who use drugs’ experiences of compulsory isolation treatment

Abstract

Background Extensive criminological literature has paid attention to the exacerbation of disadvantage due to compulsory treatment of drug use within vulnerable communities. However, understanding how compulsivity shapes users’ narrative framework and meaning construction of lives is still limited. Methods Based on an ethnography conducted at a Compulsory Isolation Treatment Center (CITC) in Central China, we collect in-depth interview data about how trainees who were convicted as drug dependents experienced and interpreted compulsory treatment in the context of life history. Our coding and case analysis of data illustrate four representative narratives on rehabilitation and reveal different ways of meaning-giving between each other. Results Our finding shows that the experience of incarcerated detoxification did not relieve the social disadvantages of people who use drugs. Instead, it was perceived as a negative encounter that intensified discrimination, deeply ingrained in social identity and constantly resurfaced in everyday life. Specifically, harmful experiences are generated by the punitive management of CITC, which underlines obedience between instructors (police officers) and trainees and encourages mutual distrust among peers. The crippling of interpersonal relationships prevents participants from developing social connections or restoring social skills. We also find trainees’ diverse coping strategies to the punitive institutions, ranging from showing physical weakness for board shelter catering to the standard of conduct for an early release to deciphering the intricacies of power relations in CITC. However, these temporary strategies cannot balance their permanent estrangement from public life and thus make them descend into the invisible confines of societal imprisonment. Implications Our ethnographic descriptions reveal the deliberated production of punishment and isolation in the process of compulsory isolation treatment and explicate the potential proximity between political correctives and drug treatment. We, thus, promote abolishing the compulsory isolation model in China, which stems not only from the inefficiency of the treatment at the medical level but also from the political motivations behind the institution and the superficiality of its moral reshaping.