Roxanne’s Dress: Governing Gender and Marginality through Addiction Treatment

Abstract

AbstractAddiction treatment is central to state governance, particularly to systems that manage crime and poverty. While a growing body of research on penal treatment suggests that it reflects punitive, neoliberal trends in punishment, we know much less about how these programs compare to treatment outside the criminal justice system. This article ethnographically compares two “gender-sensitive” addiction treatment programs for women: one is an alternative-to-incarceration facility, while the other is funded by health insurance and has no ties to the penal state. It analyzes how and why women’s appearance and gender presentation became an important target of reform at the penal program but not at the health-care program. Their practices reflect different understandings of addiction and reveal the intersection of class, race, and gender in systems that govern crime and substance use. For the penal program, addiction stems from women’s deficient self-esteem, and this degraded self manifests in their failure...