A Critical Ethnography of the Ottawa Drug Treatment Court: Linking Discourses of Addiction, Addicted Subjects & Treatment Practices

This work is based on data from a 25-month critical ethnography of the Ottawa Drug Treatment Court (ODTC), interviews with former participants of the ODTC and analysis of ODTC documents. Feminist and foucauldian theoretical approaches are used to examine the discourses of addiction, constitution of subjects and treatment practices of the ODTC.;Furthermore, the discourse of addiction-as-a-disease in the ODTC requires the construction of a specific addicted subject with four key attributes: (1) universal and genderless; (2) treatable; (3) criminal; and (4) dishonest. These addicted subjects are compelled to engage in a variety of techniques of the self in order to transform into recovering subjects.;The ODTC's discourse of addiction-as-a-disease and its construction of the addicted subject presents serious implications: (1) the blurring of traditional boundaries of punishment and therapy; (2) the re-definition of roles of judicial and treatment providers, resulting in a widening net of criminalization; and (3) the implementation of a system whereby individuals must be criminalized to access voluntary treatment programs and housing services. Throughout, I demonstrate how some participants negotiated and contested the discourse of addiction-as-a-disease and treatment practices in the ODTC.;I argue that the ODTC's approach conceals and ignores gendered and structural factors in drug use. In response, I argue that Alexander's social dislocation theory of addiction and a feminist approach can be combined to examine structural issues such as poverty, child apprehension and marginalization which contribute to gendered dislocation. I conclude the thesis with policy considerations and recommendations based on my findings. These recommendations are broken into two sections: (1) broader drug policy and treatment reform recommendations, and (2) specific recommendations to improve drug treatment courts in Canada.;The ODTC positions addiction as a life-long, chronic disease. I explore four principal consequences of this approach: (1) the rigid requirement of abstinence; (2) the construction of certain substances as dangerous; (3) a discourse of clean versus dirty; and (4) a perpetual fear of relapse. Despite the notion that addiction is a life-long disease involving repeated relapses, the ODTC constructs a problematic contradiction in viewing participants as having a choice not to use drugs.