Paper: Drug War Dragnet: Surveillance, Criminalization, and Drug War Logic within and beyond Community Supervision

Well worth a read

Drug war surveillance practices – like drug testing and mandated treatment – trap people in a cycle of punishment and cut people off from services and care.

A new paper, co-authored by Drug Policy Alliance’s Melissa Moore and Aliza Cohen and originally published in the Federal Sentencing Reporter, examines the dynamics driving overdose deaths, criminal legal system involvement, and the drug war infiltration of people’s everyday lives.

While incarceration receives more media and academic attention, almost twice as many people—3.7 million, or one in every sixty-nine U.S. adults—are under community supervision. Probation and parole are commonly understood as “alternatives to incarceration” or “lenient sentences,” but people on supervision endure constant monitoring under the threat of incarceration.

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Drug War Dragnet: Surveillance, Criminalization, and Drug War Logic within and beyond Community Supervision