Wicked Bad Habits: Governing Women in the Carceral-Therapeutic State in Massachusetts

Abstract

In this dissertation, I focus on the social response of criminalization and incarceration to the problem of heroin use among women in Massachusetts in the ongoing era of the United States' "War on Drugs." Based on fieldwork conducted between 2010-2014, I argue that the convergence of therapeutic ideals with the prison system creates a means of governing and regulating these women's lives via what I call the "carceral therapeutic state." I examine various facets of treatment programs in the state women's prison, MCI-Framingham, and a local Boston jail, Suffolk County House of Corrections, including drug treatment, trauma treatment and work readiness programs. I consider how and why these programs in prisons and jails have become means to centralize and solidify the criminal justice system as the predominant site of addiction and mental health treatment for poor women on drugs.