Book review: Enforcing Freedom: drug courts, therapeutic communities and the intimacies of the state by kerwin kaye

In Enforcing Freedom: Drug Courts, Therapeutic Communities and the Intimacies of the State, Kerwin Kaye challenges the notion that drug courts are the more effective and humane judicial option to mass incarceration, showing how they uphold a structure of ‘stratified penalisation’ that is significantly intensifying the impact of the ‘war on drugs’ on the racialised poor. Capturing the stark realities of the US criminal justice system, Kaye’s years of research have paid off in this profound, nuanced and pioneering book, writes Alessandro Ford.