‘The Only Trouble is the Dam’ Heroin’: Addiction, Treatment and Punishment at the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm

Abstract

Summary In 1929, the U.S. federal government approved two ground-breaking programs designed to treat drug addiction. Emerging at a time when many began to worry about a supposed rising tide of drug use across the country, the establishment of narcotic hospitals at Lexington, Kentucky and Fort Worth, Texas marked a watershed moment in the treatment of addiction. This article traces the institutional history of one of those facilities, the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm, and the experiences of the men who found themselves under its care. It argues that, on the surface, the creation of the farm model seemed like a hopeful alternative to strict incarceration models. Its creation reflected shifting notions of addiction: namely, that addiction is not simply a crime, but it is also a disease with serious public health implications. Yet, the establishment of the hospital as places to both treat and punish addicts was their inherent and fundamental flaw. Central to this was the concept of the “prisoner-patient,” a person forced to undergo treatment as a result of criminal charges. Not only did patients express their frustration with the prison-like setting at Fort Worth, but recidivism rates remained high throughout the facility’s operation. Ultimately, lawmakers and politicians would use these recidivism rates as part of a broader push for more punitive drug legislation in the post-World War II period. By placing the history of addiction into conversation with mass incarceration studies, this article shows that the roots of the punishment model employed in the last quarter of the twentieth century were interwoven into seemingly “progressive” treatment models dating back to at least the 1930s. Indeed, the very failures of early addiction treatment models that arose by mid-century helped to justify an expanding criminal justice model in the post-1960s era.