Theorizing the role of the ‘war on drugs’ in US punishment

Abstract

Numerous scholars have described how the ‘war on drugs’ has played a central role in US penal change, especially its racialized impact. Yet there remain aspects of this ‘war’ that are under-explored in punishment and society scholarship. This article delineates five distinct modes by which the contemporary regulation of drugs in the USA speaks to penal change, and in so doing suggests that its reach is much more diffuse, insidious, and variegated than suggested by prevailing conceptualizations of the drug war–punishment relationship.