crack Mothers Paperback -

In Crack Mothers, Drew Humphries Asserts That Medicine And Criminal Justice Have Always Been At Odds On The Subject Of Drug UseThe One Treats Drug Users As Patients, The Other As CriminalsHowever, Beginning In The Late s, The Crack Mother Scare Led To An Unprecedented Alliance Between Doctors And Prosecutors In Some States, Where Doctors Turned Addicted Pregnant Women Over To The Police For Arrest, Trial, And IncarcerationHumphries Analyzes The Public Reaction To Crack Cocaine And The Policies Instituted To Combat ItShe Shows Us That, More Often Than Not, Policies Were Generated By The Fears That Crack Mothers Were Harbingers Of Even More Serious Social ProblemsThe Medias Construction Of The Crack Mother As AModel Of Depravity, She Argues, Reflects Mainstream Desires And Fears, Rather Than Portraying The TruthHumphries Offers AMore Balanced View Of The Women Who Use Crack And The Policies That Have Been Adopted To Stop ThemHumphries Does Not Dwell On The Transgressions Of Crack Mothers, Nor Does She Endorse The Punitive Measures Of The Drug War Policy MakersAfter Ten Years Of Studying AWide Range Of State Policies, She Finds That Zero Tolerance, Mandatory Sentences, And Interdiction Have Not Only Failed To Reduce Drug Use But Increased The Sense Of Persecution Among The Urban Poor And Contributed To The Crisis Of Overcrowding In Courts And PrisonsMoreover, She States, Before Crack Mothers Became AMedia Spectacle, No One Had Considered The Special Needs Of Women In Designing Drug Treatment ProgramsCrack Mothers Is ATimely And Important Contribution To Our Growing Understanding Of Maternal Health, Drug Use, And Treatment'