Discretionary Justice: Looking Inside a Juvenile Drug Court

Abstract

Discretionary Justice: Looking Inside a Juvenile Drug Court by Leslie Paik. Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2011. 226p. $25.95, paper.

Sociologist Leslie Paik’s ethnography of a juvenile drug court in Southern California that diverts felony-level substance abusers into drug treatment programs rather than prison challenges the underlying “therapeutic orientation” message of this widely accepted model of alternative justice. Using data collected from fifteen months of participant observation and interviews with members of the drug court staff, juvenile participants and their families, Paik asks the reader to consider if “drug courts are truly therapeutic or are they simply a new form of punishment under the guise of help.” Paik advocates that the emphasis on individual accountability ignores the reality of social structures and systemic barriers that shape the juvenile’s ability to control his or her own actions. In the end, Paik argues that determinations of success or compliance based on a concept of individual accountability actually veil differential legal treatment based on race, class and gender.