Loading...
Addiction and mandatory treatment
Matthews, Steve
Matthews, Steve
Author
Abstract
This chapter uses ‘mandatory treatment’ to cover both coercive and compulsory treatment modalities. The choice-making dimension within mandatory treatment arguably makes a difference to moral perceptions of treatment. Mandatory treatment of addiction includes detoxification, counselling, education, and various other forms of rehabilitation. In civil commitment an order for treatment occurs by appeal to a state-sanctioned authority specifying strict criteria usually involving harm or the loss of the capacity for decision-making. Civil commitment type cases and coercion type cases target different groups, and their purposes and the differing outcomes from each practice suggest that it would be a mistake to attempt to draw lessons from one practice in support of the other. Mandatory treatment of addiction can be compulsory or coercive, applied within criminal or civil contexts. There is some evidence of its effectiveness as a coercive mode within some criminal contexts, but the successes seem correlated with many other factors, both internal and external to the practices themselves.
Keywords
Date
2019
Type
Book chapter
Journal
Book
The Routledge handbook of philosophy and science of addiction
Volume
Issue
Page Range
554-563
Article Number
ACU Department
Plunkett Centre for Ethics
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
Collections
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
File Access
Controlled