Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self

Care, punishment, and recovery have become deeply entangled in contemporary responses to addiction.Sanaullah Khan examines the interrelation between carceral conditions and substance use by tracing how drug markets, sidewalks, households, and prisons intersect in Baltimore. Khan argues that housing policy, medicalization, and incarceration fundamentally shape the conditions of substance use, even as individuals are increasingly drawn into a paradoxical regime that combines care and punishment through recovery-oriented interventions. This regime produces new pharmaceuticalized identities while often reproducing the very vulnerabilities it claims to address. By illuminating how addiction, care, and the drive for healing circulate through families and state institutions, Khan reveals the competing forces that structure substance use, recovery, and relapse. Drawing on archival research and ethnography, the book ultimately makes a compelling case for disentangling recovery from punishment - showing why meaningful care requires rethinking the carceral logics that continue to govern drug and addiction policies. Read more