Bounded Temptation: Geographic Restrictions and Recovery in Drug Treatment Court.

Scholars in the nascent field of legal geography have taught us much about how law conceives of and locates spaces. Space is varyingly understood as shifty, strategic, intimately bound to identity and fleetingly available for law's regulation. Drawing on ethnographic research in three different Drug Treatment Courts, we wish to add a new dimension to understandings of space. Specifically, we are interested in how spaces are defined as pro or anti-therapeutic via the bail restrictions placed on individuals undergoing court supervised addiction treatment. We show here that the definition of 'safe' and 'unsafe' spaces for the criminalized person mandated to addiction recovery is contingent on a number of variables including the court's understanding of the spatial arrangement of drug using in a particular city (as with the Hastings and Main corridor in Vancouver) and spatial mapping of an individual's drug and crime habits. In addition, we explore the gendered public / private divide concerning both drug use and criminal behavior, suggesting that women's consistent preference to conduct both activities in private spaces confounds and disrupts both the legal and therapeutic capabilities of Drug Treatment Court. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]