When experience is captured by representation: Governmentalization of drugs in health and the criminal justice system

Abstract

The combination of medical knowledge and legal practice is an important carrier of governmentalization of truths that instrumentalize the intervention of the so-called drug issue from the perspective of population management. By comparing the experiences described in two studies in this field, the present investigation combines the contact of researchers with the established literature on the topic, describing the ways through which justice operators justify their actions from allegedly scientific statements originated in the health field. The studies included were an ethnographic examination and a documentary investigation with a genealogical nature. These two methodological perspectives pervade the present experience report, which is grounded in Foucauldian analysis to establish a conversation between the studies, the experiences around them, and other productions on the use of illegal psychoactive substances.