Strong-arm Sobriety: Addressing Precarity through Probation

Over the past half-century, US welfare and penal systems have become increasingly fused modes of poverty governance. At center welfare-penal continuum sits probation, a form community supervision that operates as central hub, directing people to both services incarceration. Drawing on interviews with 166 adults probation in Hennepin County, Minnesota, 2019, we argue coercive care is structured by broader project controlling alcohol drug use among poor. Developing concept strong-arm sobriety, show how “criminal addict” trope undergirds processes probation: treatment, testing, revocation. We sobriety misreads structural precarity result, rather than cause, individuals’ choices. In doing so, fails address circumstances engender substance produces future subjects for care.