Drug Addicts under the Treatment of Therapeutic Community In Taiwan: “An Avenue for Restorative Justice”

• In Event: Terrorism, Corruption, and Drug Policy

Abstract

Over 20 years, medical researches have been proven substance addiction is a brain disease affected by long-term substance and also a chronic and relapsing disease. Furthermore, Therapeutic Community have been practiced and researched that is of benefit to reduce substance use and prevent relapse. This paper is aimed at the drug addicts’ views on drug-related injuries and recovering from the disease. Besides, this paper uses perspective of restorative justice to explore the holistic medical approach and the effect in Jia Lao Village ,a therapeutic community for Substance Abusers in Taiwan. This paper based on fourteen days participant observation of Jia Lao Village and interviewed 4 drug addicts who receives or had received the treatment in there and all in good recovery over a year. This paper finds that concepts of the holistic medical approach in a therapeutic community are similar to the restorative justice concept of that we have to give high control and high support to the offenders.The first conclusion of this paper is that the ''control'' of restorative justice is the transformation of formal social control, informal social control and self control. The second, the process of restorative justice is the process of triggering people's human agency.

Author

• Chen-Fu Pai, National Taipei University