Crack mothers : pregnancy, drugs, and the media

This work seeks to assert that medicine and criminal justice have always been at odds on the subject of drug use. The one treats drug users as a patient, the other criminals. However, beginning in the 1980s, the crack mother scare led to an alliance between doctors and prosecutors in some American states, where doctors turned addicted pregnant women over to the police for arrest, trial and incarceration. The author analyzes the public reaction to crack cocaine and the policies instituted to combat it. She shows us that, more often than not, policies were generated by the fears that crack mothers were the harbingers of even more serious social problems.

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Humphries effectively argues that the "rise and fall" of reports on crack mothers "illustrates the politics of moral panics and drug scares." The instant addiction of crack cocaine and its threat to the health of women and infants were exaggerated by the media and used to justify harsher social agendas regarding women and minorities. Humphries examines several well-publicized prosecutions of crack mothers that sanctioned legal intrusion on women's rights and had the opposite of their intended effects, discouraging drug-addicted women from seeking prenatal care. The work also includes an analysis of the severe media treatment of low-income minority women versus the more understanding treatment of middle-class white women who were also addicts. Notwithstanding the real damage suffered by infants born of crack mothers, Humphries notes that oversimplified coverage diverts attention from the underlying social problems--poverty and inadequate social services. This is a well-researched examination of a social issue that has not gone away, though it is no longer front-page news. --Vanessa Bush

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Chapter 1 The News about Crack Mothers	p. 19
Chapter 2 Realities and Images	p. 42
Chapter 3 The Point of Moral Panic	p. 67
Chapter 4 Women, Addiction, and Drug Treatment	p. 95
Chapter 5 Children, Welfare, and Education	p. 127
Conclusion	p. 154
Notes	p. 169
Works Cited	p. 179
Index	p. 201

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