ABSTRACT
Many of the chapters in this volume explore the ways in which definitions of ‘disease’ and ‘crime’ have been—and continue to be—deployed institutionally, and often in state-sponsored initiatives, to control and manage populations. Medicalization or ‘pathologization’ is understood, in this context, as the process by which particular social behaviors are framed by dominant actors as ‘conditions’ or ‘disorders’ that require specific interventions: medical study, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. The critical focus is on the discursive formation of ‘crime’ and ‘disease’ as contingent juridical and biological categories.
