The Prescription-to-Prison Pipeline

“The Prescription-to-Prison Pipeline presents compelling data to examine how the relationships among trauma, physical pain, medical care, crime, drug use, and incarceration are interwoven and cocreated. This important book tells powerful stories that humanize those who are often demonized in popular imagination.” - Jennifer A. Reich, author of Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines

“Michelle Smirnova brings compassion and a keen sociological eye to to nonmedical prescription drug use. Drawing on interviews with eighty incarcerated people, Smirnova expertly shows how treatment and punishment have become linked through the prescription-to-prison pipeline. Her book provides an urgent and necessary structural analysis of the problems that drive nonmedical drug use and incarceration and offers meaningful, informed solutions. This is required reading for anyone interested in drug policy, the social construction of disease and crime, racial inequality, and fundamental causes of harm.” - Elizabeth Chiarello, Associate Professor of Sociology, Saint Louis University

"The Prescription-to-Prison Pipeline highlights ways in which inequity in medical and legal systems manifests inpatients who develop substance use issues following being prescribed medicine. Knowledge of these forces and howthey intersect fosters one’s commitment to changing them. The need is great and requires efforts in multiple sectors. Dismantling inequity is an enormous task." - Elizabeth C. Halloran, Family Medicine

"Michelle Smirnova’s The Prescription-to-Prison is a compelling narrative that hits squarely across numerous areas of sociology, including deviance and social control, criminology, medical sociology, social stratification, race/ethnicity, social class, and gender." - Thomas J. Mowen, American Journal of Sociology

"I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the political economy of pain in the United States. I applaud Smirnova for her clarity of analysis. I sincerely hope this book is read by the broad group of US professional communities, including health care workers, policy makers, prison directors, and many others, who are responsible for improving the management of pain and ensuring better outcomes for our fellow citizens." - Ryan Whitacre, Journal of Anthropological Research

"This book brings a much-needed sociological and historical lens to a crisis whose framing has been dominated by journalists. Instead of focusing on the sensationalist tales of wealthy dynasties that profited from harm, Smirnova fixes her gaze on families who are over- and undertreated as well as over- and under policed as they struggle to survive a social system that fails them." - Elizabeth Chiarello, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences

"A work of thorough, balanced, but impassioned advocacy." - Martha Tillson, Contemporary Sociology