Surveillance, Privacy, and the Law: Employee Drug Testing and the Politics of Social Control

• NCJ Number: 169080
• Author(s): J Gilliom
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 181 pages
• Sale Source: University of Michigan Press
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: DCC. Law, Meaning, and Violence Series

Annotation

In examining the debate over employee drug testing, this book assesses the nature of employee drug testing as a means of social control and explains the rapid and largely successful implementation of employee drug testing programs in the face of significant opposition.

Abstract

One view of employee drug testing is that it is an innovative means of policing as part of a broader move to move social control policy toward an ideal of total surveillance and total crime prevention. While privacy and autonomy are obvious casualties of such a system, social control policy holds out the possibility of securing almost total compliance with the law in such problematic areas as drug use, welfare administration, and taxation. Another view of employee drug testing is less about testing than about political and legal battles over implementation. Drug testing in the workplace is discussed in relation to surveillance, hegemony, and the law. The social construction of the drug crisis is examined; consent and resistance in a unionized work force are considered; and constitutional issues associated with privacy, due process, and the fourth amendment are explored. Supplemental information on employee drug testing is provided in two appendixes. References, tables, and figures