Mandated addiction treatment and the therapeutic properties of legislation: The normative framework and its enforcement in Serbia

Abstract

Introduction. Therapeutic jurisprudence examines the therapeutic and anti-therapeutic properties of legal rules, while recent probation theory proposes that the legal system itself be treated as an external component of the responsivity principle. On this view, how enforcement of an addiction treatment obligation is designed ceases to be a technical matter and becomes a determinant of what the measure can achieve. Objective. The paper examines whether the Serbian enforcement regime creates the conditions under which mandated treatment can produce change. Methods. Normative-dogmatic analysis conducted through a therapeutic jurisprudence and procedural justice grid, secondary analysis of Serbian empirical studies, comparative analysis of arrangements in Germany, Austria, England and Wales and Croatia, and a review of recent literature on the working alliance and quasi-compulsory treatment. Results. Serbian law provides three tracks for mandated addiction treatment, yet the two therapeutically designed tracks are virtually unused, while the one actually applied amounts to brief institutionalisation followed by imprisonment. Practitioner accounts of two near-identical security measures, differing in whether their duration is tied to the sentence or to clinical need, point to divergent motivational effects of legal design, so its anti-therapeutic force can be examined within Serbian law itself. Conclusion. The analysis locates the key difficulty not in coercion as such, but in the role ambiguity legislation produces within a coercive framework. The proposed changes are largely achievable through subordinate legislation and align with the direction of European policy on alternative sanctions and with Serbia's reform objectives under Chapter 23.