Disability Studies

This chapter reviews recent publications in the field of disability studies on disability and criminal justice systems, particularly through the processes of institutionalization and incarceration. The main texts that serve as the corpus for this review define disability broadly, though devote analysis to historical constructions of intellectual/developmental disability and psychosocial disorders, labels that are critically evaluated in each text as well as in this review. By concentrating on institutionalization and incarceration, these texts are specifically focused on how ‘disability’ is entangled in the criminal justice systems of Anglo legal structures (USA, Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Australia) that developed out of English-speaking imperial forces. Specifically, these texts take issue with the idea that the process of deinstitutionalization, the movement of disabled individuals from enclosed facilities to inclusive community settings, was successful in liberating disabled individuals, specifically disabled black, Indigenous populations. This chapter proceeds in four sections. First, we focus on the contemporary definitions of institutionalization and incarceration across the different legal systems traversed by each author. Second, we consider the organizing tension of neoliberal capitalism as a framework through which to analyze and critique continued forms of institutionalization and incarceration. Third, we observe the need to center disabled black, Indigenous experiences of incarceration and institutionalization under the auspices of ‘inclusion’ in the supposed era of deinstitutionalization. Lastly, we move through the alternatives to the forms of institutionalization and incarceration assessed in these texts and offer directions for further critical thought.