Disability Incarcerated

Disability Incarcerated gathers thirteen contributions from an impressive array of fields. Taken together, these essays assert that a complex understanding of disability is crucial to an understanding of incarceration, and that we must expand what has come to be called 'incarceration.' The chapters in this book examine a host of sites, such as prisons, institutions for people with developmental disabilities, psychiatric hospitals, treatment centers, special education, detention centers, and group homes; explore why various sites should be understood as incarceration; and discuss the causes and effects of these sites historically and currently. This volume includes a preface by Professor Angela Y. Davis and an afterword by Professor Robert McRuer.

"The essays in Disability Incarcerated demonstrate that racialized and disabled bodies are now, and historically have been, policed in various and complex ways, causing a disproportionate number of people with disabilities to be confined in carceral spaces, whether in institutions or in prisons. The collection compellingly argues for a deeper examination of the interlocking oppressions that have caused othered bodies specifically, disabled, working-class, minority, immigrant, terrorist, and displaced bodies to be watched, controlled, and contained by the prison-industrial complex. . . Disability Incarcerated offers readers a powerful critique of neoliberalism and its exploitation of non-normative bodies, and it certainly has primed the path for future work that bridges critical prison studies and critical disability studies." - Disability Studies Quarterly

"Disability Incarcerated constitutes a major contribution to critical disability and penal studies, joining the two as no other book does . . . Only now and then does a work of scholarship so ground-breaking, so well theorized, and so daring appear on the scene. And seldom do we come across an anthology destined to become a classic." - Canadian Journal of Disability Studies

"Provocative, original, and timely, this collection reveals inextricable links between disability and incarceration. Each study of confinement places disability in sustained dialogue with broader forces and identities, including race, gender, sexuality and class. Accessible prose and collaborative projects attest to the transformative power of activist scholarship." - Susan Burch, Associate Professor of American Studies and former director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, Middlebury College, USA

"Disability Incarcerated challenges both scholarship and activism around the prison industrial complex by demonstrating how disability is central to systems of incarceration. It further shows howthe build-up of the prison nation is not just around policing race and gender, but simultaneously policing disability. This book thus highlights how race, colonialism, and gender operate through disability. An amazing collection.' - Andrea Smith, Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of California, Riverside, USA

"There is admirable depth to each chapter While the interconnection between incarceration and disability overall is called into question, readers are forced to pause for thought and reconsider their understanding of how social constructs and perceptions can influence persons in prison and persons with disability" Rose Ricciardelli, British Journal of Criminology 55(3)

Jihan Abbas, Carleton University, USA Katie Aubrecht, Saint Mary's University and St. Francis Xavier University, Canada Ruthie-Marie Beckwith, USA Angela Y. Davis, USA Giselle Dias, Canada Nirmala Erevelles, University of Alabama, USA Erick Fabris, Ryerson University, Canada Philip M. Ferguson, Chapman University, USA Mark Friedman, USA Lucy Ling Gu, Shippensburg University, USA Robert McRuer, George Washington University, USA Mansha Mirza, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA Shaista Patel, University of Toronto, Canada Geoffrey Reaume, York University, Canada Michael Rembis, University at Buffalo, USA Joan Ruzsa, Canada Jijian Voronka, University of Toronto, Canada Syrus Marcus Ware, University of Toronto, Canada