By Bowen Cho

In this report, we invite readers to explore the historical, racialized, disablist, and political economic contexts of mass incarceration, including the ways that incarceration has expanded beyond prisons, jails, and correctional supervision in the 21st century. As well, publics often think of incarceration narrowly, such that they make invisible the containment of Disabled people in institutional and extra-carceral systems. This report is in part a corrective and counterpoint to policy papers on disability and criminal legal reform published by non-disability advocacy and mental health advocacy organizations in recent years. Because the ideologies of eugenics, ableism, and disablism are thriving in the 21st century, disability is often used as a rhetorical frame arguing for the restriction of carceralism for certain groups and its expansion for others. Mass incarceration in the 21st century includes physical confinement, but also accounts for the rapidly expanding, technocratic industries of e-carceration and psychotropic incarceration. Our conceptions of physical confinement must go beyond prisons and jails, and include detention centers, psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, and residential treatment facilities. One cannot replace the other. Recognition of incarcerated people must similarly be expanded to include detained immigrants, people under electronic monitoring and surveillance, and people experiencing involuntary psychiatric commitment. Black people and Indigenous people continue to be disproportionately impacted by policing and carceralism, particularly in the increased criminalization of poverty, houselessness, and mental illness, and the ways that these statuses intersect with racism and disablism.

Berkeley, CA: Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) , 2024. 120p.

By Laurin Bixby, Stacey Bevan, and Courtney Boen

Disabled people are disproportionately incarcerated and segregated from society through a variety of institutions. Still, the links between disability and incarceration are underexplored, limiting understanding of how carceral institutions punish and contribute to the social exclusion of disabled people. Using data from the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, we estimated disability prevalence in state and federal prisons, assessing disparities by race, ethnicity, and sex, and we examined inequities in previous residence in other “punitive” and “therapeutic” institutions. Sixty-six percent of incarcerated people self-reported a disability, with Black, Hispanic, and multiracial disabled men especially overrepresented in prisons. Compared with nondisabled incarcerated people, disabled incarcerated people were more likely to have previously resided in other institutions, such as juvenile detention facilities and psychiatric hospitals. Together, our findings advance the understanding of disability in carceral institutions, highlighting the need for policy interventions redressing the mechanisms contributing to the high incarceration risks of disabled people and the disabling nature of prisons and other carceral institutions.

Health Affairs Vol. 41, NO. 10, 2022, 28 p.