Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada

by Liat Ben-moshe (Editor), Chris Chapman (Editor), Allison C. Carey (Editor)

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.

Genres: Disability, Nonfiction, Disability Studies, Social Justice, Mental Health, Academic, Research

317 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Kathleen O'Neal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was somewhat disappointed in this book as I felt that it could have looked at nursing homes and group homes for the disabled as carceral spaces in a much more in depth way and also the treatment of disabled people in prisons. The book could have provided a critical look at things like Florida’s Baker Act. Instead, there was a lot of trendy academic prose that I felt lacked substance. The book had good parts. I am glad I read it, but it could have been so much more than it was.

[thalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is super helpful for everyone engaged in prison abolition, disability justice, and in undoing m colonialism globally. There are other spaces the authors could have explored such as nursing homes, convalescent centers, homeless shelters, reservations, and there are ways they could have made the text more accessible or perhaps more expansive by involving a wider range of writers (maybe letter writing with disabled people who are currently incarcerated). That said, it reveals the interrelated histories of disability and incarceration in the US and Canada in ways I haven’t seen in a dedicated collection. Each chapter is important enough to demand its own curriculum of knowledge. It’s canon in multiple traditions, a modern intellectual’s classic.

[Cara G · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this book so I'll update this review once I've sorted them out

[Amanda McClelland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dense read and was required for class so it had to be done quickly. Great resource and covers the gamut of ways that people have been assigned to disability categories and "incarcerated" in a variety of ways.

[Mills College Library]

365.6087 D6111 2014