Disabling Incarceration: Connecting Disability to Divergent Confinements in the USA

Abstract

This article suggests the merits of conceptualizing incarceration as including institutionalization in a wide variety of enclosed settings, including prisons, jails, institutions for the intellectually disabled, treatment centers, and psychiatric hospitals. Such formulations conceptualize incarceration as a continuum and a multi-faceted phenomenon. This article will highlight the importance of moving beyond analogies between criminalization, institutionalization and psychiatrization to discuss the intersection of these phenomena, by highlighting several social science perspectives that have integrated these spheres already; taking up an analysis of the political economy of incarceration; and re-examining the reality of prisoners with disabilities in the growing prison machine. Lastly, I propose a re-examination of the forces of trans-incarceration, the move from one carceral edifice such as a psychiatric hospital to another such as a jail. I will demonstrate the ways in which engaging in such intersectional analysis changes the lens from which disability and incarceration are conceptualized and analyzed.