Disability Injustice

Ableism is embedded in Canadian criminal justice institutions, policies, and practices, making incarceration and institutionalization dangerous – even deadly – for disabled people. Disability Injustice brings together highly original work by a range of scholars and activists to explore disability in the historical and contemporary Canadian criminal justice system.

The contributors confront challenging topics such as eugenics and crime control; the pathologizing of difference as deviance within criminal law systems; processes of criminalization based on discretionary, biased approaches to physical and mental health; and the role of disability justice activism in contesting longstanding discrimination and exclusion. Weaving together disability and sociolegal studies, criminology, and law, they examine disability in relation to various agencies and aspects of the criminal justice system. Policing and surveillance, sentencing and the courts, prisons and other carceral spaces, and alternatives to confinement are among the areas of focus.

Drawing on empirical data and new theoretical insights, Disability Injustice investigates how disability intersects with race, class, gender, and sexuality to perpetuate oppression, paying particular attention to ways forward. This provocative collection highlights how, with deeper understanding of disability, we can and should challenge the practices of crime control and the processes of criminalization.