In another one of my classes I am currently exploring the legislation of the deinstitutionalization movement and its purported association with criminalization. That sounds super dense, but the gist is that there is an ongoing movement to provide the disabled–namely, the neurodivergent–with the most integrated living possible (e.g. assisted living rather than life in a psychiatric facility) and, given that the process so far has focused more on closing inadequate care facilities than providing more comprehensive care, there has been a large debate over the level of success attained. Some scholars (Slate) argue that the movement has opened the door not for desegregation, but for criminalization via trans-institutionalization; this claim is supported by the rise in numbers of arrested/incarcerated mentally ill individuals, as well as the reality that the majority of psychiatric care in a given state is administered in carceral contexts. Other scholars (Bagenstos) contend that criminalization was a pre-existing condition and that the number of disabled individuals in jails/prisons only rose due to the increase of the population in mainstream society. The perspective I found most interesting, though, was Kevin Cremin’s; he argued that regardless of whether the movement had succeeded or failed thus far, the reason it had not progressed much over the years was that legislation chose to define integration only through what it is not and, by extension, disability by what it is not. I feel that Alison Kafer’s work converses fairly directly with an analysis such as this, given the usage of binaries and defining concepts only through the process of othering.
My take on the entire situation is that criminalization of the disabled was absolutely existent prior to deinstitutionalization; however, because the legislation created defined individuals as only worth reintroducing to society based on their level of potential danger, a definition of disability was created that warranted excessive surveillance and evoked fear from the general public and the criminal justice system. Let’s first start with Kafer’s phrase “how one understands disability in the present determines how one imagines disability in the future; one’s assumptions about the experience of disability create one’s conception of a better future” (2). While the reading uses this most directly with the common oppositional notions that disability must either be tragic by nature or by society (i.e. medical or social model), it can definitely speak to this practice of practically speaking into existence the incarceration of integrated individuals.[1] This leads to an interesting point later on in the reading, in which a “focus from the inability of the body to the inaccessibility of the space makes room for activism and change” by way of a simple exercise in measurement of accessibility of a public space (Kafer 9). Kafer suggests this works as an example of the success of the “political/relational model” that calls for the acknowledgment of the disabled existence as politicized and I absolutely love how well it fits with Cremin’s point. In the example, individuals are not simply told what is inaccessible, but they are informed what accessibility is in order to give them the ability to imagine an accessible future. I find that this reading will help advance my point that legislation thus far has been incomplete and has, at the very least, left stigma and criminalization unchallenged.
Word Count: 582
I pledge: Rebekah Stone
Works Cited
Bagenstos, Samuel R. “The Past and Future of Deinstitutionalization Litigation.” Cardozo Law Review, vol. 34, no. 1, Oct. 2012, pp. 1–52. EBSCOhost, umw.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=83408541&site=ehost-live.
Cremin, Kevin M. “Challenges to Institutionalization: The Definition of ‘Institution’ and the Future of Olmstead Litigation.” Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights, vol. 17, no. 2, Spring 2012, pp. 143–180. EBSCOhost, umw.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lgh&AN=83474830&site=ehost-live.
Kafer, Alison. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2013. Web.
Slate, Risdon N.
“Deinstitutionalization, Criminalization of Mental Illness, and the Principle
of Therapeutic Jurisprudence.” Southern California Interdisciplinary Law
Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, Spring 2017, pp. 341–356. EBSCOhost,
umw.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lgh&AN=123799180&site=ehost-live.
[1] To clarify, I am not suggesting that there is any association between disability and crime other than the crime of poverty/necessity; the media’s insistence that neurodivergent individuals are violent is incredibly unnerving and unsupported by facts and statistics.
