Contents
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: The Case for Intersecting Disability, Imprisonment, and Deinstitutionalization
1. The Perfect Storm: Origin Stories of Deinstitutionalization
2. Abolition in Deinstitutionalization: Normalization and the Myth of Mental Illness
3. Abolition as Knowledge and Ways of Unknowing
4. Why Prisons Are Not “the New Asylums”
5. Resistance to Inclusion and Community Living: NIMBY, Desegregation, and Race-Ability
6. Political and Affective Economies of Closing Carceral Enclosures
7. Institutional and Prison Reform Litigation: From Politicization to the Governable Iron Cage
Epilogue: Abolition Now
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Liat Ben-Moshe is assistant professor of criminology, law, and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is coeditor of Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada.
"Decarcerating Disability is a groundbreaking feminist study of the
affinities, interrelations, and contradictions between prison
abolition and psychiatric deinstitutionalization. Emphasizing the
need for a more expansive field of critical carceral studies, Liat
Ben-Moshe compellingly demonstrates the important lessons we can
discover through serious engagements with radical disability
movements. Scholars and activists alike should read this book
without delay!"—Angela Y. Davis, University of California, Santa
Cruz"In Decarcerating Disability, Liat Ben-Moshe carefully and
incisively models an intersectional approach to abolition grounded
in feminist, queer, and crip of color critique. Moving beyond
demands for inclusion and critiques of overrepresentation,
Ben-Moshe makes a powerful and persuasive case for a disability
studies that recognizes state violence as central to its work and
the carceral industrial complex as a site for queer coalitions for
racial and disability justice. In so doing, she paves the way for
thinking not only disability and disability studies differently,
but also liberation itself."—Alison Kafer, University of Texas at
Austin"Decarcerating Disability is a must-read for anyone
interested in understanding and dismantling the interlocking
systems of incarceration that shape the contemporary political
landscape and shorten so many lives. Liat Ben-Moshe shows how the
effectiveness of abolitionist work has been limited by the
marginalization of disability and anti-sanism analysis and
advocacy. She not only exposes how much contemporary abolitionists
have to learn from historical struggles for deinstitutionalization,
she also demonstrates a more truly intersectional method of
abolitionist scholar-activism that we urgently need. This book is
both a corrective intervention and a path-breaking tool for
developing better strategy toward the world that those who seek
liberation are fighting to build."—Dean Spade, Seattle University
School of Law
"Ben-Moshe outlines how people fought for a new paradigm in mental
health treatment before. Beginning in the 1960s, widespread
deinstitutionalization sparked by disability activists shut down
asylums across the country. Many see this movement now as a failure
because it led to more people with mental illness being herded into
jails and prisons. But Ben-Moshe argues that this was a pivotal
step in abolition by grassroots organizing."—Teen Vogue"Examining
decarceration and deinstitutionalisation within the same frame is
vitally important...the book challenges us to think about the range
of carceral facilities that exist."—Race & Class"A groundbreaking
connection between disability justice and prison abolition."—Public
Books "Decarcerating Disability should be read not only by
students and scholars of African-American studies, criminology,
critical theory, gender studies, law, or sociology, nor only by
policy makers, but by all who are concerned about disability,
gender, or racial justice."—American Journal of
Sociology "Each chapter of Decarcerating Disability serves as
a fantastic example of the knowledges, perspectives, and
genealogies that are made possible when disability and madness are
the lenses through which a queer of color critique is
engaged."—Disability Studies Quarterly"Decarcerating Disability is
an impressive text that powerfully argues for robust coalitional
politics to challenge the logic of incarceration. Entire syllabi
and reading groups can be structured around this text as Ben-Moshe
opens up much to consider, especially how to effectively demand
carceral-free futures, while also valuing disability. "—Ethnic
Studies Review"Decarcerating disability: Deinstitutionalization and
prison abolition is abold and challenging critical intervention,
which puts critical disability studies, deinstitutionalisation,
decarceration, and abolition theory and scholarship into closer
conversation with each other. In so doing, the book has pushed
these fields forward in new and, interesting ways. The book’s
strongest contribution is its attempt to transform, redefine, and
reframe what disability studies is and can be about, its appeal to
frame and address issues of incarceration and decarceration as
disability and carceral abolition issues, and the generative
groundwork laid for fostering coalitional, liberatory politics and
ideas."—Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology"[A]n
important book that offers both a sweeping genealogy of disability
and itsentangled history with race and incarceration, and rallying
cry for abolitionism."—Journal of Constructivist
Psychology"Ben-Moshe offers a detailed history of
institutionalization and incarceration primarily in the United
States. In putting institutionalization and incarceration in
conversation, Ben-Moshe offers a larger consideration around the
systems that keep certain individuals enclosed and the implications
of deinstitutionalization as a movement versus louder for total
prison abolition. A major intervention of Ben-Moshe’s book is the
different approaches to and opinions of institutions as opposed to
prison systems across the United States."—Work in Critical and
Cultural Theory
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