In the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the country saw its largest decarceration effort in history. Dozens of psychiatric hospitals and large state institutions around the country that acted as warehouses for people with disabilities closed after public outcry and a series of lawsuits aimed at improving conditions. Over subsequent decades, the number of people in the institutions decreased by tens of thousands.

Today, advocates for disability justice and reducing mass incarceration can draw on that history, said Liat Ben-Moshe, an assistant professor of criminology, law and justice at the University of Illinois Chicago and author of the book “Decarcerating Disability.” These two movements — which are primarily led by women, queer people and people of color — can build coalitions and recognize their common threads.

For people in the disability justice space, carceral facilities and disability have long been linked.

People with disabilities currently represent about 40 percent of incarcerated people overall, and nearly half of incarcerated women, according to government data. This is likely an undercount because it is based on self-reported numbers.

The country has a history of normalizing forced detention for people with disabilities, similarly to how society has normalized punitive responses to people accused of crimes, said Dom Kelly, founder, president and CEO of the advocacy group New Disabled South. Changing this approach to institutionalization required a significant shift in policy and public awareness, as well as efforts to reimagine care for people with disabilities outside of these massive institutions, Kelly added.

“We’ve reimagined what this could look like for disabled folks, so we can reimagine what it looks like for everyone,” Kelly said. “I think our government can start to think about how we invest in improving people’s lives and in things that actually are proven to decrease interactions with policing and the carceral system.”

An important step for decarceration activism today is to recognize and address forms of detention both inside and outside prisons and jails, Ben-Moshe said. Disability justice and decarceration organizers need to understand dynamics of the carceral-industrial complex. This term, more frequently called the prison-industrial complex, refers to the extensive network of industries and institutions that support the carceral system.

Read the full article about decarceration by Candice Norwood at The19th.