The Intersections of Disability
Building Stronger Social Movements
Voter Disenfranchisement
Abolition
The right to vote is an important part of keeping our democracy functioning. Yet, by excluding those who are currently or formerly have been part of the carceral system, a constituency who makes up a key part of elected officials on local ballots, creates an easy pathway to ensuring elected officials can't be held accountable by the very people who have lived through the conditions of incarceration.
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Some states have strict voter ID laws requiring particular forms of identification to register to vote. Not only are people in jail less likely to have the required types of identification, but when people are arrested, their personal effects — including IDs — are typically confiscated. In addition, government-issued prison or jail ID cards do not typically qualify as accepted forms of identification. Without appropriate identification, jailed voters wishing to register may not be able to do so. - "Eligible, but Excluded: A guide to removing
the barriers to jail voting", Prison Policy Initiative (2020)
Body Autonomy
While behind bars, people with disabilities are often deprived of necessary medical care, as well as needed supports, services, and accommodations. This is despite long-standing federal disability rights laws that mandate equal access to programs, services, and activities for all people with disabilities in custody.
There is an important connection to be made between the current carceral system, which consists of prisons and jails as the formal "warehouse" to store those our society has deemed unfit to be seen.
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This tradition and the mindset of wanting to remove those deemed 'undesirable' out of public view, stemmed from the formalization of the asylum, reform schools, internment camps, and institutions. These spaces were used to remove people from their communities and support systems, force them into a state-run facility and try to enact behavior modification programs that were often used to really wipe away cultural connections or to try and assert control over one's physical autonomy.
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Today in the carceral system, this continues. Violence from guards, the subminimum wage labor, inadequate medical and mental health care, and often a lack of open resources for personal development, all contribute to the ways that the state continues this historical ideology, seeking to take control of the individual while stripping them of personal autonomy.
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A more horrific connection to disability and colonization is what has been documented by Ella Callow:
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In the cases in South Dakota just a few years ago, the state got into a great deal of trouble for its court’s practices around child welfare in the Native community. And what was really interesting was that things came to light, like the fact that they designate every single Native child they remove and place into foster care as disabled. And when they do that, they get more money.
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So, what we’re seeing again is they’re taking these children out of the community, they’re identifying them as disabled and making money, and they’re controlling them in state settings or non-Native settings in a way that’s detrimental to the children, and is profitable to the state. - Ella Callow in "How state courts use disability to remove Native children from their homes" Berkley News
You know, my level of illness is a result of poverty and substance abuse.
When you live in an impoverished state, like, resources, basic amenities can’t be met on a daily basis.
Then you try to escape the reality by turning to drugs and alcohol or other kinds of addictive behavior and then that addictive behavior turns into a mental illness
because life can’t function without drugs and the drugs just mess up your mind and biology
to the point where, for a long period of time,
I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.
-Ray Robinson
By The Numbers:
Disability In The Carceral System
An estimated:
32% state and federal prisoners
40% local jail inmates
reported having at least one disability in the 2011–12 National Inmate Survey.
Disabilities Among Prison And Jail Inmates, 2011-12.
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2015
There were so many times that I tried committing suicide in my early teens. Some attempts are more vivid than others, but I can never separate out the hospitalizations. Always 48 hour holds, never a long stay, as whatever crisis that had led to me trying to end my life had susbsisded within me.
The therapists never found enough reason to keep me there, but they always ensured my family had me well dosed on anti-psychotic medication, keeping me lost and confused and constantly on edge.
The problem was they could never really get at the root of it all, to understand why I was 'crazy', why a child was constantly looking for the ultimate relief.
There were so many days I woke up with what I'd now describe as existential dread. School was awful for me.
In my younger days I wore hats and wigs, as a condition of mine left me with patchy hair. I was in catholic school with a dress code so meant that I was forced to explain my medical condition, in detail, to my peers. So they could understand why my accommodation of a hat was necessary.
You can expect how well that went, it just opened the doorway for the cruelty, the constant stares, rumors; as if being fat wasn't reason enough, they had layers of ammunition against me - and they used it.
The summer before eighth grade, my dad died unexpectedly, which sent me into a tailspin. We were finally reconnecting after he had gotten his life back on track, as a lifelong alcoholic it was incredible to learn he was sober and had graduated college. Losing him after finally getting him back changed me forever.
​So much of the end of middle school through early high school is a complete blur. There were many weekend stays in the hospital, holding me on a suicide watch until I was stable enough to talk my way out.
Often, the way to the psych wing was through the emergency room, but depending on where there were beds open there was the dreaded transport. Depending on the night changed how I was taken to the psych ward.
One instance still stands out for me. I was cuffed and put into a police car, they were worried about my OCD and trying to self harm on the way, I was incredibly terrified, the police tried to make me comfortable and were kind enough, I still wonder if it would have been the same for others of different races, abilities, or if I was even outwardly facing queer.
It was this instance where upon arrival I was mandated to do the always dreaded strip and cough test. As a survivor of multiple childhood sexual assaults, this was such a humiliating and terrifying process that unearthed buried memories.
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Once I began to refuse the inappropriate psychosis medications I was able to regain a semblance of mental stability. I did intensive therapy of many kinds, I eventually made friends, and tried to live as 'normally' as possible.
It wasn't until college that I would experience the psych ward again,
this time through self-admission.
Neglect and Abuse in Our Prison Healthcare System
The Appeal, 2018
How the US Government Created an 'Insane Asylum' to Imprison Native Americans
UC Berkley News, 2020
Labor Inequality
The story of Angola helps further connect the inhumane treatment of those incarcerated to histories of racial violence and enslavement in the United States, especially at this carceral site, as it was once the site of a former plantation.
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While inmates there continue to work the land as the former enslaved did, they are making just pennies. At these wages, it's practically enslavement. What's worse, to receive medical care there comes a risk of spending precious additional money as a punishment for any "invalid" requests. From Mercedes Montagnes in The Appeal episode,
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Every healthcare request form that Angola has at the bottom is a warning that if you’re asking for healthcare and you’re deemed not to want it, that we’re going to punish you with this punishment called aggravated malingering. So with every healthcare requested a patient puts in, not only are they charged $4 to $6 per healthcare request when they only make four to twenty cents an hour for their work, but they have to fear that they could take disciplinary action against them.
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Violence
It's been noted that there are correlations between the asylums of the past and prisons today. Looking at the first hospital-based asylum, which founding father Ben Franklin was a primary contributor towards, we can recognize roots of carceral violence, especially towards those with mental illness. The following is taken from Turning Points: The Transition of the Treatment of the Mentally Ill from late 18th century to early 20th century,
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In the early days of the hospital, it was very easy to have someone committed and his freedom taken away; if the patient was not passive then he, or she, would be chained, using manacles on the floor or walls of the room. There were a large number of scraps of papers found, from a friend (or at times an enemy), writing to have a person committed. It was said that at the time of the conception of the hospital, there were a large number of the insane "terrorizing" their neighbors and wandering the streets of Philadelphia. These were people who may have truly had some variety of mental illness, the homeless, the friendless, or geriatrics with dementia.
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When the patients were taken to Pennsylvania Hospital, they were placed in the "temporary hospital", the dark, dank basement. The other areas of the hospital were reserved for those with other health illnesses. It was there that they were chained to the wall and sometimes made to wear
"madd-shirts", which restrained the movement of their arms.
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For the people of Philadelphia, it was considered a pastime to come to the hospital and peer into the rooms of the insane to witness their episodes. The patients were douched alternatively with warm and cold water, their scalps shaved and blistered; they were bled to the point of syncope (transient loss of consciousness due to inadequate blood supply to the brain), purged until the alimentary canal failed to yield anything but mucus, and, in the intervals, were kept chained. The keepers were given whips and they were allowed to use them on patients that were not passive.
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Angola For Life
The Atlantic, 2015
Prisoners With Disabilities Fight for Equal Rights
The Appeal, 2019