Disability Injustice: Confronting Criminalization in Canada

An exploration of disability in the historical and contemporary Canadian criminal justice system.

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 original work from a range of scholars and activists who explore disability in the historical and contemporary Canadian criminal justice system. The contributors confront topics such as eugenics and crime control, the pathologizing of difference as deviance, processes of criminalization, and the role of disability justice activism in contesting longstanding discrimination. Weaving together disability and sociolegal studies, criminology, and law, Disability Injustice examines disability in contexts that include policing and surveillance, sentencing and the courts, prisons and other carceral spaces, and alternatives to confinement. This collection highlights how, with a deeper understanding of disability, we can and should challenge the practices of crime control and the processes of criminalization.
 

Kelly Fritsch is assistant professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Carleton University. She is the coauthor of We Move Together.

Jeffrey Monaghan is associate professor in the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Carleton University. He is the coauthor of Policing Indigenous Movements: Dissent and the Security States

Emily van der Meulen is professor in the department of criminology at Ryerson University. She is a coeditor of Red Light Labour: Sex Work Regulation, Agency, and Resistance.