Uploaded June 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Lewis, T. A. (2021). "Disability Justice in the Age of Mass Incarceration." In D. Guthmann, G. I. Lomas, D. Goff Paris, & G. A. Martin (Eds.), DEAF PEOPLE IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM (pp. 209-303). Gallaudet University Press.
https://gupress.gallaudet.edu/Books/D/Deaf-People-in-the-Criminal-Justice-System
This video may not be repurposed or incorporated into other works in any way without the express written consent of the signer and the chapter author.
While most are aware that policing in the United States was originally developed and later honed to control Black/Indigenous peoples, most are unaware that disabled people (and those labeled disabled) have also always been primary targets of policing and carceral systems. Half of all people killed by police annually are disabled; and disabled people are similarly grossly overrepresented in U.S. jails, prisons, immigration, and youth “detentions”. Yet still, people rarely view the crisis of mass incarceration through a Disability Justice lens.
In chapter 11, entitled "Disability Justice in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” Talila Lewis provides a comprehensive examination of the inequities faced by disabled people affected by the criminal legal system—focusing on deaf and other disabled people who live at the intersection of other marginalized identities (e.g., disabled people who are Black or otherwise negatively racialized, low/no income, Trans/GNC, incarcerated, etc.).
Lewis argues that racism, classism, ableism, and other oppressions intersect to shape how marginalized people are made vulnerable to surveillance, criminalization, policing, incarceration, and more. As a multiply-marginalized disabled abolitionist attorney, educator and organizer, and the volunteer director of the cross-disability nonprofit organization HEARD, Lewis brings to the fore experiences of a group that has been largely invisiblized in debates about the criminal legal system and calls attention to the complex ways that structural and systemic inequities form and inform each other.
Lewis also examines and critiques current trends in advocacy by and for disabled people, focusing in particular on advocacy undertaken by resourced mainstream disability rights. Lewis offers strategies for advocacy that are guided by and rooted in anti-racist, anti-ableist, anti-capitalist principles that challenge the status quo by building solidarity within and across identities, communities, and movements. Lewis convincingly argues that the massive expansion of the prison industrial complex, can not be properly understood without an intentional centering of disability and ableism nor can it be successfully defeated without an intentional integration of Disability Justice into all movements for social justice including prison abolition.
Lewis, T. A. (2021). "Disability Justice in the Age of Mass Incarceration." In D. Guthmann, G. I. Lomas, D. Goff Paris, & G. A. Martin (Eds.), DEAF PEOPLE IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM (pp. 209-303). Gallaudet University Press.
https://gupress.gallaudet.edu/Books/D/Deaf-People-in-the-Criminal-Justice-System
This video may not be repurposed or incorporated into other works in any way without the express written consent of the signer and the chapter author.
While most are aware that policing in the United States was originally developed and later honed to control Black/Indigenous peoples, most are unaware that disabled people (and those labeled disabled) have also always been primary targets of policing and carceral systems. Half of all people killed by police annually are disabled; and disabled people are similarly grossly overrepresented in U.S. jails, prisons, immigration, and youth “detentions”. Yet still, people rarely view the crisis of mass incarceration through a Disability Justice lens.
In chapter 11, entitled "Disability Justice in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” Talila Lewis provides a comprehensive examination of the inequities faced by disabled people affected by the criminal legal system—focusing on deaf and other disabled people who live at the intersection of other marginalized identities (e.g., disabled people who are Black or otherwise negatively racialized, low/no income, Trans/GNC, incarcerated, etc.).
Lewis argues that racism, classism, ableism, and other oppressions intersect to shape how marginalized people are made vulnerable to surveillance, criminalization, policing, incarceration, and more. As a multiply-marginalized disabled abolitionist attorney, educator and organizer, and the volunteer director of the cross-disability nonprofit organization HEARD, Lewis brings to the fore experiences of a group that has been largely invisiblized in debates about the criminal legal system and calls attention to the complex ways that structural and systemic inequities form and inform each other.
Lewis also examines and critiques current trends in advocacy by and for disabled people, focusing in particular on advocacy undertaken by resourced mainstream disability rights. Lewis offers strategies for advocacy that are guided by and rooted in anti-racist, anti-ableist, anti-capitalist principles that challenge the status quo by building solidarity within and across identities, communities, and movements. Lewis convincingly argues that the massive expansion of the prison industrial complex, can not be properly understood without an intentional centering of disability and ableism nor can it be successfully defeated without an intentional integration of Disability Justice into all movements for social justice including prison abolition.
