Event Description 

Persons with disabilities (PWDs) across their lifespan face higher risk for arrest and incarceration due to extensively documented discriminatory law enforcement practices. According to research in the American Journal of Public Health, PWDs are 44% more likely to be arrested by age 28 than those without disabilities—a problem based in part on unfounded, ableist notions about PWDs’ propensity toward aggression and violence. Likewise, PWDs are also more likely to experience violence at the hands of police. According to data from the Washington Post, police have killed nearly 2,000 individuals grappling with behavioral health crises since 2015, accounting for one-fifth of all police-related killings during this period. Significantly, these harms are inflicted disproportionately against PWD of color—underscording the need for intersectional solutions. Moreover, for many PWDs impactful interactions with law enforcement begin at school, due to policies and practices that push students of color with disabilities into a school-to-prison pipeline.

Ending the Mass Incarceration of Persons of Color with Disabilities: Toward Intersectional Solutions to Transform Policing delved into the causes, implications, and consequences of these phenomena. It invited leaders in disability justice, racial justice, and criminal justice advocacy and scholarship to propose forward-looking ideas to shift policing away from a focus on punishment and coercion and toward one that values and affirms care, self-determination, and solidarity. This event also set the stage for a digital symposium in the Bill of Health, the Petrie-Flom Center’s blog, where a broader range of scholars and advocates from the disability justice, racial justice, and criminal justice communities will be invited to explore additional avenues for intersectional solutions.

Live CART captioning was provided.

Panelists 

• Welcoming Remarks: Michael Ashley Stein, Executive Director, HPOD; Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School 
• Moderator: Benjamin A. Barsky, Annual Fellow, HPOD; PhD Candidate in Health Policy
• Alice Abrokwa, Annual Fellow, HPOD; Senior Counsel, Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education
• Eric Harris, Director of Public Policy, Disability Rights California
• Leigh Ann Kingsley, Senior Director of Disability & Justice Initiatives, The Arc’s National Center on Criminal Justice and Disability
• Sami Schalk, Associate Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This event is co-sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, HPOD the Harvard Law School Project on Disability at Harvard Law School, and the Institute to End Mass Incarceration.