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Criminalization

We challenge systems that criminalize disabled people through policing, incarceration, and surveillance.

Disabled people in the South are disproportionately impacted by the criminal legal system at the state and federal level.

Disability is increasingly policed and criminalized while individuals who are forced to interact with the carceral system oftentimes become disabled.

New Disabled South opposes the mass detention, the forced removal, and the forced disappearance of all peoples, including the criminalization of immigration and the demonization of immigrants. 

New Disabled South believes in the decriminalization of living while disabled and the abolition of the prison industrial complex.

33–50%

Of people killed by police in the United States are people with disabilities

Source: Ruderman Family Foundation analysis of law enforcement reporting
50%+

Of disabled African Americans have been arrested by age 28

Source: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
40%+

Of people in state prisons report a disability

Source: Prison Policy Initiative analysis of Bureau of Justice Statistics data
66%

Of state and federal prison populations may have a disability when mental health and cognitive conditions are included

Source: University of Pennsylvania research estimates