Disability: Missing from the Conversation of Violence

Abstract

The data on violence against disabled people are scarce. The data on prevalence that does exist is staggering, however: disabled people make up one third to one half of all people killed by law enforcement and experience twice the rate of violence that others do. To study the relationships among ableism, violence, and disability as an intersectional identity, we use a DisCrit theoretical framework to conduct a selective review of three reports: a Bureau of Justice Statistics (2017) report on violence and disability, a Ruderman Foundation white paper on media coverage of police violence and disability (Perry and Carter-Long), and a report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) investigating the mass incarceration of people with disabilities in the United States (Vallas). The authors examine ways the available data tell a particular story about disability and violence and identify crucial missing conversations. The findings from these analyses suggest that to combat ableism and the violence it causes, oppressive systems must be named, the voices of disabled individuals must be included, and data on disability must be more systematically gathered in all national efforts related to violence and violence prevention. We also present the implications of this work for social policy, psychologists, and larger contributions to the literature on victimization.Violence, broadly defined, has rightly become a target of public reckoning in the United States. Although disability activists (disabled activists of color in particular) have been identifying the effects of violence on the disability community for a decade or more (Harriett Tubman Collective, 2018), research, policy, and publicly available data have just begun acknowledging and exploring this problem and its relationship to disability and ableism. In this article, we engage with scholarly and activist work that defines many aspects of violence and its relationship

Incorporating Measures of Structural Racism into Population Studies of Reproductive Health in the United States: A Narrative Review

“… 102 Having a cognitive or physical disability, for example, which is disproportionately more likely among Black people, 103 increases risk of exposure to violent policing and exacerbates health consequences of direct or community-level exposure. 104 The stress pathways described for each factor above are likely made worse in the case of existing disability. Immigration status is another dimension that warrants attention.…”

Critical Disability Studies: Looking Back and Forward

“…In a particularly chilling set of essays, we learn of the extraordinarily high levels of violence targeted against disabled persons in general (Harder, Keller, & Chopik, ), if less so by women and those who have had contact with disabled persons. With a secondary analysis of police‐involved killings, Mueller, Forber‐Pratt, and Sriken () document the severe and often deadly consequences of ableism, for instance, noting that “Disabled people… experience serious violence at a rate ‘nearly twice that of the general population’ and represent one third to one half of all people killed by law enforcement officers.” With a large international sample, Branco, Ramos, and Hewstone (), drawing upon the European Social Survey, calculate the debilitating health consequences of ableism on victims, in comparison and interaction with other “isms” including sexism and ageism. Dunn () reminds us that ableism functions as an ideology that legitimates policies and institutions that segregate, build hierarchy and further disadvantage within schools, the labor market and housing.…”

“…But of course, we always want more. So I will continue this “letter” to you, and address also current scholars/activists of disability studies, and the generation of scholars to come, with the hope that psychology will engage more comfortably with DisCrit (Connor, Ferri, and Annamma, ; see Mueller et al., ); will value the writings of psychology scholar‐activists who take intersectionality and solidarities seriously (Nishida, ; Smith and Hutchinson, ), those who pursue participatory projects by/for people with disabilities (Rousso, ), those who design work that seeks to reveal the gifts and radical desires that are enfleshed beneath the diagnoses through words and movements/arts and silences, drawing upon relational and visual methods (Ilyes, ; Lalvani, ; Liebert, , , ; Opotow, Ilyes and Fine, ), and those who document the radical political and artistic possibilities born in the rich soil of critical disability consciousness (see http://www.SinsInvalid).…”

Ableism Special Issue Introduction

“…Conversely, younger disabled people who are politically liberal had the lowest implicit ableism. Analyzing three newly released datasets, Mueller, Forber‐Pratt, and Sriken () reveal a disturbing manifestation of ableism: preponderant violence against people with disabilities at rates at least 2.5 times higher than those against people without disabilities. Together, this work on the predictors and prevalence of ableism highlights an urgent need for public policy and civil rights protections for people with disabilities.…”