Dr. Ben Moshe’s research shows how disability/mad knowledges and histories, and their racial resonances, should inform analysis of the closure of carceral enclosures such as prisons, jails, psychiatric hospitals and residential institutions for those with intellectual or developmental disabilities, through the prism of abolition. By foregrounding deinstitutionalization as carceral abolition, Ben Moshe’s recent book Decarcerating Disability provides lessons for prison abolition but also illuminates some of the limitations of disability rights and inclusion discourses.
Liat Ben-Moshe is an Associate Professor of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is an interdisciplinary scholar-activist working at the intersection of disability/madness, incarceration/decarceration, and abolition.
Sponsored by the Geography Department, Department of Gender & Women’s Studies, Center for Research on Gender & Women, Graduate and Professional Studies with Disabilities (GPSD) Initiative, Havens Wright Center, Borghesi-Mellon Refuge & Abolition Workshop.
