We updated “The Cult of Compliance and the Policing of the Norm” with a selection from “33 Years and Still So Much Work Must be Done: A Reflection on the ADA at 33 | by Jordyn Jensen, Jamelia Morgan, and Nicholas Lawson | CRDJ | Medium”.

Disabled people, particularly people of color with disabilities, are policed and criminalized. Disabled people of color are targeted in public spaces through aggressive policing strategies and make up a disproportionate number of police killings. In addition, disabled people of color are overrepresented in jails, prisons, and other carceral settings.

Students with psychiatric disabilities and students of color are particularly vulnerable to in-school policing through threat assessments, crisis intervention programs, and other forms of surveillance, and often tracked into the criminal legal system on account of behaviors criminalized in schools. The rate of law enforcement referrals for students reveals clear intersectional marginalization, rising from 36 of 10,000 students for White students, to 88 for Native-American students, 93 for Black students, and 113 for students with disabilities, and soars to 221 for Black boys with disabilities, and 235 for Native-American boys with disabilities.

33 Years and Still So Much Work Must be Done: A Reflection on the ADA at 33 | by Jordyn Jensen, Jamelia Morgan, and Nicholas Lawson | CRDJ | Medium