E3W: "Ben-Moshe's book delivers on ambitious goals"

The objectives and contributions of this book are multiple and complex, making for an impressive project spanning the range of an introduction, seven chapters, and epilogue.

This vital addition to carceral, prison, and disability studies draws important new links between deinstitutionalization and decarcerationAny scholar invested in disability justice will find potential for critical engagement in Liat Ben-Moshe’s Decarcerating Disability. The book is rooted in an interrogation of the histories and possibilities of abolition in three main carceral locales: prisons, psychiatric institutions, and institutions for people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (whom she refers to as I/DD). Ben-Moshe encourages the reader to think of deinstitutionalization not only as a process but as “a social movement, an ideology opposing carceral logics, a mind-set.” As such, the book argues that the project of abolition is “not about facility closure: it is about abolishing a society that could have prisons.” The objectives and contributions of this book are multiple and complex, making for an impressive project spanning the range of an introduction, seven chapters, and epilogue. This book demands much of its reader. Belying quick reading, Ben-Moshe’s book delivers on the ambitious goals she charts in the introduction. One such aim is to begin correcting a current lack of interface between Disability Studies and prison abolition, between disability/madness and analyses of incarceration. Ben-Moshe manages these through an approach defined in her own words as queer, crip, and feminist of color.

Read the full review from Volume 21 of E3W here.