“Disability and incarceration in the United States and Canada” will be this year’s subject for the Disabilities Study lecture in Old Main, Room 206, on April 13. The lecture will consist of presentations by professors Allison Carey, Liat Ben-Moshe and Chris Chapman. The lecture begins at 7 p.m.

Carey directs the disability studies minor and teaches sociology at Shippensburg University. Ben-Moshe is an assistant professor of disability studies at the University of Toledo and Chapman is assistant professor in the School of Social Work at York University in Toronto.

The lecturers will be addressing the problem of high incarceration among the disabled; coming at a critical time: disability among state, federal and local prisoners is stagnating at an extremely high rate, despite so-called “social-progress,” according to Carey.

“If we don’t provide accessible jobs, accessible housing, income supports and ways for people with disabilities to be included in society, then people with disabilities become marginalized, it becomes difficult for them to access work, they fall into poverty and they become stigmatized and criminalized,” Carey said.

A recent study by Cornell Research Associates confirms this timeline, revealing that disabled people are more than twice as likely to live below the poverty line than those without disability.

One-third of all prisoners in the U.S. are intellectually or physically disabled.

“Over time, we have begun to rely more and more on imprisonment. In prison, people don’t get treatment, don’t get support and are basically warehoused. What we are trying to show is that reliance on prison is not really new, it’s just a different way, a worse way than what we have done in the past,” Carey said.

The lecture will discuss alternatives to prison, attempt to ignite discussions and raise awareness about the broken system that segregates and controls the disabled.

“The issue is complicated, but it’s rarely even thought about by people not directly affected by it. I think many things need to change, and I think for that to happen many people need to start thinking and talking about the many things that we tend to take for granted.” Chapman said.

As well as coming to the lecture on Monday, one of the ways that students and citizens can think about disability is by noticing when things are inaccessible.

“I had students the other day, who noticed that the push button for one of the automatic doors wasn’t working, so they brought that to my attention. So rather than putting the burden on the student with the disability, someone came and said, ‘Well, how do we fix this?’” Carey said.

The lecture will be based on a book authored by the speakers, “Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada.”

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