Resources

The child welfare system, more accurately referred to as the family policing system, employs extensive surveillance that disproportionately targets marginalized families, subjecting them to relentless oversight. Scholars observe that this ongoing surveillance obstructs effective parenting, exacerbates existing injustices, and contradicts its stated protective purpose. Instead of safeguarding, surveillance transforms into a tool of control against the families it should assist, particularly those who are already vulnerable. This Article extends the analysis of the family policing system’s surveillance practices to encompass parents with disabilities and their children, revealing the unique consequences of continuous observation. The system’s ableism amplifies scrutiny of disabled parents, disregarding their disability-related needs and causing harm under the guise of protection. The culmination of this persistent surveillance results in heightened systemic harm, trapping families in an inescapable cycle of perpetual scrutiny.

A Center for Public Integrity analysis of U.S. Department of Education data from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico found that school policing disproportionately affects students with disabilities, Black children and, in some states, Native American and Latino children. Nationwide, Black students and students with disabilities were referred to law enforcement at nearly twice their share of the overall student population.

Freddie Gray, Laquan MacDonald, Kevin Matthews, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Charleena Lyles, Sandra Bland, Quintonio LeGrier, Stephon Watts, Korryn Gaines, Natasha McKenna, Eric Smith, and Daniel Prude are all Black, disabled victims of state violence. In the United States, 50 percent of people killed by law enforcement are disabled, and more than half of disabled African Americans have been arrested by the time they turn 28—double the risk in comparison to their white disabled counterparts. While these statistics provide basic insight into how law enforcement engage with parts of the disability community, much remains unknown. Specifically, the United States must improve the mechanisms used for data collection on police encounters to provide an accurate, complete picture of these long-standing dynamics and misuse of force. In the ongoing efforts and discussion surrounding police reform and the need for shifting investments into different types of interventions, policymakers need to have solid data in order to refute messaging that minimizes the magnitude of the problem.

“We Can’t Breathe: The Deaf & Disabled Margin of Police Brutality Project” includes a video and toolkit that can be utilized for educational training for disability organizations and agencies. The We Can’t Breathe Toolkit addresses how state violence affects people with disabilities who are also women, people of color, and LGBTQ+. This training intentionally utilizes an intersectionality framework to combat the racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia that pervade disability organizations and agencies. Facilitators should center the voices and narratives of those most affected by state violence in the disability community. This cannot be done without building an understanding of intersectionality within organizations of influence and power that ideally leads to inclusive actions.

Police violence is a public health issue in need of public health solutions. Reducing police contact through public health–informed alternative response programs separate from law enforcement agencies is one strategy to reduce police perpetration of physical, emotional, and sexual violence. Such programs may improve health outcomes, especially for communities that are disproportionately harmed by the police, such as Black, Latino/a, Native American, and transgender communities; nonbinary residents; people who are drug users, sex workers, or houseless; and people who experience mental health challenges.

The use of alternative response teams is increasing across the United States. This article provides a public health rationale and framework for developing and implementing alternative response programs informed by public health principles of care, equity, and prevention.

This brief is intended to help organizers working to stop the violence of surveillance, policing and punishment and advance racial, reproductive, gender, LGBTQ, migrant, and disability justice to:

• make links between criminalization of care for trans youth across all of our struggles;
• understand how we can join the fight to challenge criminalization of trans health care;
• be of support to folks seeking and offering gender-affirming care;
• and connect the criminalization of gender-affirming health care to broader calls to defund police, decriminalize, and divest from surveillance, policing and punishment.

What is mental health? How can we be more whole and how can we advocate for systems that help all of our community members heal? In this episode, we look at mental health with two practitioners — Iresha Picot and Jacqui Johnson. Listen to their conversation that ranges from trauma to mental health crisis response to hip-hop. Learn about the policy changes that could make city services more just and what we all need to be well.

This report analyzes data from the U.S. Department of Education’s 2017-18 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), the 2019 California Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) Stops dataset, and data from Stockton Unified School District on police in schools. The data conclusively show harmful and discriminatory policing patterns in schools. School police contribute to the criminalization of tens of thousands of California students, resulting in them being pushed out of school and into the school-to-prison pipeline. Critically, the data suggest that schools underreport the number of assigned law enforcement officers, so these problems are likely even more severe.

The question of whether police belong in schools has been a long-debated topic in the United States. With the increased focus on policing generally, the debate has grown more intense. Proponents argue that police can more effectively address student-to-student conflict, such as bullying, and increase overall safety in an age of recurring school shootings. Those who oppose argue that police in schools contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline and result in disparities based on race and/or disability in discipline and arrests, as well as a climate of fear for students of color. Speakers on this program present the data, discuss the impact of police in schools and examine this issue critically to confront the question of whether police in schools result in enhanced student safety.