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DisCrim Toolkit

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Policing

Examining how disability is criminalized in policing, particularly at the intersections of race, class, and gender. It focuses on how people are disproportionately targeted, harmed, or misidentified as threats due to ableist and racist policing practices.

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Education

Exploring how disability is criminalized in education through policies and practices that disproportionately discipline, surveil, and exclude disabled students. The education system often responds to disability with punishment rather than support.

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Healthcare

Investigating how disability is criminalized in healthcare settings, particularly for communities at the intersections of race, class, and gender. It examines how medical institutions and providers respond to disability with surveillance, coercion, and punishment.

What is DisCrim?

The criminalization of disability often refers to the ways disabled people are disproportionately targeted, surveilled, policed, incarcerated, and killed.

  • Laws & Policing

  • Disciplinary Tools

  • Policies

43%

Disabled people have a 43% likelihood of being arrested by age 28

55%

Black disabled people have a 55% likelihood of being arrested by age 28

50%

of people killed by police are disabled

This infographic outlines four key areas that shape disabled people’s experiences: Cultural Attitudes, Social Systems, Systemic Responses, and Criminalization Outcomes. Each column includes examples and a reflective question. Cultural Attitudes include stigma, religious beliefs, and historical legacies. Social Systems cover education, healthcare, family, and legal structures. Systemic Responses refer to policies like surveillance, institutionalization, and exclusion. Criminalization Outcomes highlight the effects of exclusion—marginalization, incarceration, and violence. Each section asks how family or economic systems affect access or exclusion. The image is credited to Nesbitt © 2024 for CRDJ.

Join the Collective!

The DisCrim Collective invites scholars, organizers, advocates, and community members to join in confronting the systems that target, police, incarcerate, and harm disabled people—especially those who are multiply marginalized. Our work explores how DisCrim manifests in policing, education, and healthcare, while remaining open to emerging and overlooked sites where state violence and institutional neglect operate. As we expand our focus beyond the U.S., we are building transnational dialogues and holding workshops to deepen our collective understanding and strategy. If you are working to expose or challenge the criminalization of disability in any form or region, we welcome you into this growing community of resistance, care, and justice.

Contact Us

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law

Center for Racial and Disability Justice

375 East Chicago Avenue

Chicago, IL 60611-3069

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Email: crdj@law.northwestern.edu

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© 2025 by the Center for Racial and Disability Justice

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