Dis/ableist criminology: applying disability theory within a criminological context

This chapter is a call for the discipline of criminology to begin to re-engage with the marginalised voices of disabled people who have been excluded, pathologised and silenced within this field of study. By tracing the parallel developments of crime and disability theory, it becomes clear that there were several points at which the disciplines could and should have intersected. Yet they failed to do so, resulting in a failure to comprehensively understand the lives and perspectives of disabled people who are victims, perpetrators, or who otherwise encounter criminal justice organisations. This chapter argues that in order to fully understand the nexus of crime/victimisation and disability, the discipline of criminology must develop and incorporate Dis/ableist spaces and approaches whereby individual, cultural and structural ableism and disablism can be examined, challenged and critiqued.