The tension between abolition and reform

Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 1989

medicaid u n i n s u r e d a n d t h e k ai s e r c o m m i s s i o n T h e K a i s e r C o m m i s s i o n o n M e d i c a i d a n d t h e U n i n s u r e d p r o v i d e s i n f o r m a t i o n a n d a n a l y s i s o n h e a l t h c a r e c o v e r a g e a n d a c c e s s f o r t h e l o w -i n c o m e p o p u l a t i o n , w i t h a s p e c i a l f o c u s o n M e d i c a i d 's r o l e a n d c o v e r a g e o f t h e u n i n s u r e d . B e g u n i n 1 9 9 1 a n d b a s e d i n t h e K a i s e r F a m i l y F o u n d a t i o n 's Wa s h i n g t o n , D C o

Ontario has recently closed its last 3 institutions for persons with developmental disabilities. Very little research has been conducted on Canadian deinstitutionalization projects, and the impacts and bona fides of such endeavours have not been well documented in Canada. However, the closing of institutions has occurred in most Western jurisdictions and has been the subject of much research in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Although community services are of variable quality, this literature review suggests that the Ontario plan to close institutional facilities in favour of community-based residential services will be of general benefit to former institutional residents.

Ontario has recently closed its last 3 institutions for persons with developmental disabilities. Very little research has been conducted on Canadian deinstitutionalization projects, and the impacts and bona fides of such endeavours have not been well documented in Canada. However, the closing of institutions has occurred in most Western jurisdictions and has been the subject of much research in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Although community services are of variable quality, this literature review suggests that the Ontario plan to close institutional facilities in favour of community-based residential services will be of general benefit to former institutional residents.

Ethics, 1982

During the sixties, social critics visited institutions for the retarded and were shocked by the conditions they found (Blatt and Kaplan 1966; Rivera 1972). Scholarly research supported the conclusions of lay observers (see the studies cited in Balla, Butterfield, and Zigler [1974] and Biklen [1979]). Consensus was easy: people saw conditions that everyone believed were bad, and all agreed that policies should change. Only a small percentage of the retarded were in institutions or helped by specialized public programs, and many had been excluded from school. Care was inadequate both because it was of low quality and because many of the retarded received no services. Social critics were allied not only with scholarly experts but with many who had a deep personal interest in programs for the retarded. Both parents and professionals who cared for the retarded sought changes in treatment and educational methods and increases in public funding.' The key slogans were deinstitutionalization, normalization, mainstreaming, and a developmental model of care.2 * Partially funded by the Yale Program on Non-Profit Organizations.

Journal of Social Issues, 1981

This article compares the history and current status of deinstitutionalization efforts for the mentally ill, criminal offenders, and the aged in need of long-term care. Evidence from other articles in this issue, and elsewhere, suggests that similar ideologies of deinstitutionalization have guided thinking for all three groups but that practices have diverged. Only the mentally ill have moved out of institutions in large numbers, and, for all three groups, many "alternatives" differ little from institutions. Society regards all three groups negatively, but with differences that are reflected in treatment goals. Effective technologies for community treatment are available for the mentally ill, and methods for preventing institutionalization are available for the aged, but few members of even these groups receive such services. The divergence between ideology and practice for the three groups highlights both the constructive force of ideology in guiding policy and research, and its capacity to distort common perceptions of practice.

1995

Race & Class, 2021

's insightful new book, Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition uses mad studies as a lens to examine decarceration and deinstitutionalisation as approaches by which to understand a broader political position of anti-racism, anti-carcerality. The book is a timely intervention into broader academic and social debates in North American and beyond. In the context of the discussions held at the 2018 Symposium on Race, Mental Health and State Violence, which provided the conceptual frame for this special issue, this review also serves as an occasion to revisit the important work of legal scholar, Camille Nelson, who served as a keynote at the Symposium. Her two articles on policing race and mental health have made an important contribution to the field of critical race scholarship and share important common ground with Decarcerating Disability. Decarcerating Disability comes at a moment of crossroads in the political landscape, which includes the mass organisation of people in the project of reducing the reach and infrastructure of the police. This aspect of the larger movement for the abolition of prisons and a vast reduction of the criminal justice system has not been conceived recently; indeed, for many decades, organisers, and in particular people of colour, women and queer people have been laying the theoretical and practical foundations for articulating the demands of abolition. The current moment, not least of all the culmination of the demands of the Movement for Black Lives a few years ago, and the 2020 protests in response to the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Elijah McClain and others, has taken forward the more transformative demand of defunding policing institutions, rather than simply calling for the arrest of the officers who undertook the killings.

2011