DisCrit Incarcerated: Exploring the Multiplicative Identities and Education Trajectories of Imprisoned Youth

• In Event: Imprisoning Disability: (Re)Conceptualizing the Role of Disability in the Criminalization of Youth of Color

Abstract

Objectives: Though there is a small but important body of work on youth prison education (Laura, 2014; Vaught, 2017), disability, racism and ableism are often undertheorized/ absent. Federal youth prisons data collection does not include disability, and ignores multiplicative data (e.g., disability + race/gender/sexuality). This absence of disability from public record allows the imprisonment of disabled Youth of Color while erasing them from memory (Mills, 2007). This study reinscribes roles of disability, racism and ableism in educational imprisonment practices through emerging findings from a national study with incarcerated youth.

Theoretical framing: DisCrit: 1) considers how racism and ableism are interdependent, situating students of color as less than (Waitoller, 2020); 2) explores material realities of being labeled as ‘undesirable’, banishing “bodies and minds that tell the truth” (Mingus, 2013); 3) identifies how ableism and racism are used to deny rights–erasing disability allows society to dispose of undesirables in prisons without accounting for resulting damage; 4) supports multiple modes of resistance; highlighting voices of those abandoned by data collection is purposeful resistance to attempted eradication.

Methods: Using research design of critical phenomenology, we ask: RQ1) “Who are the children within youth prisons?”, RQ2) “What are the educational experiences of incarcerated disabled youth of color?”.
Data source: The survey was co-designed with survey experts and formerly incarcerated youth. We then piloted and refined it via five focus groups of formerly incarcerated youth (n=55). The final rigorous survey uses an exploratory, descriptive design to captures the multiple identities and education trajectories of imprisoned youth. It has been distributed in 4 states (n=385 surveys). By AERA, we anticipate analyzing survey results for 8 additional states.

Results: This survey has already provided essential information about imprisoned youth. Table 1 describes how incarcerated youth racially identify.

Most Youth of Color are overrepresented in this sample. 14% of incarcerated youth identified as queer compared to about 7% of the US. Of all incarcerated queer youth, almost 40% were Black and 84% of incarcerated Black girls identify as queer.

Table 2 describes the education experiences that youth reported, compared to the US public school population.

Incarcerated youth experience higher rates of mental health issues, disability identification, and educational imprisonment practices (e.g., suspensions, arrests). All Youth of Color in our sample identify as having a disability at high rates (80-95%). We also created Education Profiles of participants to reject survey analysis that reduces complex youth identities and trajectories to numbers. For example,





Analyzing X’s and Z’s Education Profiles presents their full humanity and illustrates how disability and race played significant roles in their education.

Scholarly significance: Imprisoned youth narrate stories about who they are and how their education trajectories impacted incarceration. As disabilities are something that some youth are born with, while others acquire them during school, and many experience as a result of incarceration, this survey reveals how imprisonment practices across prison geographies impacted disabled Youth of Color.

Authors

• Subini Ancy Annamma, Stanford University

• Candice Jeehae Kim, Stanford University

• Michael O'Key, Stanford University

• Sophie D'Souza, Stanford University