Achieving Justice for Disabled Parents and Their Children: An Abolitionist Approach

Abstract

The social uprisings following the police killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many other people of color elevated the concept of abolition to the forefront of people’s consciousness. Concurrently, there is a burgeoning body of legal scholarship calling for the abolition of the carceral regime. Some scholars also recognize that abolition efforts must include the child welfare system, more accurately termed the family policing system, noting the interdependent relationship between the family policing system and other parts of the carceral regime. Yet, despite the nascent legal scholarship calling for family policing system abolition, parents with disabilities and their children have been mostly disregarded. This Article responds to that scholarly void.

In this Article, I situate the family policing system within the contemporary struggle for the abolition of the carceral regime. My overarching argument is that the family policing system is an unjust social institution for disabled parents and their children. As such, we must work towards abolishing it and replacing it with non-punitive supports and resources for families. First, the Article describes the family policing system and its legal obligations to disabled parents and their children. Drawing on legal scholarship and social science research, it then elucidates the scope of the problem, detailing the injustices and harms that disabled parents and their children experience because of the family policing system. Next, the Article argues that reforms are not sufficient because the family policing system inflicts injustices and harms on disabled parents and their children by design. Thereafter, it limns the tenets of both abolition and disability justice and the ways in which these interconnecting movements, theories, and praxes could advance justice for parents with disabilities through the abolition of the family policing system. Finally, it proposes a novel anti-ableist legal and policy agenda for abolishing the family policing system that is responsive to disabled parents and their children.

Keywords: disability, child welfare, abolition

JEL Classification: K10, K36, I30, I38