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Webinar – Disability, Policing, and Mass Incarceration

Click here for a transcript of this webinar

Disabled people make up a disproportionately high rate of the prison population, and it is estimated that 50% of people killed by police have a disability. As we witness a continuing increase in mass incarceration of and police violence against disabled people, especially those who hold multiple marginalized identities, we must urgently take action to shift these deeply harmful trends. We must dismantle the systemic racism and ableism that criminalizes disabled people. 

Join Judy Belk, Senior Advisor of The California Wellness Foundation, for an open, honest dialogue with disability advocates on policing and mass incarceration through the lenses of disability rights and disability justice. This free webinar is presented by the Disability & Philanthropy Forum.

About the Panelists

A headshot of Judy Belk in a shimmery blue blouse against a blurred, green exterior background.

Moderator: Judy Belk, Senior Advisor of the California Wellness Foundation

Judy Belk is Senior Advisor of The California Wellness Foundation (Cal Wellness), one of California’s largest public health philanthropic institutions. Belk previously served as CEO of Cal Wellness for 9 years. With nearly $1 billion in assets, Cal Wellness awards approximately $43 million annually in grants and program-related investments that promote health equity, justice and advocacy for communities and individuals whose lives and wellness are too often determined by their race, income, immigration status or where they live. Belk advises the foundation in pursuing its mission to protect and improve the health and wellness of the people of California, with a core belief that access to quality health care is a human right.

Headshot of Jamelia Morgan, a Black woman with box braids, wearing a beige blazer and hoop earrings. She is against a blurred exterior background with green leaves along the periphery of the image.

Panelist: Jamelia Morgan, Director of the Center for Racial and Disability Justice, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law

Professor Jamelia Morgan is an award-winning and acclaimed scholar and teacher focusing on issues at the intersections of race, gender, disability, and criminal law and punishment. Her scholarship and teaching examine the development of disability as a legal category in American law, disability and policing, overcriminalization and the regulation of physical and social disorder, and the constitutional dimensions of the criminalization of status. Professor Morgan received a B.A. in Political Science and a Master of Arts in Sociology from Stanford University, and her J.D. from Yale Law School. Prior to law school, she served as associate director of the African American Policy Forum.

A headshot of Candace Coleman, a black disabled woman wearing a yellow sweater under black overalls, in front of a window facing a blurred building exterior.

Panelist: Candace Coleman, Community Organizer — Racial Justice, Access Living

Candace Coleman is a black disabled woman from the South Side of Chicago. She works closely with disabled people affected by the justice system to organize around racial justice and disability. This work includes anti-bullying, the school-to-prison pipeline, restorative justice, police brutality, and deinstitutionalization. She was named the ADAPT Woman of the Year in 2018, 35 Under 35 by Chicago Scholars in 2017, and also received the Van Hecke award for outstanding leadership and service in the disability community. Coleman played an integral role in passing the Community Emergency Services and Supports Act (CESSA) in 2021. She continues to work diligently to implement non-police alternatives to mental and behavioral health emergency response.

Headshot of Subini Annamma, a Black Asian woman wearing turquoise earrings, in front of a full, colorful bookshelf.

Panelist: Subini Ancy Annamma, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Stanford University

Subini Ancy Annamma, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at Stanford University whose research critically examines the mutually constitutive nature of racism and ableism, how they interlock with other marginalizing oppressions, and how multiply-marginalized youth experience and resist intersectional injustice in urban schools and youth prisons. Her recent writing appears in Educational Researcher, Theory Into Practice, Review of Research in Education, and Race Ethnicity and Education. Dr. Annamma’s book, The Pedagogy of Pathologization focuses on the education trajectories of incarcerated disabled girls of color and has won the 2019 AESA Critic’s Choice Book Award & 2018 NWSA Alison Piepmeier Book Prize.