Vulnerable to the State? The Indefinite Imprisonment of People with Intellectual Disability Under Forensic Mental Health Law as Structural Violence

Abstract

ABSTRACT Violence against people with intellectual disability is commonly understood to occur as a result of an individual’s heightened ‘vulnerability’, based on their disability status. Critical disability studies scholars have problematised ‘vulnerability’, critiquing this term as being socially produced and based in a negative ontology of disability. In this article, we critically reflect on the ways in which people with intellectual disability labels are subjected to structural violence via criminalisation and indefinite detention in prison through the operation of interlocking and multi-layered systems, such as police systems, prison systems, guardianship systems, and the operation of forensic mental health systems. We argue that vulnerability framings used by these systems serve to obscure the structural violence that they ultimately perpetuate. To conduct this analysis, we engage with a testimony: Sue’s story. Sue is an intellectually disabled woman, whose entry into the criminal legal system in Victoria begins with police contact and summary offence charges and ends in indefinite detention after an assessment of unfitness is made under the Crimes (Mental Impairment and Unfitness to be Tried) Act 1997 (Vic) (CMIA). Through an examination of Sue’s case and treatment under the CMIA, we argue that one of the key limitations of vulnerability theories is that notions of ‘vulnerability’ imply a need for protection that can both obscure and animate the use of carceral responses which reproduce harm and embed the ongoing debilitation of criminalised disabled people in society.