ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the debilitation of criminalised disabled people through court diversion is represented in law as necessary, non-violent, non-colonial and just. The chapter makes this argument by moving beyond a focus on the inner workings of court diversion itself to situate it in broader dynamics of control, violence and injustice across criminal legal, criminal justice and disability and mental health systems. It first introduces theoretical ideas about carcerality (prison-like control) to explore court diversion’s relationship to criminal legal intervention and other forms of disability-specific coercive intervention. The critical disability studies scholarship on the ‘institutional archipelago’ is useful in understanding how court diversion moves criminalised disabled people between diverse sites and modes of coercive intervention. The chapter then shifts to discuss theoretical ideas related to legality (political legitimacy through law). Here the discussion focuses on exploring how court diversion can be viewed as legitimate even irrespective of its controlling and violent impacts specifically on criminalised disabled people. The concept of ‘psychological individualism’ and critical legal ideas about legality and temporality help in understanding how disabled legal subjectivity is accommodated in criminal law as non-discriminatory, humane and just.
