Prisoners with Disabilities

We have blogged on several occasions about the graying of prisons. What about individuals in prisons who have, or develop disabilities? The Center for American Progress issued a report, Disabled Behind Bars: The Mass Incarceration of People with Disabilities in America’s Jails & Prisons.   Here is an excerpt from the introduction

People with disabilities are thus dramatically overrepresented in the nation’s prisons and jails today. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, people behind bars in state and federal prisons are nearly three times as likely to report having a disability as the nonincarcerated population, those in jails are more than four times as likely. Cognitive disabilities—such as Down syndrome, autism, dementia, intellectual disabilities, and learning disorders—are among the most commonly reported: Prison inmates are four times as likely and jail inmates more than six times as likely to report a cognitive disability than the general population. People with mental health conditions comprise a large proportion of those behind bars, as well. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that fully 1 in 5 prison inmates have a serious mental illness. (Citations omitted).

The full report is available here.