The Americans With Disabilities Act Should Not Discriminate
It should serve everyone with a disability, regardless of society’s opinion of them.
Do you think it is controversial to say that the Americans with Disabilities Act should be adhered to in legal and custodial settings? It shouldn’t be that controversial. But getting these institutions to do the bare minimum regarding a federal law that has been on the books since 1990 is astoundingly arduous. Sometimes, it is simply impossible for autistic individuals and their families to get what they need.
I am tired of hearing stories from parents that ADA coordinators at state and federally-run correctional facilities are simply refusing to comply with the law. Once having exhausted all their administrative remedies, autistic prisoners and people with intellectual disabilities then must wade through minefields, hoping that they don’t make the wrong move and face retaliation by challenging the institution. Lawsuits or formal complaints take months in the courts — sometimes years to complete. And while all of this is going on, it is the person on the spectrum who suffers while they do not receive the life and death accommodations they deserve. Autistic individuals often have medical comorbidities that are not addressed in these settings. From the link:
While behind bars, people with disabilities are often deprived of necessary medical care, as well as needed supports, services, and accommodations. This is despite long-standing federal disability rights laws that mandate equal access to programs, services, and activities for all people with disabilities in custody. Poor conditions in jails and prisons and inadequate access to health care and mental health treatment can not only exacerbate existing conditions but also lead to further physical and mental health problems that individuals did not have prior to incarceration. Many inmates with disabilities are held in solitary confinement — reportedly, in many cases, for their own protection, due to a lack of appropriate alternative accommodations.
Sensory accommodations are often considered contraband. General population for an autistic prisoner who is there on a sensitive charge can and does lead to physical and sexual assaults against the ASD individual. When parents or loved ones let prison administration know these things are happening and ask for accommodations in coordination with their sons or daughters, staff often look the other way.
Recently, I was made aware that an autistic individual was transferred out of a neurobehavioral unit that accommodates neurodiverse populations and follows the ADA. This transfer happened through no fault of the autistic person whatsoever. It was an administrative decision. This unit was one of the only units of its kind in the United States. The family has been desperate to try to transfer them back to that unit so their mental health does not further decompensate, but they have had no such luck after several months.
The ADA is not just for governmental spaces where we enforce it based on who we categorize as “good” or “bad” people. The law is there to protect all disabled individuals. We do not constantly hear about these kinds of awful stories in the news because when you are in prison or jail, you don’t have much of a voice. However, while these lawsuits may not be widely reported upon, they happen with enough frequency that it cannot be questioned that the problem is systemic.
A careful reader who clicks on the links above may notice that those articles do not mention autism but are mostly about physical disabilities. That’s the point: Autism is hardly acknowledged as even being a disability in jails or prisons because it is an invisible disability and not always physically apparent. If there is a physical disability present, *sometimes* jails or prisons will abide by the ADA or worry about facing a lawsuit. But when it’s autism or an intellectual disability? ‘Nah. We’ll take a pass.’
What is it going to take to change this situation? Does every jail or prison need an independent oversight body? Are compliance reports going to solve it? Does the DOJ need to get involved more widely? Do we need to get more ombudspersons involved? I do not have an answer. As it stands now, there is a complete and utter lack of accountability regarding the enforcement of the ADA for various neurotypes that constitute the term “disability,” and it feels a lot like discrimination to me.
With this being an election year, please ensure you stay on top of all the candidates running for office surrounding this issue. Tell them you are paying attention to how much they care about this and that their inaction will cost them at the ballot box.
