The story of the disability community and the united states prison industrial complex begins with disturbing trend of numbers. Recent reports from the US Census Bureau estimate that as many as 1/5 of US prisoners are disabled in some form but the prevalence is actually much higher.
While few reliable sources of Data exist nationwide as to the mass incarceration of people with disabilties, there is enough data to draw educated inferences as to the extent of the issue.
Studies suggest that 30 percent of inmates have some form of hearing impairment. Learning Disabilities are fairly common and estimated to be present in 55 percent of those in the Juvenile Justice system.
One of the most striking studies in this regard was a four state study on juvenile offenders who had committed capital offenses,which found that 98 percent of them to have multiple disabilties (neurological,psychiatric or cognitive conditions) usually stemming from significant Childhood trauma.

So why are so many individuals with disabilties incarcerated? Social determinists like like the vast majority of elected officials in Carver County and others who also exhibit the intellectual capacity of a gnat, will attribute the high rates of incarceration to the persons "handicap" resulting in behavior's considered abnormal and asocial but I would argue an entirely different theory and base my conclusions on socio -economic factors and historical trauma based loosely on an idea first contemplated by early 20th century Marxists.

Given the historic segregation of people with disabilities (PWDs)from American society, PWDs living in what we would consider the "free world" really aren't any better off than their counterparts behind bars
Institutions In general, including prisons have functioned to support accumulation of financial capital and as a means of social control on the disability community.
The prison population is not a cross-section of America; prisoners are poorer and statistically less likely to be employed

Combine this with the fact that poverty is directly linked to a higher prevalence of disability. Neither quality health care, nor safe, adequate housing, nor nutritious food has been available to poor people. Environmental racism, i.e placing waste dumps,industrial factories, power plants and other poison-emitting industries in low-income, mostly non-white neighborhoods, has a devastating impact: not only are poor children exposed to lead and other toxins, resulting in high rates of developmental and learning disabilities; they also drink poison water and breathe air of potentially questionable quality leading to extreme prevalence of asthma and other respiratory illnesses and cancers. People in poverty often live in neighborhoods plagued by drug and alcohol abuse, leading to physical and psychological damage, including fetal alcohol syndrome, and marked by violent often leading to spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, and other disabilities.

Even the economic boom of the Industrial revolution opressed pwds of all kinds to the bottom of the socio-economic totem pole. 19th century "commodified" the human body, creating a class of proletarians and a class of “disabled” whose bodies did not conform to the standard worker

Physique and whose ability to impact the labor market was ignored. Over time, as disabled persons came to be regarded as a social problem, it became justifiable to remove individuals with impairments from mainstream life and segregate them in a variety of institutions, including workhouses, asylums, prisons and "special" schools.

It was about this point that it became a social norm to sift PWDs out of the labor force and communities and into institutions, the medical industry pathologized traits such as blindness, deafness, and physical and mental impairments that have naturally appeared in the human race throughout history. In the Foucaultian sense, "medicalization" and institutionalization became means of social control, relegating disabled persons to isolation and exclusion from society; the combination met capitalism’s need for discipline and control.

The basic concept of an institution is repressive in that all those who either can't or won't conform to the norms and discipline of a "normalized" society can be and will be removed from it. It is ideological in that it stands as a visible monument for all those who currently conform but may not continue to do so: if you do not behave, the tall walls and punitive treatment of an institution awaits you.

Institutions of all descriptions thus became formidable, formalized containment devices. It is now the disability rights movement’s primary revolutionary goal to reverse this trend.

The impact on disabled people of this kind of segregation has been profound. They are the least likely to be employed, the most likely to be impoverished and undereducated. Only a third of working-age disabled individuals are currently employed, compared to more than 80 percent of the nondisabled population. One- third (34 percent) of adults with disabilities live in households with an annual income of less than $15,000, compared to 12 percent of those without disabilities—a 22-point gap which has remained virtually constant since 1986. Disabled persons are twice as likely not to finish high school (22 percent versus 9 percent). A disproportionate number of disabled persons report having inadequate access to health care (28 percent versus 12 percent) or transportation (30 percent versus 10 percent).7 Of course, one must acknowledge that disabled people live on the economic margins of all societies throughout the world, not merely in capitalist countries. But nowhere else are we witness to the jarring disconnect between a society’s vast wealth and its refusal to provide more than the barest means of survival for its most vulnerable citizens.

The role of Federal courts in preserving the rights of Americans with disabilities

Friday, June 22, 2018 marks the 19th Anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s decision, Olmstead v. L.C. The Olmstead decision required states to eliminate the unnecessary segregation of persons with disabilities and to ensure that they receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs. The federal court system has a rich history of issuing decisions that acknowledge and protect the most fundamental of rights for people with disabilities.

Even before the passage of the American with Disabilities act in 1990, the Federal Courts were intervening to preserve the rights of disabled Americans.  From the early 1960s-to early 1970s, there were at least 10 landmark cases that challenged the constitutionality of forced labor in State run institutions. Large numbers of patients were required to operate the facilities, which were focused on maintaining an unpaid unlimited workforce rather then providing treatment to our nation’s most vulnerable demographic. Dozens of attempts were made to prohibit this practice. The efforts became reality DC circuit ruled in Souder V Brennan that the Fair Labor Standards Act applied to institutional workers.

Prior to the 1970s millions of children with special needs were either refused enrollment or inadequately served by the public schools but the Federal Courts decided in both Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. Pennsylvania and Mills v. Board of Education, the courts decided that the due process clause of the Fourteenth amendment gave parents specific rights that included prior notice, the right to discuss changes in their child’s education plan before those changes occurred, and the right to appeal decisions made by school districts. In both P.A.R.C. and Mills the judges struck down local laws that excluded children with disabilities from schools and established that children with disabilities have the same right to a public education as any other child.  Over the years the federal courts have continued to reinforce the fact that under the equal protection clause of the 14^th amendment, a public education is owed to ALL students.

The other issue that was tackled by the Federal Courts in the 1970s were the growing concerns with public institutions and the lack of services being provided behind their walls.  In 1970, the guardian of Ricky Wyatt filed suit against the State of Alabama over a failure to provide proper treatment at Partlow State Hospital. After a lengthy court battle, Federal district court judge Frank Johnson ruled that involuntarily committed patients “unquestionably have a constitutional right to receive such individual treatment as will give each of them a realistic opportunity to be cured or to improve his or her mental condition.” This court was the first to hold that there was a right to treatment for civilly committed patients. Subsequently Johnson ordered that the state must consider community resources must first be explored before admission to an institution was even considered. Judge Johnson issued a final order in 1972 that established standards for legally and medically adequate habilitation which offered protections that ensured humane and treatment orientated conditions.  Since the 1970s, Wyatt v. Stickney has become the model for cases challenging institutional conditions.

Minnesota also played a significant role in rethinking the standards for institutionalized care when the  US District court for the District of Minnesota  heard Welsch v. Likins in 1972. The  Court held that  due process requires that civil commitment for individuals with developmental disabilities be accompanied by minimally adequate treatment designed to give each committed person a reasonable opportunity to be cured or to improve his or her mental condition. This case was brought by Patricia Welsch, a resident of Cambridge State Hospital, against the state on behalf of all Minnesotans institutionalized against their will.  She argued that current treatment practices, such as seclusion, restraints, and excessive use of tranquillizing medication violated her constitutional right to due process under the law. The State of Minnesota argued that their obligations were custodial in nature and that neither the Constitution nor state law required any specific treatment. The court disagreed, holding that the court itself hada constitutional duty “to assure that every resident of Cambridge receives at least minimally adequate care”

The Federal Courts also ruled in 1977 that Americans with disabilities have a right to habilitation in Halderman v. Pennhurst. The Case began in 1974 when Terri Lee Halderman, a minor resident of  Pennhurst State Hospital in Pennsylvania brought a class action in the District Court on behalf of herself and all other Pennhurst residents against Pennhurst, its superintendent, and various other state officials responsible for the operation of Pennhurst, alleging that conditions at Pennhurst violated various state and federal Constitutional and statutory rights of the class members. Specifically, the lawsuit argued that these conditions denied the class members due process and equal protection of the law.

Ultimately, the district court awarded injunctive relief and ruled that certain rights of the patients had been violated. The court acknowledged that there is a federal constitutional right to be provided with “minimally adequate habilitation” in the “least restrictive environment,” regardless of whether the patients were voluntarily or involuntarily committed. They also cited the a constitutional right under the 8^th amendment to be free from harm and cruel and unusual punishment as well as a right to be be provided with “nondiscriminatory habilitation” under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th amendment. The District court issued an order that Pennhurst was to be closed and that “community living arrangements” be provided for all Pennhurst residents.

The State appealed to the third circuit which ultimately affirmed the ruling of the district court but not on the constitutional claims, rather they based their decision on an interpretation of the Developmental Disabilities assistance and Bill of Rights Act. The Third Circuit also affirmed the district court’s holding that Pennhurst residents have a state statutory right to adequate habilitation. The Supreme Court ultimately vacated the decision due to the 11^th amendment principle that federal Courts can’t order state officials to comply with state laws but the facility was closed anyways as the result of a settlement agreement.

 Historically, the federal courts have played a pivotal role in guaranteeing the rights of Americans with disabilities and their decisions typically result in legislative changes, even paving the way for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, in which Congress ensured that individuals with disabilities are entitled to equitable opportunities for independent living, economic self-sufficiency and community engagement. The federal courts continue to play an important part in the future as we continue to look to them in both defining and defending the rights of people with disabilities.

Haircuts with my surgeon and medical opinions from my friendly neighborhood cop

Toothache? I don’t know about you, but I go to the dentist and not the florist. I don’t call my surgeon. For a haircut nor do I go through the Wendy’s Drive through and ask them to do my taxes for me. So you will have to forgive me if I don’t place a high level of confidence in professional medical opinions of law enforcement agencies as to how address issues arising out of a combination of incarceration and disability.

I am not alone in this assessment as a similar conclusion was also reached by the United States Supreme Court in 1998 when they heard Pennsylvania V. Yeskey and ruled unanimously that Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) covers inmates in state prisons and local jails.
Ronald Yeskey was a prison inmate sentenced to 18 to 36 months in a Pennsylvania correctional facility. The sentencing court recommended his placement in Pennsylvania’s Motivational Boot Camp for first-time offenders. Successful completion would have led to release on parole in just six months. Because he had a medical history of hypertension, admission to the program was denied. He sued, alleging that his exclusion violated the ADA.

The phrasing of Title II is not ambiguous. It clearly states: “[N]o qualified individual with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by any such entity.”

Disabled prisoners pose special problems compared with the general prison population and prison administrators must confront a broad range of disabilities. The disabled may include the wheelchair bound, the blind, the hearing impaired, the mentally retarded and mentally ill, and persons with an array of medical conditions including HIV and Hepatitis. Moreover, administrators must deal with the tension between the ADA’s individualized approach to accommodating disabilities and the needs of prison security and administration.

Another important consideration for local governments is that the ADA’s provisions also affect pretrial detainees. Bell v. Wolfish, 441, the leading case on the rights of pretrial detainees, suggests little practical difference between pretrial detention and post-conviction incarceration. This suggests that ADA claims of pretrial detainees are likely to result no differently than those of prison inmates.

Thus Municipalities and local law enforcement agencies face two immediate issues, the first is to acquaint elected officials with the need to bring their corrections facilities into compliance with Title II. The second is to acquaint corrections managers and staff with the needs and rights of the disabled inmate population. Full implementation of the ADA in state prisons and local jails is a complex but important task as the consequences of not doing will provoke a whirlwind of lawsuits.

But Correctional facilities across the country routinely flout the Americans with Disabilities Act, subjecting thousands of inmates with physical and mental health problems to painful and often times degrading conditions including refusing medications, unnecessary segregation in violation of numerous DOJ Regulations and Court rulings requiring that programs and actives be administered in the most integrated setting.

In 2015, Inmates Ronaldo Ligons and Barry Michaelson sued the Minnesota Department of Corrections. Ligons and Michaelson suffered from a deadly viral disease called Hepatitis C . Prior to 2013, the standard treatment for Hepatitis C was injections of interferon. The method had significant and debilitating side effects and a low rates of success. In December 2013, the Food and Drug Administration approved several drugs that were lauded by both the Association for the study of infectious disease and the association for the study of liver diseases as medical breakthroughs.

Despite changes in policy from the Federal bureau of prisons, the Center for Disease control For non-medical reasons the Minnesota Department of corrections, refused to provide the breakthrough medical treatment.

The ADA requires that prisons provide “reasonable accommodations” for disabled people, such as grab bars, wheelchair ramps, and special adaptations in educational or treatment-related programs for inmates who are deaf or have a cognitive disability. Inmates aren’t supposed to be put in solitary confinement simply because there are no accessible cells available or because officers just don’t feel like dealing with providing the necessary accommodations as prescribed by law.
For the 31 percent of inmates in state prisons nationwide who report having a physical or cognitive disability, abuse and neglect are common features of prison life and the situation is only expected to get worse as the U.S. prison population ages. Incarcerated people are three or four times more likely to report having a disability than the rest of the U.S. population.
John Woodatch, who headed the disability rights section of the Department of Justice’s civil rights division from its inception in 1995 until 2011, said most of the thousands of annual complaints the office received were from prisoners and that nearly all of them were substantiated. Woodwatch stated in a recent interview that “Every complaint we got from those people were legitimate complaints,” he continued on to describe the conditions in US Correctional facilities as a “ a litany of discrimination against people with disabilities.”

Woodatch’s concerns were shared by Justice Scalia in his opinion in Pennsylvania Dept of Corrections v. Yeskey in which he explained that the ADA was designed to remedy the serious and pervasive disability-based discrimination that exists throughout society as documented by Congress when the ADA was enacted. It was intended to ensure equal protection of the rights of all persons with disabilities, including prisoners according to the Supreme Court, and to relegate the existence of a disability to a non-issue.

The Fourteenth Amendment reads, in part, “No State [can] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Fourteenth Amendment, in conjunction with the ADA, ensures that prisoners with disabilities have the means with which to protect their rights because YES! People with disabilities have rights too

"Why can't they just let it go?"

"Noah can not let this go. I can't tell if it's part of his diagnosis or if he just enjoys stirring the pot or a little bit of both" - Carver County Sheriff Olson


These words are taken from an email sent by Carver County Sheriff Jim Olson To Carver County Administrator Dave Hemze. It was typed in inconspicuous  black font, covering one sides of a white piece of paper and It is one of thousands of letters, emails and memos I received  in the mail today if to say nothing of the 2 am visits from cops and the threats to lynch me that were hung up all around the City Square Park— after I refused to, as Sheriff Olson so aptly put it " let it go." and proceeded to publish my thoughts on how Carver county treats people with disabilities. I think in the beginning I did it out of a desire to advocate than out of anger as conversations are important especially about a topic that resides at the heart of who we want to be as a community.
The entire thing is fairly frustrating because people come at disability issues from a variety of different perspectives, and people are at different stages of understanding of the cause-and-effect of issues facing minority groups in modern day america There are a hundred different sentiments that can (and should) be analyzed in these conversations, but one keeps coming up that always gives me pause:

"Institutionalization ended  a long time ago  — isn’t it time for disabled people to get over it? At this point, they’re just using it as an excuse for their behavior  We all have equal rights now. They need to stop playing the victim and take responsibility. That’s not bigotry that’s reality."

I hear it all the time and I could go into a 3 hour lecture on the history of the disability community or offer all sorts of arguments from philosophical legal and socio-economic perspectives but I feel as though this is best illustrated with a simple story :

Once upon a time, there was a handful of blue houses in a neighborhood of yellow ones. Each day, the yellow house owners would dump all of their trash into the yards of the blue houses. Their owners hated it, of course, but if they complained, the yellow house owners would beat them senseless. If they went to the authorities, they’d beat them senseless too.

Day after day, so much garbage filled the blue house yards that it was impossible to clear it all. So the blue house people did their best to live their lives around it.

After years and years of this, the blue house folks said enough was enough. They banned together and blocked the road so nobody could get home. The yellow house owners tried to beat them up like they always had, but the blue house owners refused to move until the trash dumpers would listen.

The blue house people explained the obvious fact that it was unfair to dump garbage in their yards and vowed to continue to block the road until it stopped. It took a while, but finally, the yellow house people conceded.

But the blue house owners’ woes weren’t over. Their lawns were dead from years without sunlight. Their shrubs were withered from the toxic sludge that seeped in year after year. Some of the poison even penetrated the foundations of the houses, causing structural issues. The blue house people tried many things to remedy all of this, but there was so much damage, it proved difficult. Meanwhile, the yellow house owners’ yards thrived as they always had. And soon, they started complaining about how the blue houses looked.

“What’s the matter?” they asked the blue house owners. “We don’t put garbage in your yard anymore. Why aren’t you fixing up your yard?” The blue house people explained that they’re trying, but were running into some problems. Their tools were rusty from years in storage. They needed new plants, some good soil to restart their grass, and maybe some fertilizer.

Since the yellow house owners had caused the problem, They thought hmm maybe the yellow house owners will help us since they originally caused all this damage. 
 “You’re just looking for a handout. said the  yellow house people.You just need to work harder and be responsible. Look at your yard! What a mess! We don’t dump our garbage on you anymore. We’re equal now. There’s nothing wrong with your soil or your tools — you just don’t want to work at it like we do. I bust my butt to get my lawn looking this way. It’s your own fault that yours isn’t thriving and your house needs work.”

See the problem? This is what it sounds like when "normal people refuse to acknowledge the generational, societal effects of America’s history of prejudice against the disabled.  This is what it sounds like when people place the blame for  all the issues they've caused and failed to address on the disability community.  It  is patently unfair to deny that so many challenges my communities faces is the direct result of centuries of dehumanization and degradation .It is blatant arrogance for Normal people to expect  people with disabilities to take responsibility for disparities in our economic and justice systems over which we've had no control  ( AND STILL DON'T HAVE ANY CONTROL) when it's their fault the disparities exist in the first place.

You cannot exclude people away from society for 200 years, systematically and legally oppress them for another century, and think that everything is hunky-dory a mere 28 years later. I know all these behavioral determinist folks who want to point their finger in a disabled guys face and  “move on,” to leave that ugly history in the past, to start with a clean slate. But there’s no such thing. 

We can’t just wish away the far-reaching effects of blatant discrimination We can’t pretend that a mere two decades after the American with disabilities signed, which contrary to popular belief had opposition (and still does) that we've   successfully weeded out the deep-seated prejudice that historically has and continues to fuel centuries of mistreatment for individuals with disabilities both inside and outside of institutional settings.

This isn’t about “white liberal guilt.” or "Revenge" Even though at the very least — and I mean the very least — that those who define themselves as "Normal" could do is acknowledge that our ancestors gave birth to this current mess, even if we had nothing to do with it directly. Of course we haven’t personally had somebody locked up in an asylum  but if we deny the ongoing effects of Minnesota's legacy of Able-ism and refuse to own our role in helping remedy the problems it’s caused, then we are no better than that yellow house owner chastising his neighbor for the state of his yard — dishonest, unjust…and yes, prejudiced

If I can't dance is it still my revolution?

 I have had a lot of political opportunities over the past few years but one of my greatest privileges has been to mentor several up and coming advocates in the disability community.  I had a conversation with one of the individuals the other day and the issue was a dance at a recent political function and I sarcastically posed the question “if I can’t dance, is it still my revolution?” the question goes much deeper than accessibility; it goes towards the basic right to self-determination.

One of the more notorious decisions of the US Supreme court is Buck V Bell in which the court upheld forced sterilization of a woman deemed "feeble minded." With the disturbing justification that "3 generation of imbeciles is enough “SCOTUS rejected arguments that it violated her 4th and 8th amendment rights. The decision came at the start of the eugenics movement, the belief that the human race can be improved by cleansing the human race of the “less desirable” Thus, 60,000 disabled people were forcibly held down and sterilized without their consent.

The practice escalated in the 1940s when Hitler systematically exterminated 250,000 people just like me under the label "research" We weren't allowed to refuse the research. Ironically enough many of the practices used by the courts in providing treatment today comes from my people being used as lab rats. Do the ends justify the means?

It did in the late 1900s, when people with disabilities were placed in Institutions; large numbers of patients were required to operate the facilities. It wasn't about providing treatment, It was about providing an unpaid and unlimited labor force that had zero choice in the matter and zero ability to control the conditions.Dozens of attempts were made to prohibit this practice. The efforts came to fruition when the DC circuit ruled in Souder V Brennan that the Fair Labor Standards Act applied to institutional workers.

Disability discrimination still is fairly common but it’s more subtle such as that of the Community Caretaking doctrine, a legal test stemming from Cady v Dombrowski often used to justify Police officers responding to things like mental health crisis calls. The problem is people with disabilities don’t have the right to refuse and  can be stopped, detained and arrested on the sole basis that they are exhibiting signs of a condition. One concerned individual who doesn’t care enough to call themselves eradicates the 4^th amendment rights of a disabled individual. I personally find this to be extremely degrading and indicative of the larger problem that people with disabilities are a minority group structured around the norms of the majority and our rights don't exist outside of their benevolence. The belief that the rights of people with disabilities can be curtailed for the preservation of a "pseudo-common good” is just flat out ableist

Many will simply disregard my opinion becasue the practice is legal but at the end of the day all of these examples listed above were legal. In fact Buck is still precedential as it has never been overturned. Are police officers going to hold me down and rip out my urethra tubes without my consent? Because to be perfectly honest they could probably get away with it but again do the ends justify the means??  If I can't say no is it my choice? and If I can't dance is it my revolution?