Dis-ability and the Dehumanization of Prisoners

Article by Arwen Bird

In 1995 I began sharing my story publicly of how being paralyzed in a drunk driving crash has changed my life. I’ll never forget the first time that someone said to me “…but you got a life sentence sitting in that wheelchair and all he got was a year in a restitution center!?” At the time, I was shocked by the assumption being made; I didn’t equate my injury by a man who was convicted of drunk driving with any kind of prison sentence. If there is one thing that I will carry with me for the rest of my life because of my paralysis, it is the dehumanizing experience of others making assumptions about what my life is like.  And when it comes to dehumanization, people with disabilities and prisoners have a lot in common.

Using a wheelchair to get around can be frustrating at times—but it’s not a full picture of what my life is like. In much the same way that we make assumptions about people with disabilities, we also make assumptions about people in prison that don’t give us a full picture who they are, the reasons for their incarceration, or what their lives are like.

Underneath the negative assumptions being made about others based on whether he or she is sitting in a wheelchair, or using a cane, or has been sentenced to prison lies dehumanization. Reducing any person to symbols (wheelchairs, skin color, incarceration status), takes away their full humanity. This is the same thinking that allows people to hurt each other in the first place—seeing others as objects rather than living breathing people who are entitled to basic protection from harm. It happens to people with disabilities, and it happens to people in prison.

The dehumanization of people in our prison system is magnified when a prisoner is also a person with a disability. Throughout the past decade, lawsuits have been filed to address the ways that our criminal justice system dehumanizes and violates the human rights of incarcerated people, and some of these lawsuits have taken up cases of people with disabilities.

In 2004 Tony Goodman filed a lawsuit against the state of Georgia. Mr. Goodman is a state prisoner who is also paraplegic. Like many prisoners, he was unable to get his basic needs met because of the conditions inside the prison, although in his case that problem was extreme. He had to sleep in his wheelchair for weeks, sit in his own excrement for days, and at one point couldn’t shower for two years—all because his prison cell and bathing facility were not accessible. He also did not receive needed medical treatment and was excluded from prison activities and programs because of a lack of access.

On January 10th of this year the case of Goodman v. Georgia was decided by the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decision did not address the human rights violations in Mr. Goodman’s case. They merely validated that Mr. Goodman had a right to sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). (The ADA was passed in 1990; it is a federal law that outlines some civil rights for people with disabilities).

Mr. Goodman’s case is just one of many cases of human rights violations that prisoners with disabilities have experienced. Doris Clark, who is deaf, was the lead plaintiff in a 1995 suit against the state of New York. While in prison, she and other prisoners were routinely denied interpreters; thus limiting their ability to participate in or understand parole hearings, prison activities and medical or psychiatric appointments. The federal judge in the case ruled in the prisoners’ favor. The judge understood the injustice of the segregation that deaf and hard-of-hearing prisoners experienced and described their situation as “a prison within a prison.”

In September 2004, Jonathan Magbie, a man with quadriplegia, died while in custody in Washington D.C.. Mr. Magbie used a ventilator at night and needed his lungs suctioned; the judge knew this when she sentenced him to ten days in jail for marijuana possession. During his four days of incarceration he was shuffled between the jail and the hospital because of a lack of planning about how best to provide for his needs and assistance in breathing. His mother was at the same time trying to negotiate with medical personnel and was finally permitted to bring his ventilator on the day Mr. Magbie died. In September of 2005 Mr. Magbie’s mother, Mary Scott, filed a lawsuit through private attorneys and the ACLU to address the gross neglect and systemic failures that lead to her son’s death.

A small number of these cases are receiving media attention, but they represent the tip of the iceberg. Among the lesser known stories is that of Nate Wright, a former prisoner with cerebral palsy who was forced to crawl around while incarcerated in upstate New York because staff refused to help fix his broken wheelchair. There is also the story of Easton Beckford, a paraplegic prisoner, who was routinely denied access to catheters, showers and bedding at the New York facility where he was incarcerated as ‘punishment’ for asking for medical care.

These stories shine a light both on the ways that prison systems dehumanize people and how society often dehumanizes people with disabilities. How does restricting Mr. Goodman’s use of the bathroom or denying Mr. Magbie’s ventilator fit into a system that respects basic human rights? It doesn’t. Our current prison system dehumanizes people, plain and simple. It operates with the belief that a certain amount of suffering is allowable, perhaps even justified in the name of punishment.

As a survivor of violence I know we can do better. I believe we have to do better. Rather than creating a system that harms and dehumanizes people, we have to address the suffering that comes from dehumanization, not replicate it. It starts with seeing the humanity in each and every one of us, creating a system that respects the contribution that each of us can make, and treating every single person as a human being.

This article was written for the Spring 2006 issue of Justice Matters.