The American criminal justice system, particularly its network of local jails, profoundly impacts the lives of millions of people. Often overlooked in discussions of incarceration are the unique and exacerbated challenges faced by people with disabilities and Deaf individuals.

A series of recent reports, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, sheds critical light on these disparities and calls for new strategies to address them. These reports collectively argue that achieving a more just society requires moving beyond mere compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and toward a human-centered approach rooted in the lived experiences of disabled people.

“Expecting Difference” by Access Living

The first report, “Expecting Difference: Reorienting Disability Strategy for Jail Decarceration,” produced by Access Living, a disability-led organization, argues that current approaches to disability in the criminal justice system are fundamentally flawed. Rather than solely focusing on ADA compliance or viewing disability through a medical lens, which treats disability as a defect, the report champions different approaches known as  social model of disability and disability justice framework.

The social model emphasizes that challenges arises from barriers that make parts of society inaccessible to people with disabilities, not an individual’s impairment. The disability justice framework highlights the value of access, self-determination, and the expectation of difference.

The report spotlights three specific, often under-addressed disability groups disproportionately affected by current jail practices:

• Youth with disabilities, many without a clear diagnosis, face school suspensions at twice the rate of their non-disabled peers and enter juvenile detention at five times the rate of their representation in public schools. They often lack self-advocacy skills, and their school documentation of accessibility needs accommodations are rarely shared with detention staff, leading to unmet needs and increased vulnerability to abuse and loneliness.
• Neurodivergent people, including individuals with autism, ADHD, or acquired brain injuries, experience incarceration as a sensory and cognitive overload and their behaviors are often misinterpreted as aggression or non-compliance, leading to punishment, segregation, or forced medication.
• Individuals needing personal care, though a smaller percentage than the other groups, face severe disruptions to their support systems, are often denied essential medications or assistive devices, and are forced to rely on untrained and sometimes untrustworthy fellow inmates for basic needs like hygiene and mobility, creating immense vulnerability and risk of harm.

The report identifies systemic barriers that span disabilities, including a pervasive lack of disability competency among jail staff, fragmented data systems that fail to track access needs, the use of complex legal language, and inaccessible probation and reentry programs that set disabled people up for failure. Electronic monitoring can further isolate individuals and hinder access to crucial medical appointments.

The report recommends establishing reentry planning from the time the person enters jail, developing self-advocacy programs led by disabled people, coordinating person-centered planning, standardizing how access needs are tracked, ending electronic monitoring, and providing comprehensive disability competency training for all corrections and legal staff.

It also suggests specific interventions for youth, neurodivergent individuals, and people needing personal care. The core message is that decarceration requires a philosophical shift from a compliance-driven medical approach to one that values accessibility and the experiences of disabled people.

“The Overrepresentation of People with Disabilities and Deaf People in Local Criminal Legal Systems” by Activating Change

This report, produced by Activating Change, delves into the historical and systemic factors contributing to the alarming overrepresentation of disabled and Deaf individuals in US jails and prisons. It broadens the understanding of disability beyond a medical condition, viewing it as a characteristic shaped by environmental interaction and acknowledging Deafness as a distinct cultural and linguistic identity.

Historically, people with disabilities faced forced institutionalization in almshouses and asylums due to laws that criminalized their public presence. Later mass deinstitutionalization without adequate community support directly contributed to increased homelessness and incarceration among disabled people. The landmark Olmstead Supreme Court decision affirmed the right to community living, ruling that institutionalizing people with disabilities who can live independently is discrimination and a violation of the ADA; yet many states still fail to comply.

Current data reveal stark disparities: people in jails are four times more likely to have a non-psychiatric disability than the general population, and people in jails are seven times to have cognitive disabilities. While psychiatric disabilities are widely recognized, the report highlights the significant overlap with other disability types, noting that 80 percent of women and 65 percent of men in prison have at least one disability.

The disparities seen in jails are deeply rooted in community inequities, including the school-to-prison pipeline, where students with disabilities are disproportionately suspended and arrested. High rates of poverty and unemployment among disabled people, exacerbated by discriminatory job markets and a lack of affordable, accessible housing, further drive system contact. Disabled individuals, particularly women and people of color, also face significantly higher rates of victimization and violence.

Within the criminal justice system itself, a profound lack of understanding of disabilities by law enforcement leads to increased criminalization of behaviors, misinterpretations (for example, a slow gait can be mistaken for intoxication, a lack of eye contact for deceit), and harsher treatment, including higher rates of force.

Inadequate, delayed, or denied accommodations — from communication aids to assistive devices — is rampant. This violates the ADA and undermining justice. Jails, typically inaccessible and often overcrowded, exacerbate people’s existing conditions, disrupt medication regimens, and expose individuals to neglect, manipulation, and violence from both staff and other incarcerated people. The report concludes that these harsh conditions can coerce guilty pleas, further entrenching individuals in the system.

To address these systemic issues, Activating Change recommends:

• Education and training for all criminal justice staff;
• Making information and processes are available in multiple, accessible formats, including plain language;
• Providing transparent and low-barrier methods for requesting and providing accommodations at every point in the system;
• Apply disability and Deaf equity lenses from the outset in the development of all new reforms, utilizing universal design principles and involving people with lived experience in the planning process;
• Ensure diversion programs are genuinely accessible and beneficial for all disability types, rather than creating narrow, specialized initiatives;
• Form strong partnerships with disability and Deaf organizations and integrate disability status into data collection and program evaluation to track disparities and ensure accountability.

“Reducing the Arrest and Jailing of People with Mental Health Disabilities” by Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law

This report, produced by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, focuses on the severe overrepresentation of people with mental health disabilities in US jails, estimating that over 44 percent of people in jails have a mental health condition. The report asserts that this is primarily due to a systemic lack of community-based mental health services, rather than criminality, and that carceral settings are inherently harmful environments for treatment, exacerbate conditions, and lead to longer incarceration.

A key insight is the critical role of intersectional identities — such as race, LGBTQ+ status, and homelessness — in compounding stigma and increasing the risk of arrest and harm during police encounters for individuals with mental health disabilities. The reliance on police as first responders for mental health crises, compared to physical health emergencies where trained medical professionals respond, is highlighted as a discriminatory practice that violates the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act by denying equal opportunity to public services. The US Department of Justice has consistently found legal violations in jurisdictions where police are the default responders to mental health emergencies.

To address this, the report proposes a comprehensive “crisis system” that prioritizes mental health-led responses. This system includes three key components:

1. “Someone to Call”: Mental health staff should manage emergency calls (including 911/988), providing phone-based de-escalation, safety planning, and linking callers to community resources. Houston, TX’s Crisis Call Diversion Program exemplifies this, diverting over 62 percent of mental health calls away from first responders and saving millions.
2. “Someone to Come”: For mental health crises requiring an on-site response, mobile behavioral health teams—comprising mental health clinicians, paramedics, or crisis workers and EMTs—should be dispatched instead of police. Denver, CO’s Support Team Assisted Response program, for instance, has responded to over 8,000 calls that would have otherwise involved police, leading to a 34 percent drop in arrests for low-level crime and significant cost savings. Eugene, OR’s CAHOOTS program, largely staffed by people with lived experience, provides crisis intervention and transportation, resolving nearly 20 percent of the city’s 911 calls without police involvement. Albuquerque, NM’s Community Safety Department, which is independent of the police, also deploys behavioral health and community responders, connecting individuals to services and diverting thousands of calls from police.
3. “Somewhere to Go”: For individuals needing off-site stabilization, the report advocates for small, community-based, home-like centers, ideally peer-run, rather than large institutional settings. Milwaukee County, WI’s Mental Health Emergency Center and Pennington County, SD’s Pivot Point serve as examples. They provide immediate assessment and short-term stabilization, linking individuals to longer-term community-based services like Assertive Community Treatment.

Finally, the report stresses breaking the cycle through person-centered, culturally responsive diversion and reentry services that address crucial social issues that impact health, especially housing. Programs in Alameda County, CA (expanding mobile crisis teams and intensive case management) and New York, NY (the Peer Bridger Program supporting transitions from psychiatric hospitals) demonstrate how integrating mental health and social supports can significantly reduce recidivism and foster community integration. Robust investment in such community-based services is essential to reduce incarceration and support individuals with mental health disabilities.

Intersecting Identities: “An Intersectional Approach to Advocacy on Prison and Jail Conditions” by Center for Racial and Disability Justice

The report by a the Center for Racial and Disability Justice at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law presents intersectionality as a vital analytical framework for understanding and addressing the profound harms of mass incarceration, especially for multiply marginalized individuals. It highlights how overlapping identities — such as race, gender, disability, and socioeconomic status — intensify the negative impacts of pretrial detention and carceral conditions.

The report presents compelling data on incarceration trends, demonstrating significant disparities. Women’s incarceration rates have surged by over 586 percent in the last four decades, often for nonviolent offenses, and they disproportionately experience trauma and psychiatric disabilities like post-traumatic stress disorder. Black individuals are incarcerated at nearly three times their population share. Disabled people are also significantly overrepresented in carceral settings, with 32 percent and 40 percent of people in jail reporting a disability, rates notably higher than the general population. These conditions, including stress, isolation, and violence, can both exacerbate existing disabilities and produce new ones.

The report details challenges within carceral settings through this intersectional lens, although there is a severe lack of comprehensive, intersectional data on conditions of confinement, particularly regarding the impacts of violence, use of force, and solitary confinement on marginalized groups. Solitary confinement, known to increase self-harm and suicidality, disproportionately affects disabled individuals (especially people with psychiatric disabilities), people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Access to adequate medical and mental health treatment in jails is constitutionally mandated but frequently unmet, leading to severe health consequences, even as so-called “mercy bookings” continue for people awaiting psychiatric beds.

The report proposes various models for transformative change:

• Decarceration by reducing reliance on criminal law enforcement and jails by addressing root causes like homelessness and substance dependence through community-based alternatives. It argues that pretrial detention, which disproportionately harms low-income people of color and disabled individuals, neither reduces crime nor ensures court appearances.
• Decriminalization through prosecutors declining to charge minor offenses related to mental health crises or nonviolent drug or property offenses, particularly for vulnerable groups like women and people impacted by the opioid crisis. Ending criminal sanctions for technical parole violations is also crucial, as 20 percent of jail detainees are there for such violations.
• Disability Justice which challenges the criminalization and surveillance of disabled people, emphasizing that “all bodies are unique and essential” and promoting self-determination and the reclamation of stigmatized identities. It fundamentally seeks to disrupt pathways into the criminal justice system driven by disability.
• Abolition by radically reimagining of how society responds to harm, moving beyond punitive systems like prisons and police to invest in “life-giving systems, practices, and institutions” that address root causes rather than perpetuating subordination.

Key actions recommended include promoting comprehensive, disaggregated data collection (including disability-specific data), expanding true alternatives to incarceration, increasing investment in community-based mental health services, improving medical and mental health care within carceral settings, establishing accountability for police violence, ending solitary confinement, supporting robust rehabilitation and reintegration programs, and promoting systemic change that aligns with disability justice principles. The report concludes that effective reform demands an intersectional approach that centers the voices and lived experiences of multiply marginalized individuals to truly transform the criminal justice system.

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These four reports collectively paint a picture of the profound impact of the criminal justice system on people with disabilities and Deaf individuals. They underscore the urgent need for a paradigm shift — from a narrow, compliance-based approach to one that is human-centered, focused on making the justice system more fair, and deeply informed by intersectionality and lived experience. The reports suggest that true community safety and justice for all can only be achieved by rethinking how America uses its jails and supports its most vulnerable populations.