Disabled Prisoners in New York Aren’t Receiving Entitled Accommodations
by Michael Dean Thompson
Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, forcing government institutions, via Title II, to accommodate people with disabilities. While it was not until 1998 that the United States Supreme Court clarified the law applied to prisons in PA DOC v. Yeskey,118 S. Ct. 1952 (1998), it was a 1995 decision in Clarkson v. Coughlin,898 F. Supp. 1019 (S.D.N.Y. 1995), a case brought by hearing-impaired prisoners, that forced New York prisons to comply with the law. Nevertheless, an investigation by Prism shows that prisoners in the state still struggle to access the equipment, housing and other support they need.
New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) has designated 11 of its 41 facilities to provide support for people with hearing, vision and mobility loss. No single facility, however, is able to support every kind of disability described within the department’s internal policies, leaving some people with multiple disabilities unable to acquire the breadth of supports they need.
Often, this occurs even as DOCCS has agreed the need exists and the accommodations are “reasonable” under the standard. For example, the Five Points Correctional Facility near Ithaca is the only DOCCS facility designated in their policy as wheelchair accessible. Prisoners who are transferred from one unit to another are also forced to reapply for assistance. Facilities that are not equipped to handle specific disabilities may, therefore, fail to understand those specific needs.
As such, legal scholars told Prism that DOCCS is likely violating the law. “Where a person with a qualifying disability requires a reasonable accommodation to access a prison program or service that non-disabled people enjoy, the ADA requires the prison to provide the accommodation,” Laura Nakamura, a Legal Aid Society’s Prisoner Rights Project attorney, told Prism in an email. “If the prison fails to provide the accommodation, it’s violating the ADA, unless it can show that providing the accommodation would be an undue burden or would fundamentally alter the program.”
DOCCS does not track ADA-related grievances in its semiannual grievance report. However, one external measure is the number of people who wrote to Prisoner’s Legal Services of New York. Between March 2023 and January 2026, 123 DOCCS prisoners wrote to complain about missing accommodations and discrimination. The group received at least one complaint from 92% of DOCCS facilities. Twenty-five percent had five or more complaints. Five Points led the pack, managing to double the complaints of the next facility on the list.
Being a prison system, complaints also invite retaliation. Several people incarcerated at Five Points and other facilities told Prism they believed staff had deprived them of support or filed reports of misbehavior because they spoke out for their needs.
Meanwhile, at least one wheelchair-bound, blind, and epileptic prisoner found himself on the floor of his cell following a seizure, alone and ignored. Prism’s attempts to get him help were actively disregarded, including a guard hanging up on the reporter.
DOCCS is looking into it.
Source: Prism
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