Report Highlights Shortage of Wheelchairs at Michigan Women’s Prison
by Michael Dean Thompson
Disability Rights Michigan (DRM) had alerted the Michigan Department of Corrections (DOC) many times since 2019 that conditions exist that threaten the health and safety of wheelchair users at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility (WHV). But DOC failed to act and even denied the legitimacy of the complaints, according to a report compiled by DRM.
DRM is a federally mandated Protection and Advocacy system for Michigan. As such, they are able to enter prisons, interview prisoners and review prison records in ways others cannot. After a fruitless high-level meeting between DRM, the DOC Office of Legal Affairs (OLA) and the Michigan Attorney General’s office in January 2026, DRM decided to begin a formal investigation and published their findings in a report titled Deliberate Indifference. It is not even the first time DOC had come under scrutiny. A 2010 investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) had found some of the same challenges.
In-person communications between 2021 and 2023 with DOC stalled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, numerous formal letters to OLA, WHV and the Attorney General’s office resulted in outright denials of the problems. Yet, a 2023 records request found that there were too few wheelchairs as well as attendants that could assist those whose disabilities prevented them from propelling themselves. No powered wheelchairs are available at WHV. More records requests and a largescale, facility-wide visit followed.
There are three distinct levels of wheelchair accommodation by health services at WHV: temporary is as it sounds and may be used for issues such as surgical recovery; for-Distance wheelchairs are a shared resource for access to meals, medication and programs; and permanent wheelchairs are assigned to individuals and stored within the cell. On the latter, however, OLA denied wheelchairs were ever assigned to individuals or stored in cells, despite “individual responsibility contracts” showing they were. Such denials were a pattern for OLA, which regarded inmate and advocate accounts as unreliable.
Access to wheelchairs is its own challenge. A January 2024 email by a WHV medical provider described how medical practitioners have been instructed to further restrict who even is prescribed a chair. Despite those efforts, the DOC showed in July 2025 it had 126 people who needed for-distance wheelchairs. Yet only 56 wheelchairs were available (many of which are in severe disrepair), and they were distributed across 14 housing units. As a result, dozens of people who have documented need for wheelchairs are unable to access one. The DOC told DRM that their original wheelchair supplier had gone out of business, making repairs of the many broken and dangerous chairs too expensive, so they instituted a replacement policy. Yet, with less than half the necessary chairs, the replacement policy is failing.
If a prisoner has access to a wheelchair, access to an attendant who could push them to and from destinations is further limited. For many, that restricts access to food, medication and other services. Women who primarily needed to travel to receive food with the help of attendants were documented to miss 42% of meals. Medication access was worse, where only 18.9% of prescribed medications were delivered. Likewise, only 19.3% of diabetic medications and 24.6% of blood pressure drugs were delivered. Each of these three conditions can result in unnecessary medical emergencies simply because the medications were not available. Only six women needing an attendant received more than 10% of their medications.
Simon Zagata, director of community and institutional rights for DRM, told the Detroit Free Press that despite the fact the problem has existed for years, “I see it as extremely urgent.”
Zagata added, “I can’t speak to whether it’s directly contributed to deaths, but we have definitely seen people suffer negative health effects.”
Additional source: Detroit Free Press
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