Disability is not the exception.
Not when more than one in four Americans have a disability, and many have more than one. That’s just as true inside prisons and jails as it is outside in Pennsylvania’s neighborhoods and towns.
Care matters.
But as strained as the nation’s safety net is for all people with disabilities, the situation is much worse for people in prison.
For incarcerated people with disabilities, access to medical care, programming, and legal assistance can be limited in budget-stretched, understaffed prisons and jails. Safety can be an issue, as some of the stigma attached to disabilities in communities carries over into prisons. People may be bullied or harassed.
When it comes to disabilities, some people picture wheelchairs, but many incarcerated people live with less visible disabilities such as mental illness, dementia, traumatic brain injury, hearing loss, autism, or epilepsy. These conditions can significantly affect how someone communicates, understands information, or navigates daily life, and they may require accommodations under the law. In addition, disabilities are correlated with other life-threatening conditions, including diabetes and heart disease.
Healthcare is a major concern in prisons and jails, as reflected in the many medical complaints we receive through the Prison Society's Helpline. But for people with disabilities, the challenges extend far beyond access to medical care.
“Prisons are built for security and compliance, and they are built to have a protocol that everyone follows,” said Kirstin Cornnell, the Prison Society’s director of Family and Community Support. They are designed “to be one size fits all, and one size doesn’t fit all when you have a disability. Disabilities require accommodation.Cell doors may need to be widened for wheelchairs. People with vision or hearing loss may need special sensors and light fixtures in their cells,” she said. “Jails just aren’t built that way.”
County jails have an even bigger challenge, she said. “People are cycling in and out. Jails are tasked with processing high volumes of people really quickly, and that’s a major challenge for identifying and responding to people with disabilities.”
In many cases, she said, people coming into jails with a mental health disability may never have had a diagnosis. So, for them, the experience of being processed into jail may be the first time that anyone has even tried to assess their condition. And, of course, intake officers aren’t trained to spot these disabilities on the fly. Wardens have asked for more training so staffers can recognize disabilities when they see them.
“We are the largest psychiatric and addiction clinic in the county, with only a small number of medical personnel and correctional officers to handle such populations,” one warden wrote in response to the Prison Society survey.
Uncovering frustrations and gaps in care is key to an important Prison Society initiative, which is improving the situation for the thousands of incarcerated people with disabilities in Pennsylvania’s prisons and jails.
The work starts, as it always does for the Prison Society, on the ground listening to people who live and work in Pennsylvania’s prisons and jails.
Over the past two years, thanks in part to a grant from Pittsburgh’s FISA Foundation, the Prison Society has been speaking with wardens of Pennsylvania’s county jails about the challenges of managing people with disabilities.
More training, more staff, more resources
The wardens were clear that better outcomes for people with disabilities will require greater investment.
- Disability is more common than many realize. While most wardens estimated that fewer than one in four people in their jails have a disability, three county jails — Armstrong, Franklin, and Washington — reported that more than half of those admitted have some form of disability.
- Training needs to go further. Most facilities already provide training on psychiatric disabilities, and some include crisis intervention and de-escalation. But wardens said they need more training to:
- Understand psychiatric, intellectual, and physical disabilities
- Recognize and address disability-related stigma
- Better support people with diverse accommodation needs
- Jails need stronger community partnerships. Wardens also called for greater access to outside providers, specialized services, and community-based placements for people whose needs cannot be met within a jail.
- Staffing shortages make everything harder. More than half of county prisons responding to an April 2024 Prison Society survey reported security staff vacancies, and many also had significant shortages in their medical departments. In one jail, only 57 of 139 medical positions were filled.
The result is a system stretched thin. Staffing shortages increase concerns for both incarcerated people and staff while reducing capacity to provide appropriate care, accommodations, and support for people with disabilities.
Trying to catch up
The data provided by wardens is a starting point for productive conversations.
In February 2026, in partnership with Activating Change, a national leader in disability advocacy, the Prison Society brought together wardens from four southwestern Pennsylvania county jails for a first-of-its-kind regional conference focused on disability in jail settings.
“They have an enormous challenge in front of them,” said Matt Dugan, the Prison Society’s Western Region Director. “They have very difficult populations to serve with very outdated buildings. The general public doesn’t recognize that and neither does the local government” in many cases.
“It’s not a lack of empathy,” he said. “It’s a lack of resources.”
The gathering was an important opportunity for correctional leaders to share challenges, learn from one another, and begin identifying solutions.
Ultimately, ensuring people with disabilities receive appropriate accommodations and support is a matter of human rights — rights that apply to everyone, inside or outside of a jail or prison.
As The Arc, a national disability advocacy organization, writes: “Everyone deserves inclusion, rights, and respect.”
