After a multitude of complaints that the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) was not meeting accommodation standards as outlined by a July 2017 settled lawsuit brought by Disability Rights Florida, a new lawsuit was subsequently filed and settled on November 18, 2021, that reaffirms the requirements of the past settlement.
The settlement to the original 2017 lawsuit stipulated that:
- The FDC would assess prisoners upon intake for hearing, vision, and mobility issues and place them in the proper facilities for accommodating their needs.
- The FDC would supply appropriate assistance to prisoners with a disability, including providing canes, etc. to prisoners with mobility issues and hearing aids or audiobooks to prisoners with hearing and vision issues.
- Additionally, prison staff members would be required to receive more education on the rights of the disabled and to receive ongoing training on how to best accommodate prisoners with disabilities.
Yet even after these new requirements were established in 2017, the non-profit legal advocacy group the Florida Justice Institute received myriad complaints that basic needs were not being met amongst the Florida prison system’s disabled population. Everything from canes and wheelchairs to sign language interpreters were being withheld from prisoners. The continued complaints led to new legal action against the FDC with the Florida Justice Initiative and Morgan & Morgan, P.A. joining Disability Rights Florida in pursuit of accommodation for the disabled population of Florida’s prisons. And now this most recent lawsuit against FDC has been settled as well, reaffirming much of what the 2017 case stipulated with a few new additions. The FDC will still be required to assess and keep tabs on prisoners with disabilities, with some expanded requirements:
- Expanded accessible facilities
- Ensured equal access to education and vocational programs for prisoners with disabilities
- Trained staff specifically directed to provide assistance to the disabled population
- Access to all appropriate accessories and communication tools that disabled inmates would use in their day-to-day lives
But there is one other significant addition to the new settlement, one that ideally would go further in ensuring compliance than the 2017 settlement did. As stipulated in the new settlement, a compliance officer will be appointed to inspect FDC facilities to monitor accommodations and ensure they adhere to the terms of the settlement agreement. Additionally, the disability rights and watchdog groups who brought the lawsuit will continue to be involved with the monitoring and compliance process to ensure that Florida’s disabled prison population receives the care and accommodations due to them. Progress in the implementation of the new standards and accommodations will be monitored in quarterly meetings with the FDC where civil rights groups will be present to address issues reported by inmates.
Florida’s aging prison population
Comprehensive disability accommodation in prisons is so pressing in Florida perhaps more than in any other state for one simple reason: like in many other areas of Florida, the prison population is aging rapidly, and with age comes higher incidences of disability.
Florida has the third-largest prison population in the country with 27% of the 88,000 inmates being over age 50. This is in contrast to the year 2000 when the over 50 population was only 8%. The reason for such a high percentage of older inmates now can be explained by Florida’s “Truth in Sentencing” law, an approach to sentencing that is costly for states and lacking in humanity for prisoners, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. That law requires prisoners to serve 85% of their sentence, meaning folks are older when they are released and aging within the system instead of outside of it, requiring increased healthcare resources in general and also more care and accommodation for age-related disabilities.
With one of the oldest prison populations in the country, Florida then shoulders an increased burden to care for the elderly within the system and provide the necessary accommodations to those who enter with a disability or acquire one as they age during their sentence.
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