July 2005

News

By Morgan Tharp

Supreme Court to Hear Case on Disabled Prisoners
On the docket for the US Supreme Court when it reconvenes this fall is a case to determine whether state and county prisons can be sued for damages for not accommodating disabled prisoners. Paraplegic Tony Goodman claims in the suit that he has been held in a cell so narrow he cannot turn his wheelchair, in addition to the Georgia facilities where he is incarcerated not being able to accommodate disabled persons.

The court has already decided that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects people in state prisons. There are different accounts, however, of disabled prisoners receiving treatment in prison facilities, at both the state and federal level.

According to Lt Cmdr Corey Dahl, PT, of the US Public Health Service Commission Corp at Federal Medical Center Carswell, Fort Worth, Tex, the Federal Bureau of Prisons sends inmates with preexisting or chronic conditions to medical centers for both incarceration and treatment. At FMC Carswell, the only female medical center in the federal system, physical therapists like himself are on staff to help treat those with disabilities.

“The physical therapists are, I would say, generalists,” Dahl says. “We see patients with musculoskeletal impairments, neuromuscular, cardio, pulmonary… We really see it all and do it all in the Bureau of Prisons.”

Dahl says it is important that physical therapists help inmates maintain a decent quality of life while they are incarcerated.

“We try to impact the patients to return them to as high a function level as we can so when they get released from prison they’ll be able to find work or take care of themselves,” he says. “When I see a patient and there’s a chance that the treatment or intervention that I provide would allow them to maybe keep a job when they got out of prison or find a job, then I think I’ve done some good.”

But this is not the case everywhere. In California, Norma Martinez, whose son, Steven, became a quadriplegic after being attacked in 2001 while incarcerated, paints a different picture.

His family paid for private physicians from Casa Colina Rehab to evaluate his condition. The rehab center gave the California Department of Corrections a 21-page report detailing his injuries as well as information for what type of mobility equipment he needed, Norma Martinez says. The recommendations were ignored.

“Steven requires 24/7 [care] to live,” his mother says. “That’s the bottom line. He still [receives] no rehab, no therapy. There’s litigation going on right now on Steven’s behalf to try to force the Department of Corrections to provide our son with a power chair.” She says the private physician has sent more recommendations to the California Department of Corrections, but they continue to be ignored. His family has not been given any reason why Martinez is not being given rehabilitation therapy.

“Inmates have civil rights, and because Steven is disabled, there are also ADA issues,” she says. “Without the rehab and the therapy, he’s developed irreversible complications. They’re killing him day by day.”

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