Women incarcerated in Michigan frequently went without food and medicine due to a lack of wheelchairs, according to a report released this week by an advocacy organization charged by the state with monitoring compliance to protections for people with disabilities.
“We have diabetics that at times go too low [on their blood sugar], those who have seizures,” one wheelchair user told the Disability Rights Michigan. “If someone feels they are not able to walk that far [to the cafeteria], they go without eating.”
Disability Rights Michigan (DRM) found that women incarcerated in Michigan who required an attendant to help push their wheelchairs missed, on average, about half of their meals and a majority of doses for prescription medication for seizures, diabetes, and high blood pressure.
The findings are based on interviews with more than 200 incarcerated women, analysis of cafeteria attendance and medical logs, internal communications, and site visits to Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility, the state’s only prison for women.
Food and medicine are critical to one’s well-being, so women in prison wouldn’t skip them willingly, said Simon Zagata, who oversees issues arising in state facilities like prisons.
"This just confirmed the reports we had heard for years and confirmed that this was a real problem,” he said. “It was really impacting in ways that were really concerning for their health and well-being.”
The report also noted that incarcerated women who required wheelchairs also missed programs ranging from Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to college courses, potentially impacting their chances of parole.
Zagata said officials at the Michigan Department of Corrections, which oversees Women’s Huron Valley, were aware of the issues that his organization was investigating.
“We talk about the issues with the department as we monitor,” he said. “And so we've made them aware, and there just have not been changes that have solved the problem.”
The inadequate supply of wheelchairs and lack of wheelchair attendants were raised in a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2010, which found that many wheelchairs in the women’s prison were “broken, dirty, and ill-fitting,” calling for an adequate number of properly maintained wheelchairs to be available for those who required them.
Instead of addressing those supply issues, internal emails obtained by DRM as part of their investigation more than a decade later suggest that staff were trying to reduce the number of women approved for wheelchairs.
In an email from January 2024, a medical provider at Women’s Huron Valley wrote, “As these [wheelchair] for distance details expire and patients request them, the [medical practitioners] onsite have been educated to be very judicious in who gets them renewed."
A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections said the department was reviewing the report and could not comment yet.
