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<h2><b>
<a href="http://thecrimereport.org/2009/09/28/the-secret-world-of-deaf-prisoners/">
The Secret World of Deaf
Prisoners</a></b></h2><font size=3>
<a href="http://thecrimereport.org/2009/09/28/the-secret-world-of-deaf-prisoners/" eudora="autourl">
http://thecrimereport.org/2009/09/28/the-secret-world-of-deaf-prisoners/<br>
</a>By James Ridgeway<br>
Monday, September 28th, 2009 9:47 pm<br><br>
<img src="http://www.thecrimereport.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/sign_language_interpreter.jpg" width=300 height=200 alt="09.29.09sign">
<b><i>SPECIAL REPORT<br><br>
</i></b>In the 1970s, an antiwar demonstrator found himself at New York
City’s Rikers Island jail facility for a couple of months on a disorderly
conduct charge. The demonstrator, who happened to be a friend of mine,
met a handful of young men from the Bronx in his unit who were
deaf.<br><br>
They were having trouble communicating with anyone but themselves.
My friend knew a little sign language and, after a few conversations,
discovered they were illiterate. With the idea of helping them improve
their communication skills, he asked prison authorities for permission to
order books on sign language from the publisher. The wardens refused,
saying that they did not want anyone in that prison using a “language”
they could not understand.<br><br>
Things may have changed a little for the better since then. But not
by much.<br><br>
I first wrote about the deaf in the late 1960s in the New Republic and so
I know something of the background which is what really informs this
article. I am engaged in a project for
<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/">Mother Jones</a> on solitary
confinement at Angola prison, and in doing research came upon an article
in the July issue of
<a href="https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/21430_displayArticle.aspx">
Prison Legal News</a> about widespread violations against deaf prisoners.
Remembering the people and culture I had caught a glimpse of in the 60s,
I got in touch with the article’s author, McCay Vernon. Luckily he
remember my earlier writing, and promptly agreed to help me. <br><br>
The letters quoted below are from deaf prisoners to different people in
he “free world,” who are seeking to help them, to advocate their cause. I
have disguised the advocates, prisoners and prisons to keep the inmates
from getting reprisalsreprisals which they fear on a daily basis. You
have to remember a deaf person can’t hear the chatter among other
inmates, can’t hear the person sneaking up behind,is unintelligible in
his cries for help during a rape.<br><br>
The deaf face a nightmare when they fall into the criminal justice
system. They live in a world apart to begin with; but in prison they are
thrown into a dread new environment where they literally can’t understand
the language of either their jailers or the other prisoners. When people
who have never heard a spoken word try to speak, the sounds come
out jumbled and weirdleading ill-informed jailers to think they are
obstreperous or crazy. As a consequence, some deaf prisoners can end up
in solitary.<br><br>
I discovered numerous examples of abuses and violations of the rights of
deaf prisoners as part of an ongoing investigative reporting
project. But the most troubling discovery I made was how little has
been done about the problem in the criminal justice systemand how little
is known about it outside prison walls.<br><br>
No one knows exactly how many deaf prisoners there are in the U.S.
Efforts by psychologists and other experts to find out have been largely
unsuccessful. With few exceptionsthe state of Texas apparently being
oneno one counts the deaf or hard of hearing in the prison
population.<br><br>
But according to two researchers, as many as one-third of the entire U.S.
prison population of 1.7 million have difficulty hearingwith some of
them being profoundly deaf. The researchers,
<a href="http://www.emporia.edu/parm/Miller.htm">Prof. Katrina Miller</a>
of Emporia State University in Kansas, herself a former corrections
officer, and <a href="http://www.nda.com/about/advisors.php">McCay
Vernon</a>, a psychologist whose late wife was deaf and who has worked
within the prison community for years, believe it is long
past time to seek help for this ignored segment of prisoners. Almost
two-thirds of deaf prisoners, according to some studies, are in jail for
violent and often sexual offenses committed against
children.<br><br>
A person is hard of hearing if he/she has a 50 percent loss of hearing in
one ear. Prisoners who are illiterate as well as deaf are especially
deprived when they find themselves in the criminal justice system.
They seldom have been educated beyond second grade and, as a
consequence, have trouble reading and writing. Because they are deaf and
without competent interpreters, they can’t go to AA meetings or drug
counseling or make it through educational
programs. <br><br>
The abuses begin as soon as a deaf prisoner
<a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6399/is_7_64/ai_n28964750/">
enters the criminal justice system</a> and faces accusers in
court. Often the hard of hearing and deaf can’t hear
the charges against them, don’t know what the trial is all about, don’t
know why the guards are screaming at them, can’t hear bells or commands
from others. If they are close enough to the judge and look hard at him,
they can read his lips. But, as McCay Vernon points out, only 50 percent
of spoken sounds can be translated into sign language.<br><br>
On occasion, deaf persons will be given a court interpreter who knows
sign language. But this can be a doubly frustrating experience:
sign language can’t convey the special, often arcane lingo used by
defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges. Most deaf people don’t read
lips. The idea they can hear normally, or at least hear enough to act as
if they can hear normally, is a myth of the hearing world, Vernon
points out.<br><br>
Sign language is enriched by mime, hand-spelling, and cued speech
(which is a combination of signs and lip movement). In prisons and jails
around the country, there are few interpreters who are trained well
enough in this form of communication. Often other deaf or hard-of-hearing
prisoners are recruited to help, but just as often deaf prisoners are
left with few resources when they are confronted with pitfalls and
crises that are tragically common in today’s prison system.<br><br>
One deaf prisoner wrote, for example, that when he sought help after a
prison rape, the guards laughed at him. A hard-of-hearing
inmate who requested a pair of headphones to listen to the radio was
turned down by the warden, who said he had not filled out the papers
correctly. A request for a vibrating alarm clock got a similar
rejection.<br><br>
When deaf inmates want to make a phone call using TTDa method of
typing out messagesthe prison insists two guards must be in the
room. To make matters worse, the deaf are restricted to the same
amount of phone time as hearing prisoners, though it takes twice the time
to type out the messages.<br><br>
Such anecdotes illustrate that deaf prisoners are faced daily with
violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates equal
treatment for deaf and other disabled persons. There is even a provision
under the Act to pay
attorneys<a href="http://www.signlanguageinterpreters.com/blog/14-attorneys-responsibilities">
additional sums </a>to bring cases to correct inequities suffered by
deaf inmatesa provision which, like other parts of the act, is honored
mostly in the breach.<br><br>
A twitter for these people isn’t just a vehicle for social networking,
but a lifesaving device to communicate with the hearing world.<br><br>
Complicating this situation, is the fact that the deaf community in
general rarely goes to bat for peers who are in prison. As the
mother of one deaf son, told me, “it makes them look bad.” Thus deaf
prisoners are subject to a double isolationfrom the prison community and
from the larger community of their peers.<br><br>
In a letter to a friend,one deaf prisoner wrote the following: ”I have
been lowered to nothing more than a beggar in order to stand up for
something. I believe the deaf have a right too. But I tell you this…there
is no help for us here…I am almost at the end of my rope and believe that
before I submit this body to any form of sexual act in order to get legal
work done, I will take my own life. There is no help for us here…Many
nights I have stayed awake contemplating the end and only my fear in the
Lord Jesus in not accepting me in heaven has kept me from that act.”
<br><br>
Rape is a major fear, he went on. “Many many times deaf people raped and
beat and no help from the officers. Hearing people steal our things…when
we try to talk to officers, they just laugh. So hard for us. Many, many
times I just want to die but have Jesus in [my] heart…Now one day at a
time. Pray every day to help other deaf.”<br><br>
This letter is signed with the drawing of a small, round smiling face and
the words, “<i>Deaf and proud.”<br><br>
<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/authors/james-ridgeway">James
Ridgeway</a> is senior Washington correspondent for Mother
Jones.<br><br>
</i>NOTE: The names of prisoners and the correctional institutions
mentioned in this article have been omitted because of the inmates’s
fears of retaliation.<br><br>
RELATED READING:<br><br>
<a href="http://jdsde.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/eni039v1">“Violent
Offenders in a Deaf Prison Population”</a><br><br>
<a href="http://jdsde.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/8/3/357">“Deaf Sex
Offenders in a Prison Population”</a><br><br>
<a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/sign_language_studies/v002/2.4miller.pdf">
“Assessing Linguistic Diversity in Deaf Criminal Suspects”</a><br><br>
<br><br>
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