LANSING — State prison can be terrifying for anyone.

But imagine being sent there surrounded by darkness because you can't see. Or unable to hear a corrections officer yelling instructions because you are deaf. Or unable to walk to the chow hall because you need a wheelchair.

A federal judge in Detroit recently determined that the Michigan Department of Corrections for years violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) with respect to about 200 prisoners statewide who are deaf or hard of hearing, and it could be placed under the watch of an independent monitor.

The lawsuit, brought by Michigan Protection & Advocacy Service, heard evidence that hearing-impaired prisoners had no effective way of talking with their loved ones by phone, couldn't be sure they'd be notified of a prison emergency such as a fire, and in some cases were disciplined because they couldn't hear and attended discipline hearings without hearing aids or sign language interpreters.

The ADA, which took effect in 1990, requires public facilities — including state prisons — to accommodate people with disabilities so they get a level of service and programs equal to those who don't have such disabilities.

Prisoners who are blind — the department says there are about 40 statewide — or use wheelchairs — the department says there are 65 — say the department, which didn't issue its first policy directive related to prisoners with disabilities until last August, has flouted the ADA with respect to their disabilities, too. A few have sued separately, but not in a successful class-action suit like the one for deaf prisoners.

Among the concerns raised:

Geraldine Taeckens, who is blind and recently served two years for health care fraud at Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility near Ypsilanti, said prisoners with sight were routinely allowed to use knitting needles, pens, and even scissors. But there were strict controls placed over the slate and stylus she needed to write Braille because prison officials viewed the stylus as a potential weapon, she said. As a result, it was difficult to get a slate and stylus when she needed one, such as during phone calls when she might want to take notes, she said.

at Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility near Ypsilanti, said prisoners with sight were routinely allowed to use knitting needles, pens, and even scissors. But there were strict controls placed over the slate and stylus she needed to write Braille because prison officials viewed the stylus as a potential weapon, she said. As a result, it was difficult to get a slate and stylus when she needed one, such as during phone calls when she might want to take notes, she said. Terrance Pugh, who was paroled in 2018 after serving more than six years for drugs and weapons offenses , sued the department in 2012, alleging he was assigned a top bunk in violation of a medical order that he sleep in a lower bunk, that he was given a wheelchair too small for his 300-pound-plus frame, that the department wouldn't replace the chair when it broke, causing him to fall, and that he was cut off from five consecutive meals when he couldn't use the broken wheelchair to get to the chow hall and officials would not deliver meals to his cell.

sued the department in 2012, alleging he was assigned a top bunk in violation of a medical order that he sleep in a lower bunk, that he was given a wheelchair too small for his 300-pound-plus frame, that the department wouldn't replace the chair when it broke, causing him to fall, and that he was cut off from five consecutive meals when he couldn't use the broken wheelchair to get to the chow hall and officials would not deliver meals to his cell. Marvin Bennett, who was paroled in 2011 and is now 61, had a chronic herniated disk in his spine when he was sentenced to two to 20 years for larceny in 2009. As a result of a medical assessment given upon arrival, Bennett was assigned to a ground-floor cell and a lower bunk. Despite that order, he was assigned a fourth-floor cell upon arrival at the former Mound Correctional Facility in Detroit, requiring him to climb several flights of stairs each day. Bennett fell down the stairs in 2010, after which he needed a wheelchair. The case was settled for an undisclosed sum after U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow refused to dismiss Bennett's claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Corrections Department could not say how many of its nearly 39,000 prisoners require ADA accommodations because of mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder. But prison officials say about 9,500 prisoners, or 24 percent of the population, are being treated for mental health issues, of which close to 4,000 have serious mental health problems. Many control their conditions with medication and do not require special accommodations under the ADA, but prisoners being treated differently from the general prison population include 220 mental health in-patients at Woodland Correctional Center in Whitmore Lake, 770 prisoners in residential treatment programs at various sites, and 250 prisoners in adaptive skills residential programs at two Michigan prisons, spokesman Chris Gautz said.

Among the findings in the case involving deaf prisoners, U.S. District Judge Sean Cox determined the department only offered 60-year-old and "obsolete" technology in the form of teletypewriters for deaf inmates to make phone calls, despite the fact the Federal Communications Commission offers free access to videophones, which are standard use for the deaf, and on which deaf prisoners can speak through sign language interpreters. A department official acknowledged most prisoners' family members no longer have teletypewriters and said their use was "comparable to sending someone a fax to their homes versus an email."

The court is finalizing a consent judgment under which the department will be overseen by a federally appointed monitor for two years. A hearing to determine the fairness of the proposed class-action settlement is set for March 21.

Under the proposed order, the department would be not only required to make videophones available to all deaf and hard-of-hearing prisoners, but would have to provide hearing aids and access to sign language interpreters for all "high stakes" interactions and programs, including medical appointments and religious services, as well as institute mandatory training for all prison staff on how to identify and interact with deaf and hard-of-hearing prisoners.

Though the lawsuit sought orders requiring the department to take certain actions — not monetary damages — the department will also be required to pay $1.3 millionto cover both the plaintiffs' attorney fees and the cost of the independent monitor.

The department argued it has taken steps to render the lawsuit moot, but U.S. Magistrate Judge David Grand, who helped Cox adjudicate the case, said the department didn't act until after the suit was filed in July 2015, and still has more to do.

"Prior to the commencement of this action, it is undisputed that the MDOC did not have guidelines for medically classifying prisoners with hearing deficits, and had no policies related to housing such prisoners at appropriately designated facilities, or to providing specific communications accommodations," Grand said in a report to Cox.

In one incident, inmate Ralph Williams, now 64, who is serving a life sentence for murder, was sent to solitary confinement for 40 days after he was forced to appear at a misconduct hearing without a hearing aid, leaving him "completely unable to hear or communicate," according to a plaintiffs' court filing in the case.

The Corrections Department now has an ADA coordinator in each prison, but spokeswoman Holly Kramer said that change didn't take effect until last August, which is after Cox ruled in favor of the deaf prisoners on several of their claims.

That's also about the time the department's first policy directive related to prisoners with disabilities took effect. Among other provisions, it requires that upon arrival all prisoners be assessed for disabilities requiring special treatment under the ADA.

"The offender shall be provided a reasonable accommodation if it is determined necessary and if it would not create an undue hardship," the directive says.

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Prior to the policy, "medical protocols would have ensured prisoners with disabilities were provided with ... aids or reasonable accommodations when necessary," Kramer said. The new directive "was designed to streamline the process and make it clearer and more efficient" for both prisoners and staff, she said.

Taeckens, 67, a former commissioner on the Michigan Commission for the Blind who was a state-licensed clinical social worker, was sent to prison in 2016 after she was found guilty of submitting tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent billings to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, including billing for psychotherapy for patients who received massages. She was released on parole last July.

In May 2017, she sent a letter to state lawmakers detailing what she perceived as violations of the ADA at Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility, affecting not only her and the one other blind prisoner there, but also female prisoners who are deaf and use wheelchairs.

"In general, prisoners with disabilities are not well-understood by staff, often criticized or disbelieved, (and) not given proper equipment for healthy functioning and equal access," Taeckens wrote in the letter.

Among her concerns was a lack of input in the assignment of prisoner aides to guide and otherwise help blind prisoners. It's essential the prisoner be assigned someone they trust because the aide could be involved in reading correspondence related to personal issues and would be expected to respect confidentiality, Taeckens said.

One aide assigned to Taeckens "spread my (personal) stuff all over the place," Taeckens said. Another "kept running me into stuff."

Taeckens "wanted to be able to dictate who her aides were and have the ability to 'hire' her friends, rather than be assigned one," Gautz said in an email. "In prison, we do not allow prisoners to be in a position of authority over other prisoners by being able to hire and fire them."

A major concern for Taeckens was restricted access to the slate and stylus she uses to write Braille. Taeckens said the stylus used to punch holes in paper is no more dangerous than pens, knitting needles or dull scissors that prisoners are allowed to own and carry freely, but prison officials required that it be kept in a lockbox at the officers' desk. She couldn't take the device out of the unit, was required to return it when there was a shift change, and to get it, she had to provide her prisoner ID, which is also needed to access the chow hall.

To get it from the desk, "sometimes I had to wait an hour and a half, sometimes I had to wait 13 minutes, sometimes there was an officer who couldn't find it," Taeckens told the Free Press.

"I kept saying, 'It is not the object that is the weapon, it is the person,' " Taeckens said. "A person can use anything as a weapon. There was a lady, an inmate, that used a chicken bone and stabbed somebody."

Mark Cody, legal director for Lansing-based Michigan Protection & Advocacy Service, which is handling the deaf prisoner lawsuit, said he would require more information before giving an opinion, but a lack of equal access to writing materials is a potential violation of the ADA.

Gautz said officer and prisoner safety must come first.

"The small, blunt scissors are the type of child-size scissors you see in primary education classes," Gautz said. "The knitting needles and crochet hooks are either plastic or wooden. The stylus however, is metal and pointed, not blunt."

It is kept "on a tool inventory for safety and security as it is equipment owned by the state and requires control accountability," he said. Similar rules apply to clothes irons in residential units and screwdrivers in vocational training areas, he said.

Gautz said that during the time Taeckens was housed at Women's Huron Valley, the department purchased additional slate and stylus kits for the prison school, the program building, and the fieldhouse.

Taeckens said just as she had problems with prisoner aides, so do prisoners who need wheelchairs and someone to push them. At the women's prison, a lack of reliable access to aides results in such prisoners missing meals and appointments, and the wheelchairs themselves were often in poor repair and/or beneath ergonomic standards, she said.

Gautz said wheelchairs are repaired regularly.

Pugh, now 38, who was serving time at Cotton Correctional Facility near Jacksonon drugs and weapons charges, represented himself in his case against several prison officials. While most counts were dismissed before trial, Pugh was able to put his case against one official in front of jurors after U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Binder wrote in a report that he found it "somewhat troubling" that Pugh would miss meals for two days after his wheelchair broke and a nonmedical prison official canceled a medical order to have his meals delivered to his cell, believing that Pugh was "malingering."

The prison official "offers no explanation as to why the RN (registered nurse) would not be qualified" to make the judgment about the in-cell meals, and did not explain "why she ... who is not a medically trained person of any kind, would be better-suited to make the decision as to whether (Pugh) required in-cell meals or whether he could walk from the housing unit to the chow hall," Binder wrote.

Jurors ultimately ruled against Pugh, in favor of the prison official.

Bennett, who, like Pugh, was given a bed assignment that was contrary to a medical order issued in light of his disability, received a cash settlement in his federal lawsuit, said Troy attorney Teresa Gorman. The amount of the settlement was not immediately available.

Patricia Kefalas Dudek, a Farmington Hills attorney who advocates for people with disabilities and their families, said prisons for the most part are not set up to be health care providers, and that's especially true in the area of mental health. They are also part of bureaucratic systems that do not accommodate change easily and a lack of ADA enforcement provides little impetus for prisons to make sure they are in compliance, she said.

Cody, the legal director at Michigan Protection & Advocacy Service, said prisons are set up for uniform treatment, but compliance with the ADA can involve making accommodations that are sometimes prisoner-specific.

Gautz said the department looks at each case separately, as required by law.

"As it relates to the mentally ill, we have always said that prison is not the ideal place to treat someone with a mental illness," but the department is required to provide both physical and mental health care to prisoners, and it "takes great care and spends millions of dollars annually to do so."

Chris Davis, the agency attorney who has the lead role in the lawsuit involving deaf prisoners, said a notice sent out about that pending settlement prompted many prisoners with other types of disabilities to contact the agency and provide information.

"We're just sort of starting to sort through them," Davis said.

Cody said that going forward, the agency is particularly concerned about prison officials using segregation — a type of solitary confinement — as a way of handling mental health issues.

The department recently launched a program at three prisons called START, which provides programs to high-security prisoners with mental health issues, as an alternative to segregation, Gautz said.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.