Justice: Issues Facing People With Intellectual Disabilities in the Criminal Justice System #AtoZChallenge

Hi everyone. I’m once again really late writing my #AtoZChallenge post and actually considered not writing it today, but that felt rather off. For my letter J post, I am writing about issues facing intellectually disabled people in the criminal justice system, be it as victims, witnesses, suspects, defendants or incarcerated individuals.

There are many issues for these individuals. For instance, people with an intellectual disability are far more likely to be victims of crime than the general population. For violent crimes, they are twice as likely to be victimized, whereas for other crimes, the ratio is even higher. For instance, people with an intellectual disability are easily exploited.

That being said, crimes against people with intellectual disabilities are not prosecuted as often as crimes against non-disabled people. The reason may be that intellectually disabled people aren’t viewed as credible witnesses.

When people with an intellectual disability are themselves suspects, they often do not get appropriate supports and reasonable accommodations to allow them a fair trial. In the UK, people with an intellectual disability can access an “appropriate adult”, who isn’t their lawyer but whose job it is to make sure their disability is accounted for during involvement with the justice system. This as far as I know does not (yet) exist in the Netherlands or the United States.

Many individuals particularly with a mild intellectual disability end up in regular correctional facilities because either their intellectual disability wasn’t recognized during trial or they don’t qualify for an insanity defense. Unfortunately though, the regular prison system can’t really accommodate these individuals. One of the student staff here used to work in correctional facilities and this motivated her to retrain as a support worker.

In the United States, people with an intellectual disability are exempt from the death penalty. However, it varies by state how it is determined whether a person actually has an intellectual disability. In some states, the jury decides on this, whereas in others, it’s the judge. Either way, I feel this is discriminatory, as neither a lay jury nor a judge are trained to recognize intellectual disability. Now I oppose the death penalty anyway, but I feel this lack of proper identification could affect individuals not at risk of execution too.