People with learning disabilities’ experiences of punishment and prison life remain invisible within prison policy and research. With participants’ voices central, this paper makes visible the hidden harms experienced by a hidden population, exposing the multi-faceted and nested forms of harm that people with learning disabilities encounter while in prison as a result of direct and indirect discrimination. It highlights the ways in which they navigate prison life and respond to structural and inaccessible barriers that adversely impact their understanding of their sentence, access to services, and ontological security. By drawing together conceptual and methodological insights from disability studies and prison sociology, I offer new insights into the distinct yet challenging aspects of prison life for people with learning disabilities.

In this paper, we draw on data from a recent study of how Covid-19 and related restrictions impacted on vulnerable and/or marginalised populations in Scotland (Armstrong and Pickering, 2020), including justice-affected people (i.e. people in prison and under supervision, their families and those that work with them; see Gormley et al., 2020). Focusing here mainly on interviews with people released from prison and others under community-based criminal justice supervision, we explore how the pandemic impacted on their experiences. Reflecting upon and refining previous analyses of how supervision is experienced as ‘pervasive punishment’ ( McNeill, 2019 ), we suggest that both the pandemic and public health measures associated with its suppression have changed the ‘pains’ and ‘gains’ of supervision ( Hayes, 2015 ), in particular, by exacerbating the ‘suspension’ associated with it. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the pursuit of justice in the recovery from Covid-19.

Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 15 people who have learning disabilities, brain injuries, neurodiversity, or mental health conditions accused of a crime in Scotland, this article offers substantive and methodological insights to unpacking perceptions of justice accessibility. We explore barriers to participation in pretrial justice processes for disabled accused people, demonstrating that disabled people are systematically denied a voice and disadvantaged by poor identification and recognition of impairment, insufficient supports or adjustments, and inaccessible information. We discuss participants' accounts of feeling excluded from, and intimidated by, systems and decisions that are not routinely explained in accessible terms, which, in turn, adversely impacts access to justice and perceptions of fairness. Informed by criminology and disability studies, we argue that the failure of criminal justice systems and practices to acknowledge disability as an equality issue creates disabling barriers that serve to further marginalise disabled people within justice settings.