Examining Vocational Rehabilitation Services Provided to Incarcerated Persons With Disabilities

Abstract

In the U.S. prison system, incarcerated persons with a disability represent a largely marginalized population with limited or inadequate provision of services in prison. In general, once released, ex-offenders face a number of challenges when they reenter society ranging from access to housing, employment, health care, and substance use services. These challenges are generally exacerbated for incarcerated persons with a disability. Overall, there is a dearth of research on rates of vocational services utilization among incarcerated persons with a disability. Using data from the Rehabilitation Services Administration for 30,170 inmates, the results indicate that inmates with cognitive and physical disabilities have the lowest utilization of vocational services overall and across all types of services (educational, job, disability, and other). Furthermore, vocational service utilization varies based on the nature of the disability suggesting distinct programming needs for each group. Implications for access to vocational rehabilitation services and current reentry programming for incarcerated persons with a disability are discussed.

Intellectual, Developmental, and Physical Disabilities in U.S. Legal Settings: A Scoping Review

“…Across these descriptive and correlational studies, we found varying sample sizes. Some studies relied on large-scale epidemiological surveys-e.g., the Survey of Prison Inmates (Maruschak, Bronson, and Alper, 2021;Bixby, Bevan, and Boen, 2022), National Inmate Survey (Bronson, Maruschak, and Berzofsky, 2015), or National Survey of Drug Use and Health (Winkelman et al, 2020)-or administrative datasets (e.g., data from the Rehabilitation Services Administration; Baloch and Jennings, 2021), and these studies included sample sizes of 15,000 individuals or more. But other studies relied on smaller samples, including those that involved primary data collection.…”

“…For this reason, it was more challenging to identify a consistent set of themes within this subset of the literature. Criminal legal topics included studies relating to efforts to apply for Supplemental Security Income/Social Security Disability Income (SSI/SSDI) following release from incarceration (Sajadi, 2021), participation in vocational rehabilitation (Baloch and Jennings, 2021), courtroom accessibility (Riehl, 2008), and provision of accommodations in correctional settings (Parry, 2009;Seevers, 2016).…”