In 2021, at his Arizona prison, Larry Dunlap noticed how people with vision impairments were being treated: The prison wasn’t providing them with necessary reading materials or equipment, like canes. Many were assigned top bunks, forcing them to climb up and down despite their low vision.

“There were many inmates put on top bunks who had no blind aid sticks and no reading materials,” Dunlap said. “I saw an officer punish a blind inmate by moving him to an upper bunk.” 

Dunlap said he overheard the officer say he placed the inmate on a top bunk because of his “smart mouth.”

Incarcerated for nearly three decades, Dunlap has always been heavily involved in prison life, organizing events to facilitate positive race relations and to raise money for causes like Special Olympics and breast cancer awareness. 

“I thought to myself, ‘Nobody should be abusing any person, especially the visually impaired,’” Dunlap said. 

He said he tried to speak up on behalf of the punished person, but was reprimanded and threatened with administrative segregation, a form of solitary confinement.  

After witnessing that first encounter, Dunlap began keeping track of the mistreatment he saw and spoke to people who were visually impaired people to understand their experiences. 

Forty percent of people in state prisons have a disability, according to Prison Policy Initiative. Tens of thousands of these people are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, low-vision, deaf-blind, speech-disabled or otherwise disabled in ways that affect communication.

These prisoners are protected by Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which states that no individuals with disabilities should be excluded from participation in services, programs or activities or be subjected to discrimination by a public entity — including a state prison — based on their disability. 

Ultimately, Dunlap amassed three years’ worth of handwritten records based on the experiences of 35 individuals. These records became the basis of an over two-year investigation by the U.S. Justice Department into whether Arizona’s state prison system had violated the ADA by discriminating against incarcerated individuals with visual impairments. 

In 2021, Dunlap wrote letters to the director of Arizona’s department of corrections, the state legislature and state attorney general, hoping to draw attention to the mistreatment he was documenting. He received no responses. 

Then, in January 2023, as a last-ditch effort, Dunlap wrote to the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Three months later, Adam Lewis, a disability rights attorney at the DOJ, contacted Dunlap by telephone. 

Dunlap said he told the attorney about the lack of programs and equipment for visually impaired individuals in all the Arizona prisons where he had served time. He noted, in particular, the absence of programs, Braille displays and other accessible reading materials. 

After the call, Lewis requested the names of everyone who had alleged they were subjected to inadequate treatment at the Cook Unit of Arizona State Prison Complex, Eyman.

In July 2023, three months after Dunlap’s initial conversation with Lewis, the DOJ sent a public letter to the Arizona Department of Corrections Rehabilitation and Reentry, reporting their findings from an investigation into the prison system. It read, in part: “ADCRR has violated and continues to violate Title II of the ADA through its discriminatory treatment of individuals with vision disabilities.”

The DOJ and ADCRR reached a settlement agreement to address the violations they identified. Under the agreement, which will last for three years, ADCRR will retain an expert consultant to help revise its policies and practices, train its personnel, and provide necessary modifications, aids, services and assistive technology to people with vision disabilities in its custody.

But thus far, Dunlap has been disappointed in the state’s attempt at rectifying its failures. In December 2023, ADCRR announced via email that a Braille program would soon be introduced. As of August 2024, we have seen no evidence of such a program at our facility.

“Once they initiate the program,” Dunlap said, “it may be a long ordeal getting staff up to speed as they are barely trained in the role they are in now.”