This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
JACOB HUTT: Welcome, everybody to Recent Advocacy for Blind and Low-Vision Incarcerated People panel. We'll start with brief introductions, Jacob Hutt. My pronouns are he/him. I'm Staff Attorney at Prison Law Office Berkeley, California. I am a white-bearded man wearing a blue suit, red and white tie.
MONICA BASCHE: I'm Monica. I'm associate with law firm of Brown Goldstein and Levy. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am, I guess, short, white woman with shoulder-length brown hair. I am wearing a gray dress with burgundy. I'll pass it.
MICHAEL NUNEZ: Mike; pronouns, he/his. I am Latino, 5’11 wearing suit and tie. And I have a black Labrador retriever sitting on the floor. Given its a small group, we're going to speak about niche topic, go around real quick and poll folks in attendance, actually, I think we're small enough, we can real quick run through everybody, we don't need full bios and favorite ice cream flavors, maybe name, what organization you are coming from what your title is so we have a sense of who we are speaking to more or less familiar with subject matter. Maybe in the front row.
>> ATTENDEE: Hi, I'm not an attorney, but I'm interested in becoming a mediator. I work for Department of Defense, contract specialist.
>> ATTENDEE: Larry, I am an attorney, been with the federation 40 years, practicing law for about 33 years in DC/Virginia area.
>> ATTENDEE: I'm an attorney at the DC Office of Attorney General, here in a personal capacity. Member of the federation since 2005.
>> ATTENDEE: I work at the Prison Law Office. I'm an attorney as well.
>> ATTENDEE: I'm a 2L at George Washington Law School.
>> ATTENDEE: I'm attorney at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
>> ATTENDEE: I'm attorney at the Civil Rights Enforcement Center, been there for 15 years.
>> ATTENDEE: Charlie.
>> ATTENDEE: I'm an attorney for Disability Rights Advocates.
>> JACOB HUTT: Two new attendees, no, you are fine, real quick, we are, we're just doing name, what organization you are coming from and what your position is there so we get a sense of who is in the room.
>> ATTENDEE: My name is Lucia, Disability Rights, Houston, Texas. I am supervising attorney.
>> ATTENDEE: I'm Dan Goldstein.
JACOB HUTT: Thank you, everybody. Before we sort of dig into the substance of panel, we thought quickly we would sort of run through the background each of us have in subject matter that we're going to be discussing today. So I can start. Primarily, my work at Prison Law Office is on the Armstrong versus Newsom class action lawsuit. This is a decades old case challenging the failure of California Department of Corrections Rehabilitation to provide disability accommodations to folks who are incarcerated in state prison system. Primarily folks with physical disability learning disabilities as well. And in the last couple of years, this is a case in which there's been remedial plan that the state is obligated to follow has not been able to follow for many decades, which is why I still work on that case even though it was filed when I was learning how to walk.
We recently started to collaborate work with other side in disability specific working groups. We meet regularly with opposing counsel and talk about issues facing folks statewide, so we have mandate to investigate disability accommodations all 35 prisons across the state of California. What I do and what Mike and I do together is to hear from class members who are blind or low-vision and to represent their concerns to the lawyers for CDCR state prison system.
We meet with defendants try to develop systematic better programs of accommodations for people who are inside the state prison system. In addition to that case, I also counsel on county jail lawsuit, county of Santa Clara, jail population three thousand smaller, about 95,000 people in state prison system around 10,000 physical disabilities, so compared to that, also represent group of folks with physical disabilities in Santa Clara County jail system, couple in hundred people have disabilities smaller portion who are blind low-vision.
MONICA BASCHE: This is Monica. My advocacy on front end. We recently, Brown Goldstein and Levy partnership with Virginia Disability Law Center of Virginia filed lawsuit against Virginia Department of Corrections. Some individual employees and their prison third-party medical care provider and that involves the organizational, national federation, as well as individual plaintiffs, so that litigation just started.
A part of my advocacy is also some of you may be familiar we have settlement in Maryland related to one of the prisons Roxbury Correctional Institution I represent two individual inmates at other prisons, to try to get their situation, get access to accommodations they are entitled to. My advocacy mostly for blind low-vision, we do have inmates that have other disabilities. And then finally, I have another case that I recently got involved in for individual inmate in Tennessee, so all of this is more at the front end demand letter stage or active litigation. I, unlike Jacob and Michael, not doing monitoring of consent decree hopefully we'll be at that point in Virginia in the future. We'll see what happens.
MICHAEL NUNEZ: Hi, everybody. In terms of, I focus a lot on larger class actions, in addition to working with Jacob on Armstrong case regarding accommodations or, I also work on large statewide class action called Holman versus Newsom been around since 1990, been remedial monitoring phase since 1996 or 1997. That case concerns the rights under constitution of a large 30,000 plus class of incarcerated people, term of art dated, severe mental illness. To access mental health treatment. So, a lot of my time spent on that case as well. Within that case we, so large, different attorneys have different sort of focus areas for me my focus in particular suicide.
In addition to working on the large sort of institutional, I also have had privilege of working on number of cases under ADA Title 2 and Title 3 regarding access to either government services or programs activity. In addition to that also access to transportation, technology such as kiosk website mobile apps privilege to work with couple folks in the audience on different cases here and there with NFB as well as other disability rights organizations as well. Currently, I'm working on case that, regarding access to wheelchair coverage in health insurance plans. Another case that we're getting ready to file that's kind of coalition cross sectional disability rights case has to do with death, death of people with disabilities that will be filed in next month or two.
JACOB HUTT: Thank you. Mike, to set the stage for today's conversation, Monica, Mike and I were thinking folks in attendance would probably be very familiar with low-vision disability and accommodations, but perhaps less familiar with life inside of the correctional facility and because that is subjected part of this panel, thought we would starter off with walk through of daily life inside a prison or jail, perhaps people in the room who are more familiar, so forgive us. Just to sort of orient the space that we're talking about. I'll sort of run through few of the unique aspects of prison life, I spent a lot of time walking around prison yards day rooms and administrative segregation, please continue to do that if I slip into acronym world.
So, to start off movement is really critical aspect inside prison both voluntary and involuntary movement. The involuntary movement is probably more familiar. You arrive. You are immediately moved to a particular housing unit, sometimes a dorm setting, sometimes a cell. You usually will not have any control over where you are moved to. Most folks hope that the place that they are moved to when they arrive to prison is the place that they are able to settle and sort of adapt to that new living environment, but many times assuming that it's desirable location, but many times folks will be involuntarily moved either to different unit within that same facility or transferred to another facility way across the jurisdiction. In our case the longest distance between two prisons about 16-hour drive, nine hundred miles California is a big state.
So movement really can have dramatic impact where you are going to be spending your time. We've also seen in the pandemic especially intra facility movement was really big deal for lot of clients that I represent sent. Unit A and unit A would have had potential exposure to COVID and so all of a sudden middle of the night your unit gets woken up told you have to move to unit F you've never lived in unit F before all of a sudden pick up and you have to pack up belongings and move to that unit. There's involuntary movement being transferred to punitive, disciplinary lockdown settings, then the more sort of voluntary aspect of movement, folks when they are able to really do not spend most of their days sitting in their cell. People like to get out and move around. Enrolled in educational curricula, people have jobs, producing goods and services for the facilities in which they live.
Sometimes they are contract external state entities going out and working on producing jobs usually for extremely minimal compensation. I would venture they are going out of housing units and navigating to locations where they'll be engaging in their work. So a lot of movement in and an round the facilities and to other new facilities. Another unique aspect is the correspondence that folks who are incarcerated engage in, one of the I think principles of incarceration to isolate and separate you folks do what they can to minimize that separation. A lot of that is communicating with loved ones on outside a lot is communicating with legal counsel, with the courts challenging their conditions of confinement wrapping all of that into correspondence whether in legal brief or if it's writing a letter to one's child or family member.
So, a lot of corresponding in that sort of includes correspondence or reading and writing within the facilities.
I mentioned educational programs people are taking homework packets back to their cells and working on them in evening. All sorts of different aspects filling out commissary requests, requests for meeting with counselor, some cases for accommodation even grievances that people file. I think I don't want to go on too much longer last point I want to highlight that makes life in correctional facility unique no surprise to anyone, violence and corresponding concerns about safety that somebody has when they are living inside prison is dangerous.
Prison makes people more dangerous in some ways out of necessity people need to fend for themselves with other people may be attacking them. I speak with people who feel pressured to commit acts of violence on other people if they don't someone else will commit violence on them. It’s a complicated place. Of course people manage to carve out living spaces and lives for themselves that are free of physical violence, but what you hear when you spend a lot of time sitting with incarcerated people is that violence is sort of always in some way on their mind whether it's at the hands of other incarcerated people or staff.
And some of that I mentioned staff because it means that it’s not just the other folks who have been convicted of crimes you might be concerned about violence from, but Mike and I the case that we work on involves significant staff misconduct against people with disabilities, but, generally there is widespread violence by staff who don't really want to have engage in compassionate way with incarcerated people, we hear very often about the folks that we represent in dealing both with sort of verbal harassment and of course also physical and sexual violence staff facilities will perpetrate on incarcerated people. These are just a few of unique aspects of prison life not to -- anything that you guys would add.
MONICA BASCHE: Integrated into violence aspect real specter of retaliation I think you were talking about retaliation possibly from other inmates if you don't do what that inmate wants you to do but there's also retaliation from corrections officers where filing grievance, in prison, you have to actually file grievance to complain about particular issue or thing that is going on in order to ultimately bring a lawsuit and so oftentimes when you file grievance there can be pressure to withdraw, retaliation against you for filing grievance to begin with.
So, there's real disincentive whether you are inmate with disability or not for even complaining about an issue because then you end up having risk of being retaliated against. So, oftentimes we are working with individuals who are very stubbornly persistent about wanting to get access to things they are entitled to have access to. They are butting their lives on the line in order to get that access.
And I think, I don't know if Michael had anything else to add. If not I can speak to it.
MICHAEL NUNEZ: I think that's great. You did a great job.
MONICA BASCHE: Yeah, so, we're talking about daily life, I think a lot of people here, I don't know how familiar you are with the prison setting, but, we're very used to being able to pick up cell phone and text somebody or call somebody whenever we want to or write them email, that's unfortunately not the way this works when you are working with incarcerated people oftentimes, there's several different ways of communicating and Jacob was talking about correspondence that's one way written correspondence and you label as an attorney all of that correspondence as an attorney-client privilege communication. But at the end of the day technically prisons are not supposed to open or view this mail.
But setting that aside entirely plausible that corrections officers are opening and viewing this mail and additionally complicating that many states I think at this point is 30 -- many states have actually gone to having all mail sent to like centralized processing facility male scanned in prisoners view them on tablet they have. So I thank there's not really anyway for the corrections officers to not be viewing the confidential communications from attorneys. Or even confidential communications that you don't want people to see from friends and loved ones.
And then with email, any email course response, as an attorney, you can't have any confidential communication, and that is if the particular prison your particular inmate has access to email lots of prisons that don't permit access to email. You have to be very careful about what you say and do with any email correspondence all of that is screened. Then phone calls, phone calls, if the client calls you, right, all those phone calls are recorded. So only real way to have a confidential phone call is to schedule that in advance usually with case manager or with the prison. But issue with that when dealing specifically with blind to low-vision folks is that you can't see in that room whether there's somebody else in there, we actually had instances where case manager would stay in the room and listen to the phone call, which also, again, you know, breaches attorney-client privilege.
Also, if they have complaint about corrections officer or case manager that's putting that client at risk for retaliation word gets out, right.
Honestly best way not all prison facilities have this in-person visits or video calls, but then logistical issues, Jacob was saying California is large state, so having to travel in person every time you want to have privileged confidential conversation with your client can be difficult. And video calls are not always ideal, sometimes they are recorded, sometimes they are not.
But they tend to be a way that you can work with a blind visually impaired inmate if those calls are available so you can visually see whether there's somebody else in the room that doesn't mean that you know, the person will leave if you insist that they leave. I actually had to terminate a call before because there were two corrections officers in the background and they would not leave. So, it can be very, very challenging to actually communicate with your compliant just based upon limitations on their ability to communicate with you. And the confidentiality, of maintaining confidentiality privacy.
JACOB HUTT: Mike, anything to add on that point?
MICHAEL NUNEZ: Monica did great.
JACOB HUTT: Hard to hear you in the back.
MICHAEL NUNEZ: I was saying Monica did great job on addressing communication pieces. In terms of communication issues, the sort of way in which agent, issue we are tackling in our California case. Very well oftentimes that, fully developed and limited. And we've been, in our case, Armstrong case, working for past year plus, year and a half to ensure that there are accessibility solutions not only on tablets also accessibility solutions are meaningfully available, meaning that people learn how to use them and are aware of them as well. May touch on that little bit later. But that seems to sort of, that came to mind when you started talking about communication.
JACOB HUTT: Mike, can we stay with you for a second and although I know most of the folks in this room law students or lawyers, maybe you can briefly walk us through some of the legal, that we are -- disability laws intersecting law of incarcerated people.
MICHAEL NUNEZ: In this instance, we are all, three of us dealing with state prisons as well as county level jails. Statutes that are key here are statutes that I think most folks in the room familiar with, ADA Title 2 as well as Title 3 I'll get to that in a minute. As well as Section 504 of Rehabilitation Act. Been about 25 years since Supreme Court held Title 2 of ADA applies to prison setting and activities available within prison system. Numerous courts also held similarly Section 504 applies to prison systems as well, they are receiving federal funding.
And these law have been applied to basically everything and anything that Jacob was describing before that prisoners incarcerated people are seeking to be able to access or need to be able to access whether it be job programs, whether self-help programs, whether mental health treatment, whether it has to do with accessing educational programs as well as even more basic activities such as being able to read, being able to correspond, being able to write, being able to access the courts.
So, the rights of prisoners with disabilities are sort of part and parcel of what the ADA Rehabilitation Act are kind of. What we see in practice is that basically, these institutions are far, far behind in making sure most, good not all of these programs are you know, when I first became involved in this work several years ago I was surprised to see sort of how far behind so many of these institutions are at providing accommodations that people need to be able to access wide variety basic -- in the free world and more accessible, such as being able to read, or being able to write in braille or being able to access the time, for example.
So, in terms of the two statutes I mentioned in addition, implicated by prison or jail, oftentimes might not -- I haven't seen them come up as often, especially statutes that kind of parallel ADA Section 504. Key distinction here though is unlike using ADA free world, where you are able to file a claim out right without administrative procedure you need to exhaust first in this context, Monica mentioned -- prison legal reform act, prison litigation reform act must exhaust the administrative remedies that are available to you in the prison system before you can file a claim.
MONICA BASCHE: If I may, real quick, as an aside on administrative remedies process I spoke little bit about it earlier every different state has different administrative remedies process and also when you get more of institution, institution level you can see how institutions make sure complaints or administrative remedies are time barred for clients as we were talking about they have difficulty even filing it, administrative grievance oftentimes those forms are not accessible and then even if they are able to fill out the form whether on their own or with assistance of other people.
Then it's usually written form that is returned to them and they have no ability to read it, sometimes it's returned day before, there's just so, it's difficult enough for sighted prisoners, additional layer of complication and so, we do have some arguments in our favor where we can say that they actually don't have practically have access to the administrative grievance process they don't have to exhaust, that can also be a challenge, always making sure that your client exhausted remedies in face of these obstacles.
MICHAEL NUNEZ: I kind of came to conclusion, touched on.
JACOB HUTT: I was going to add one point. Another one of the terrible damages that prison litigation reform act caused to access the justice for people who are incarcerated is it capped amount of fees that individual could recoup not just problem of lawyers being able to get rich incentive to prosecute civil rights case, if civil rights violation happened very likely not going to get remedied unless lawyer gets involved lawyer is not going to get involved if they can't get compensated. One, one of brilliant horrible things capped amount of attorney fees, that attorney could recover in victorious prisoner civil rights case. Now, the nice intersection of ADA claims and PLRA is that claim brought under ADA is not subject to that PLRA attorney fee cap.
So, if you are person who brings lawsuit on behalf of incarcerated person and your claim based on battery by correctional office, you are going to be subject to that extremely low market cap 150%, if you bring successful claim under the ADA you are not limited by that very restricted PLRA attorney fee cap. So, in that way there is more of incentive to prosecute ADA claims on behalf of incarcerated people. In that way sort of frees up attorneys to think creatively about ways that they might want to litigate cases on behalf of folks under ADA and not feel so constrained as they normally would when prosecuting these cases.
MONICA BASCHE: More to settle, if it's going to hurt defendants to continue to litigate the case, get pretrial resolution.
ATTENDEE: What about 504?
ATTENDEE: Subject to cap under 504?
JACOB HUTT: I'm not sure. Yeah, I need to look it up, in our case we are not limited by that, but I'm not sure.
MICHAEL NUNEZ: I would expect that the cap would in practice not really apply to 504 because like by in large litigating 504 claim, based on, is going to be mostly the same as the Title 2 claim. But that's not always true so I'm not 100% sure.
JACOB HUTT: Yeah. Good question. So, we are at 10:41 so I think somewhat quickly we could talk through little bit about different legal vehicles we have used to advocate on behalf of blind and low-vision incarcerated folks.
MONICA BASCHE: I can start being the one whose done a lot of front end stuff. So, we talked about doing I guess general investigation of the practices attic prison or in particular Department of Corrections to see whether they are actually providing reasonable modifications to programs and services for inmates who are incarcerated there. And we found through complaint, specifically in Virginia, from blind and low-vision prisoners, that they were not receiving modifications to the programs. So, with that, we sort of moved to the next phase I would say with demand letter. And then in every case, or Virginia cases I've been involved in as well as the one with individual inmates that is a way obviously of putting defendant on notice we intend to file suit oftentimes, request to enter into structured negotiations.
I don't know if anybody here is familiar with structured negotiations. But it is a way for the defendants to resolve the case and a way for the attorneys to ensure they will recover attorney fees in the case. I have to say so far at least in Virginia, the defendants did not bite on that one unfortunately we ended up having to file suit. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't continue to try it, because as Jacob was saying that the cap, PLRA cap -- so that is a way to incentivize defendants to make change. Also a way to advocate for systemic change, which is different from advocating for individual inmates in custody. So, that was what we were trying to do in Virginia.
MICHAEL NUNEZ: Monica, have you ever seen in any of prison cases or jail cases, worked on structure goings framework adopted or agreed to.
MONICA BASCHE: No.
MICHAEL NUNEZ: That's my experience I never saw public entity agree to one.
MONICA BASCHE: I have seen public entity agree to one but not in the prison context. I think and this is the, when you are litigating in the prison context, most departments of crazies really don't want anybody telling them what to do whether it's the court, whether it's the plaintiff. So, I will say that all of cases that Brown Goldstein and Levy, Maryland, Colorado and now Virginia, bigger institutional reform cases defendants have basically Colorado, I don't want to say capitulated, they entered into settlement agreement after we survived motion to dismiss. But married fought and fought, fought and I have you know every expectation Virginia will fight and fight and fight because it's just what they do. Because, again they don't want, they don't want anybody telling their Department of Corrections what to do. So, it can make it very challenging you just have to be prepared for a fight.
Oftentimes, a lot of the defenses that you are going to get from the defendant actually have to do with sovereign immunity which, if you are trying to get perspective injunctive relief, that's not really an issue almost misses the point. Especially, since you are prevailing party in ADA lawsuit you are going to gets, so we're going to keep trying to get that injunctive relief for inmates in Department of Corrections custody. Nice to be able to get them some monetary compensation for what they suffered while in the Department of Corrections custody.
But at the end of the day, article, if you know, obviously to make the lives of individual clients better we would really like to see more institutional reform, and I know that that can be tricky business, because when you have individual clients and you are doing impact litigation knowing who your client is if they are on board with goals of institutional reform but also ensuring they are getting what they need in terms of accommodations so that they can access the prison's programs and services.
So, that's I think also a particular issue that when you are doing the larger, mine isn't class action case larger cases with an organizational plaintiff and multiple individual plaintiffs just making sure that there is necessary conflict there be cognizant of potential for conflict if your constitutional client wants for reform, clients more concerned about what they are going to get for themselves. So, that's a different aspect of this representation that you really have to think about. But, ultimately, people who are incarcerated are marginalized to begin with, many of them have different intersectional marginalized identities, and they are some of the most vulnerable and at risk for violence and blind inmates probably most risk for violence, because they have to trust people in that facility, and when you don't want to trust anybody. So it could be very challenging.
And then, I think for us, because, so getting back to the Virginia lawsuit, because the Department of Corrections didn't want to enter into structured negotiations we ended up filing suit. That lawsuit is not just I think as Michael was talking about, it is Title 2 of the ADA Section 504 Rehabilitation Act and Virginia's With Disability Act, we actually have section -- 42 USC 1983 claims endeavors to medical needs.
One individual plaintiff who has cataracts and he is eligible for cataract surgery has not had cataract surgery in over two years they refuse to give him eyeglasses new prescription for eyeglasses because he's going to get cataract surgery they say unnecessary to give him eyeglasses he basically can't, he can't see. He used to actually be tutor in GED class but he had to switch jobs because he could no longer see to help the students who we're being tutored. We're talking about somebody who as an individual wants to help his other inmates was indeed helping his other inmate now put in position where he can't do.
He's also super afraid because he's, he's had site all of his life now actually I think in the past two years, he's just basically completely lost his ability to see. So, obviously not getting life skills training in prison, not getting character racquet surgery he needs, so, he feels pretty useless, right. I don't think that any of you can imagine having that sort of situation, right, but that's by virtue of the fact that he's in custody of the state and they control everything about his daily life. So that's little bit off track. But these are the type of situations that we're encountering, and that's, you know, the norm, blind to low-vision inmates. We put people in prison to warehouse them because we don't care about them unfortunate that you impact disproportionately falls on people with disabilities.
JACOB HUTT: Segues us into how we can make conditions better, we only have 10 minutes before I want to turn it over to Q and A why don't we jump into specific areas. I can see where we have been successful or maybe not as autistic sell. Mike can I generally turn it over to you to talk little bit about some of advocacy we've done within Armstrong case on behalf of blind Low-Vision Incarcerated People, communication, whatever you'd like.
MICHAEL NUNEZ: Sure, I will do survey, we have been working past couple years addressing a variety of issues for people who are blind and low-vision in California state prison. The issues I'll touch on this, maybe, we've been working on access to movement, so in this case, it means both access to white canes, as well as access to sort of training and understanding of spaces that people are living in. So, in couple, or in addition to those particular issues we've been focused on access to reading and writing accommodations, many instances where people want to read or need to read in order to more effectively, or communicate with attorneys they may have or just read course responds from friends or family.
Participate in educational programs, possibly even participate in a job depending on the job as well as writing to be able to you know, complete assignments for education, to be able to use certain jobs as well. To be able to communicate with attorneys or communicate with court for pro se case. Reading, writing critical tasks in addition to those particular issues access to blindness skills training is another issue. Most of our class members who are blind or low-vision did not enter prison as blind and low-vision people. So, they encounter blindness or low vision, primarily while incarcerated. While incarcerated, it is, hugely more difficult to access kinds of blindness skills training that many people are fortunate enough to access outside free world through organizations like NFB, other vocational programs throughout the country. So, finally, we've been working on advocating for access to the new modality communicating I mentioned that earlier, primarily being new tablet system being distributed as well as education laptops distributed throughout California.
About five or six different issues that we've been focused on as well as few others kind of limited areas of focus with respect to canes variety of issues. First, unlike free world, in order to get a cane in prison you need to be prescribed or directed to receive one by a physician. Unlike free world where you want a cane go to NFB.org or any nub of the manufactures or websites or store and buy one.
MONICA BASCHE: Often times prisons confiscate canes if you have one as security Rick sometimes even if you get order from a doctor at the prison that you need a cane prison will still deny it as purported security Rick.
MICHAEL NUNEZ: Even after you get an approval on, to get a cane from whoever is in charge of that the next step in process is getting cane there can be delays. In digs to getting a cane just don't want any, you need one appropriately sized cane for you all cane users in the audience, it’s not one size fits all you need right length given whatever your height is. And that has been ongoing challenge that we've been working on as well rolling out policies within California prison system to ensure that people are not just provided six foot four person not provided 42-inch cane, provided cane appropriately sized based on their particular height. Now next step even once you are able to get the cane that is the resize learning how to use it. Most of our class members were not blind when they came in never encountered cane before needing one while incarcerated they are not necessarily knowledgeable about how best to use one safely move around.
So, another issue that we advocated on for the past couple years getting prison administrator to contract with third-party providers, other service provider organizations located in California to provide certified mobility specialists by contract who can come in and train people who are issued canes, so that they are not just given a cane without any information on how to use it and you know basically told good luck, go on, give it a shot, hopefully you're gonna make it. So, cane training has been key issue as well. With respect to moving, did you want to add anything on cane's before I pivot to reading and writing.
JACOB HUTT: We got couple minutes left.
MICHAEL NUNEZ: So with respect to reading and writing accommodations, we have to focus on a couple of key issues there. For lower vision users or class members, focus on improving access to video magnifiers portable that people can use and carry to other locations potentially, but also better access to desktop magnifiers currently in California state prisons kept in couple key locations education or libraries and which are highly regulated restricted basis where people can in the best case scenario only gain access to for two to four hours per week. Which is being able to read for only two to four hours per week certainly not equal access to what kind of access that ever one else who is incarcerated would have who is fully sighted.
Access to that kind of technology in addition for people who are fully blind as well as people who may be have very, very low-vision, advocate greater access to technology in affordable reading devices that can basically scan documents and be done an loud so that people can use that kind of technology with printed doubts. We made a lot of progress in this area in ongoing, negotiating stipulation, what the contours of the plan will be, very, very optimistic our class members in California about 280 blind and very low-vision class members, we're very optimistic that we're going to be providing much bigger access to those in addition to access to many, in formats including large print and braille and audio format for people who are blind or very low-vision also read braille.
JACOB HUTT: Wasn't of the aspects of this advocacy I found interesting our need to persuade correctional administrators that there are not security risks associated with provisions these auxiliary aids outside of restrictive locations, libraries and educational classrooms, part of that, experts who we can sort of have explain to correctional administrators here is video magnifier, here is why someone is not going to repurpose it to use it as weapon or spy on what prison guards are doing. And kind of convincing folks who work in prison context that here are precise functions and capabilities of each of these auxiliary aids here is why none of those functions could be turned into violence or safety risk. Unfortunately, we not only get, we have gotten push back in not just safety concerns that our class members will be using these as weapons against other people, but also somewhat patronizing sense of we don't want someone who is blind or low-vision to be victimizing with their own device for it to get stolen or used against them.
We don't want to discipline someone for misusing device when someone stole it from them and used video magnifier to take picture of someone in shower. We hear range of illegitimate security rationales one of the interesting, I find interesting parts in doing this advocacy needing to kind of blend knowledge of correctional atmosphere with particular functions of the accommodations going to be.
We are at 11:01, official time end 11:05. Q and A, would that be all right?
ATTENDEE: So many disability rights in Texas. I am curious about, I guess to ask a question, I want to know more how do you all do initial investigation to find that there is this problem, because like disability rights Texas we do get in takes and information calls from individuals, mostly that are deaf, like they contact us, right. I understand maybe part of disability is inability kind of, to contact us, how did you find the people. And also we need money to do this, Texas has 104 prisons at least from last time I checked, and my team has like me and three other attorneys. So, how do we find money to be able to do prison project, we do jails but if we go into prisons, it's like opening the floodgates of like different issues in Texas, which is another issue like do we even want to do anything in Texas, Texas is awful.
There's no way that we could ever win anything on this. But I'm trying to think proactively not so much in litigation but to do white paper or for some of these settlement agreements, you put in there to provide training for these, for these guards so that they are knowledgeable, like Videophones, they were like oh, no, there's cameras going to be all kind of pictures, you know, it another big issue. Sorry for going on.
MONICA BASCHE: No, it's all right. For our case how we found potential plaintiffs is actually the NFB put out a call for, if you are blind prisoner, please contact us let us know your situation. And would you would be amazed a lot NFB members who have family members who are blind who are incarcerated. So, we actually learned about one particular individual who whose mother was NFB member he was also NFB member he wrote to us, we learned about him got names of several other inmates at Virginia prison and he was actually willing to do the ground work to say are you willing to talk to the attorneys Brown Goldstein and Levy and ALU Virginia Disability Law Center we were fortunate in that the two facilities that most of the blind and low-vision inmates are incarcerated at actually do video calls, we were able to schedule video calls with individual inmates to talk about what their situation was, what their needs were learn lay of the land at the different institutions even though they are both Virginia Department of Corrections facilities, they are completely different one, one is medium security one is lower security and one has everything together with regards to setting up the video calls, the other just absolute mess.
All these different things you are right, it is, can be very, very challenging. So I don't know, in terms of Texas, yes, it is daunting prospect, I think you could do something similar maybe on more than, like you were saying white paper you can talk to inmates that have states and maybe focus on both blind and deaf because we do, there is deaf population in the one of the Virginia facilities previous lawsuit in Virginia that resulted in settlement, but the settlement agreement expired 2015 or 2016, we're seeing now results of that are that they are no longer receiving their accommodations.
We have one inmate who is deaf/blind and that has also been a challenge because we have to go in person to visit him with an interpreter and we can't do video calls with him we can't do develop calls with him we've been trying to set up relay service with him and prison has been very resistant to doing that. So, that's not answering your I guess particular question but I think for Texas, like you were saying white paper now it's just the funding, where do you get that from? I actually don't necessarily have an answer to that question I don't know if Jacob and Michael have an answer to that question. But I should say I'm committed to making this change in every state slowly but surely making my way to every state.
ATTENDEE: Any other blind people in Virginia?
MONICA BASCHE: Not at the moment we already filed suit any other state that has blind inmates I think that we're open to hear about it, I should also say, and I know we're over, Colorado was actually more of success story and as part of that settlement agreement, all of the individual inmates got tap bleats that had all of the prison regulation, grievance forms, commissary ordering forms, everything like that digitally in accessible format. They submit grievances electronically. It can be done, you know, it's just that there is real resistance, I think security risk obviously you know that is illegitimate reason I think part of it, it's not just, the idea that the prisoners are there to be punished they shouldn't be allowed to have anything like you know, and so even though they are advancing security risk just the idea that inmate could potentially have access to something you know especially something that the other inmates don't have access to.
So, I think that that can be a real challenge because I think in corrections setting people just have it in their minds that you know prisoners don't deserve things because they are in prison, and again, that disproportionately impacts people with states who need accommodations to access programs and services.
JACOB HUTT: One more question.
ATTENDEE: Hi Dan Goldstein. I think we need to find a way to model your collective wisdom. I think because just before Maryland suit when I was looking at other suits that had been filed, I saw highly touted fully-abled prisoner guides disabled prisoners around the prison and was appalled by that.
So, I think plaintiff lawyers need to get benefit of your collective wisdom. I think it's necessary because saw address -- I'm thinking boy that could not have been the only problem in Minnesota. But also to legitimate solution, I don't know if it's set of standards or handbook or something I think there needs to be something out there so that folks don't have to re discover the wheel, re discover the experts, rediscover responses. I know you guys don't have a lot of spare time.
JACOB HUTT: Couple months ago sort of collective wisdom document that you are describing now exist. There was white paper University of Michigan Law School drafted solicited to the sort of prisoners’ rights disability community. I submitted input I think I don't know if co-panelists did as well, collective wisdom going a and round country checking best practices that has been published model practices.
There's lengthy section about accommodations for people who are blind to low-vision I'd be happy to send it to you I already used it for areas of disability accommodations I was not familiar with in my advocacy.
So, it's really great resource. I think the hope is that it will not only in form advocates like myself presented in form could actually be pended to ADA coordinator of local count say here this is sort of policy you should be implementing great document I'd be happy to circulate it. Thank you all so much for your time.
MONICA BASCHE: Feel free to, I guess, approach us with any questions that you have after the class.
[ Applause ]