Opinion: What we miss when we talk about prison reform

Why reform that ignores disabled and incarcerated people isn’t reform at all

I’ve sat in a Mississippi prison where the toilet didn’t work.

Where the medical chart was a lie.

Where a woman looked me in the eye and said, “They only listen when I scream.”

We talk a lot about prison reform these days. We say it with urgency, with buzzwords, with a polished sense of policy that looks great on a legislative tracker or a grant proposal. But I’ve been doing this work for years and here’s what I know:

Most of the conversations about prison reform aren’t about people.

They’re about systems. Budgets. Efficiency. “Safety.”

And they miss the point.

The system isn’t broken. It’s working how it was built.

I’ve represented clients who are blind, deaf, paralyzed, diabetic, pregnant, mentally ill, developmentally delayed — and incarcerated.

Many of them were incarcerated because of their disabilities, or because they were poor, or because the systems that should have intervened early — housing, education, mental health — never did. So, prison became the last stop.

For some of them, the abuse started as soon as they walked in. Others waited months for medication. Many were punished for behaviors directly related to their diagnoses.
I’ve seen women who were denied access to feminine hygiene products, who bled through their clothes. I’ve seen deaf men go without interpreters for court hearings, healthcare visits, disciplinary hearings. I’ve seen people punished for “noncompliance” when they were in medical crisis.

You can’t reform a system unless you admit what it’s doing.

And what it’s doing is disappearing people.

The problem with policy-only solutions

I’ve read hundreds of bills and policy proposals that use phrases like “evidence-based alternatives to incarceration,” “population reduction” or “improved oversight mechanisms.”

But let me tell you what a woman with an untreated prolapsed uterus cares about: Clean pads. Dignity. And a nurse who doesn’t shrug.

Let me tell you what a man with schizophrenia and diabetes cares about: Not being locked in a cell for 23 hours with a broken sink and a missing inhaler.

That’s not a "population statistic." That’s a person. And prison reform that doesn’t start and end with people — and the brutal specificity of their lived experience — isn’t reform. It’s rebranding.

If we really wanted to fix it

If we were serious about prison reform, we’d do more than close a few facilities or reword a few job descriptions.

We’d staff our prisons with trauma-informed providers.

We’d enforce the ADA with the same vigor we enforce the rules about commissary.

We’d stop treating solitary confinement as a catch-all for medical care.

And we’d create real systems of accountability — not internal grievance processes designed to exhaust, delay and ignore.

We’d fund advocacy.

We’d welcome litigation.

And we’d listen when people whisper, not wait until they scream.

Why I’m still here

I work as litigation director at Disability Rights Mississippi. My job is to make the system see what it wants to ignore — to bring lawsuits, yes, but also to bear witness.

Sometimes, our wins feel too small. A transfer granted. A medication refilled. A ramp installed six months too late. But those small wins are reform. They are resistance against a system that thrives on delay and invisibility.

So, when I hear people talk about prison reform like it’s just about closures and cost-savings, I want to shake the conversation loose.

Because what we need isn’t just reform.

We need remembrance.

Of who’s inside.

Of what they’ve endured.

And of what we owe them.

This article originally appeared in The Magnolia Dispatch.

Greta Kemp Martin is a Mississippi attorney, social justice advocate and lifelong southerner who believes “change travels on the back of a good story, a strong cup of coffee and the kind of grit that doesn’t ask permission.” She publishes The Magnolia Dispatch, where “law, policy and lived experience come home to roost.”

---

Image: Razor wire atop a prison fence (via The Journalist’s Resource/Pixabay)