PAROLE BOARD ORDERED TO ACCOMMODATE DISABLED

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The state parole board routinely violates disabled
convicts' rights to equal access to their parole hearings and doesn't seem
to care about federal anti-discrimination laws, says a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland condemned the Board of Prison
Terms' practices Wednesday and issued a broad injunction requiring better
facilities and treatment for the disabled.

She said there was overwhelming evidence that the board "regularly,
consistently and as a matter of routine practice fails to make its
programs, services and activities available" to prisoners and parolees with
physical and mental disabilities.

The board, appointed by the governor, holds about 35,000 hearings a year.
Most are to decide whether freed inmates have violated their parole and
should be returned to prison. The other hearings are to determine whether
inmates serving up to life in prison should be released on parole.

Wilken cited testimony from a series of convicts at a 10-day trial last
spring.

"Some prisoners who use wheelchairs have had to crawl up stairs to get to
their hearings," the judge wrote. "Mentally retarded prisoners who cannot
even spell their names have waived their right to a hearing and spent years
in prison without benefit of any assistance.

"A blind witness was denied access to information at his hearings because
he could not see the documents. ... Hearing-impaired prisoners who normally
express themselves using sign language had their hands shackled at their
hearings."

She said she was "shocked to find that these things occurred with such
frequency" and even more shocked by "the level of indifference to the basic
rights of prisoners with these disabilities that the BPT exhibited."

Board officials denied that any problems existed, blamed other agencies or
the convicts.