A/67/227 reinforces abuse. Thus, eliminating such discriminatory practices is essential to addressing violence against women with disabilities. 50. The discrimination and violence faced by women with disabilities in society tends to be exacerbated by prison environments. In the Handbook on Prisoners with Special Needs, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recognized that women prisoners with disabilities were at a particularly high risk of manipulation, violence, sexual abuse and rape and that prisoners with physical disabilities might be actively targeted or suffer the effects of having their special needs, including safety needs, neglected. Furthermore, according to the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 of the United States of America most prison staff is not adequately trained to prevent or respond to inmate sexual assaults, and prison rape often goes unreported and untreated. 51. There is evidence that the experience of prison itself is a source of disablement for all prisoners. 30 Thus, not only are women with pre-existing disabilities liable to see their disabilities aggravated but those who enter prison without disabilities may develop them during their incarceration, due to prison conditions.30 52. Women with disabilities in prison also face discrimination upon their assignment to a particular facility, due to misclassification of their risk level. In the Handbook on Prisoners with Special Needs, UNODC also noted that, owing to the limited accommodation available for them, female prisoners in a number of countries are housed in security levels not justified by their risk assessment undertaken upon admission. This is exemplified in cases where a prisoner who would normally be placed in an open facility can instead be sent to secure custody, should a member of the medical, psychological or psychiatric staff decide that the medical and support services required are unavailable in open custody. 31 53. Discrimination in access to services and programmes during incarceration is a reality for most women with disabilities. They may face difficulties in accessing these because such programmes fail to account for their disabilities; 32 or they may be explicitly denied the ability to participate in programmes, which are largely tailored to prisoners without disabilities.31 Furthermore, women with disabilities who are able to participate in work programmes are often paid lower wages for their work.32 54. A common factor considered by parole boards and other bodies determining the appropriateness of the early release of prisoners is the ability of a prisoner to adapt to life in the outside world. This can be a difficult threshold for any prisoner to meet, but especially so in the case of women with disabilities who may have specific needs that the board may not adequately take into consideration. 33 The problem is exacerbated by the misclassification of such women as higher risk prisoners, which makes it much more difficult to secure an earlier release.33 __________________ 30 31 32 33 12-45120 Beth Ribet, “Naming prison rape as disablement: critical analysis of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the imperatives of survivor-oriented advocacy, Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law (2010). Anti-Discrimination Commission Queensland, Women in Prison (2006). Megan Bastick and Laurel Townhead, Quaker United Nations Office, “Women in prison: a commentary on the UN standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners”, Human Rights and Refugees Publications (2008). Judith Cockram, “People with an intellectual disability in the prisons”, Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (2005). 13