There is an excellent piece at Monthly Review by Jean Stewart and Marta Russell which details the unspeakable fact that people with disabilities represent 1/5 of America's prison population. Here is the article's provocative opening:
"The story of disablement and the prison industrial complex must begin with a trail of telling numbers: a disproportionate number of persons incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails are disabled. Though Census Bureau data suggest that disabled persons represent roughly one-fifth of the total population, prevalence of disability among prisoners is startlingly higher, for reasons we will examine later. While no reliable cross- disability demographics have been compiled nationwide, numerous studies now enable us to make educated estimates regarding the incidence of various disability categories among incarcerated persons. Hearing loss, for example, is estimated to occur in 30 percent of the prison population, while estimates of the prevalence of mental retardation among prisoners range from 3 to 9.5 percent."
Planet of the Blind 
Learning disabilities of various types are especially prevalent in prison populations. This is an “invisible” disability that is frequently not diagnosed in lower-income populations. Early on people with learning disabilities may be labeled “dumb” or “lazy” by teachers, family and peers when they may be trying harder than everyone else to learn or giving up because all they get for their efforts is a big headache.
A former work colleague had an inherited childhood eye condition that caused a central retinal blind areas in both eyes. People with this sort of eye condition do not behave as if they have a vision impairment, nor is there any obvious cosmetic indication of a vision problem. Yet, this severe disruption of the normal visual field results in reading rates that are much slower than average, even when the print is made larger by getting closer to it. They read with much more effort, too, so the quantity of reading is greatly limited. I’ll never forget this very distinguished, intelligent gentleman, in his fifties at the time, breaking down in my office as he described how the nuns in his Catholic school as a child accused him of laziness and rapped his knuckles with a ruler because of his reading difficulties. He, thank goodness, had a very supportive family. But if your whole world thinks you’re lazy from early on, how could you grow up having any respect for society?
Here are the stats on learning disabilities in prison populations:
• 15% of the population has a learning
disability
• Up to 50% of the prison population has some
type of learning disability
• Not indicative of low intelligence
• Average to above average intelligence
• Deficit in the processing of information
• Discrepancy between a person’s apparent
capacity to learn and his level of achievement
http://developmentalmedicine.ucsf.edu/odpc/docs/pdf/student%20projects/REVISEDforensicpsychSQ.pdf
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