From the [UK] Telegraph, BBC, [UK] Independent:

Sir Ken MacDonald (left), the UK’s highest ranking prosecutor, said this week that disability hate crime is widespread and the criminal justice system is failing to address it. He urged UK police and prosecutors to seek tougher sentences against those who victimize people with disabilities.

“This is a scar on the conscience of criminal justice,” he said in a speech. “All institutions involved in criminal justice, including my own, share the responsibility.”

Macdonald said the biggest barrier to effective prosecution is a failure by law enforcement personnel to perceive that people with disabilities are targets of systematic hostility and prejudice. A 2003 law in the UK allows courts to punish offenders more severely if a crime is motivated by a victim’s disability or sexual orientation, but the measure is rarely used.

Research by the charity Mencap says people with learning disabilities in the UK live in fear and face harassment on a regular basis. The UK has seen a number of murders and acts of violence against people with disabilities over the past year.

See also: This hatred is borne out of fear of disability — by Ian Macrae in the [UK] Indendependent. An excerpt:

Disabled people’s impairments frighten people because they show them what they could become. Hate is too easily borne out of that fear. And that is what the judiciary, the police and the criminal justice system – and indeed society at large – have to come to terms with. Disabled people create fear and hatred in just the same way as people from ethnic minorities do for the racist; women do for the rapist, or gay people do for the homophobe.

Earlier posts:

• BBC asks: Does disability hate crime exist?
• UK gang sentenced to life for murder of disabled man
• Columnist: We must protect people from this wave of barbaric and hateful crimes

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: An investigation of Washington state’s troubled $1.8 billion mental health care system. The paper writes that the state leaves thousands of families …

snared in a Kafkaesque system that won’t help people with serious symptoms until they are in imminent danger of harming themselves or others, or gravely disabled — standards so high they exclude many who desperately need help.

But this strategy ends up costing the public more money, and puts citizens at greater risk, a scenario tragically highlighted in this state by a string of high-profile slayings by people who had severe mental illness but could not be treated despite signs that they needed help.

From the Madison [WI] Capital Times

Individuals with autism have up to seven times more contact with law enforcement than others, and police officers don’t always know what to do.

Among the tools available to Wisconsin law enforcement authorities is Project Lifesaver, a new electronic tracking program in which individuals are fitted with personalized electronic tracking bracelets.

Safety officials are also being trained at recognizing and dealing with the confusing behaviors of autism.

“There are so many more people out there with autism that we decided we needed to be proactive rather than reactive,” said Sgt. Lorie Wiessinger, director of the Dane County Law Enforcement Training Center. “These days, we need to be almost like social workers. We need to be sensitive and in front of the changes happening in our community.”

From the [UK] Telegraph and the [UK] Times:

A report by British members of Parliament has found that there is a flourishing black market in disabled parking badges in Britain.

According to the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, people were applying for the badge because of its financial value.

It is understood that blue badges have been put up for sale on Ebay. There have been also been occasions where the holder has died and relatives have decided to sell the badge rather than return it.

The report found that there was no consistent criteria over who should be entitled to a badge, meaning that people in some areas were much more likely to get badges than in others. Previous studies by local authorities have suggested that up to half the badges are being used fraudulently.

Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Times:

Civil and disability rights attorneys Thursday filed a federal lawsuit against Los Angeles County alleging that “egregious” jail conditions amounted to illegal discrimination against people with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Sheriff Lee Baca said the lawsuit was “unreasonable and unfair.”

The lawsuit alleges people with disabilities face inhumane treatment and are illegally discriminated against because the jail system routinely fails to accommodate their basic needs.

In interviews with 70 inmates, the attorneys cited inmate accounts of having to lie in their own waste for hours because wheelchair-accessible toilets and showers were not available or because their catheter bags were taken away.

Others said they had to drag themselves on the floor because they had no access to their wheelchairs or bathroom doors weren’t wide enough to accommodate them.

The ABC News site had drawn more than 700 comments at last count to its Associated Press story about the church in Minnesota that took legal action to prevent Carol and John Race from bringing their 13-year-old son, Adam, to services. Adam has autism.

Here are a few recent ones:

• Which of Adam’s rights is more important here: his ‘right’ to attend a church service in which he may or may not get the ‘message’ over top of the other sensory input; or his right to be in a situation that is not overwhelming to his senses. I am under the impression that this is not so much about Adam’s rights, as this is about Carol Race’s demands to have her own way.
• I don’t see autism as a major problem for those not directly affected. Violent behavior is a major problem for everyone within reach. The fact that young Mr Race is autistic is a secondary or even tertiary consideration. The fact that he is violent is the primary consideration. He is not denied attendance to the church because of his autism. He is being kept out because of violence. He has rights to attend church. Others have a right to attend church without physical pain inflicted by Mr. Race.
• I have experienced discrimination against my son because of behaviors he cannot control. It’s true that some people are very ignorant and do not want to deal with reality. They think children with autism should be locked away. In Minnesota, 1 in 81 children have an ASD diagnosis. So maybe over 1 in 40 families have a child with autism. We will not stand to be treated as second class citizens.

Earlier posts here and here.

From the BBC, the [UK] Times:

Prosecutors in Scotland have apologized to the family of a teenager with Down syndrome for charging him with a racially motivated assault on an Asian student. The parents of Jamie Bauld, 19, are calling for changes in how law enforcement authorities treat people with intellectual disabilities.

The charges arose out of an incident in September in the special needs department at Motherwell College, in which Jamie pushed another student who had been following him.

His parents, Fiona and Jim Bauld, said they had been through a seven-month ordeal with the legal system over what they described as a minor fracas between two youngsters with learning disabilities. They said their son agreed with everything the police said, even though he did not understand the charges against him.

They believe that he was a victim of the zero-tolerance policy on racism under which police have to respond to any complaint, however minor.

Experts in Down syndrome say that the case shows insensitivity and is an example of bureaucracy gone mad.

The stories describe Jamie as having “a mental age of five.”