The Ideal Prisoner and The Limits of Reasonable Accommodation in Indian Prisons
The rights of prisoners with disabilities have received increasing judicial attention in recent years. Courts have recognised that prisons must provide reasonable accommodation and ensure that disability does not become an additional hidden punishment. These developments are important and long overdue. This article argues, however, that they address disability only after the prison has already been organised around a particular idea of the “ordinary” prisoner. The question, therefore, is not only whether prisons provide reasonable accommodation, but also what kinds of bodies and minds prison rules assume in the first place.
The Handbook on Persons with Disabilities (2024), published by the Supreme Court of India, describes prisoners with disabilities as a “particularly marginalised demographic” requiring “special consideration” because of their “unique circumstances and requirements.” Although the Handbook uses the language of special consideration rather than reasonable accommodation, both ideas recognise that formal equality is not enough and that prisoners with disabilities require additional measures to enjoy their rights on an equal basis.
The same approach appears in L. Muruganantham v. State of Tamil Nadu. The Supreme Court held that the State, as the constitutional custodian of prisoners, must ensure that persons with disabilities do not suffer disproportionately in custody. The Court grounded this obligation in Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, and India’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Importantly, the judgment does not rely on Article 21 alone. Instead, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act gives concrete legal content to the duty of reasonable accommodation and makes it a binding obligation within prisons. The Court repeatedly states that reasonable accommodation is not optional but an essential part of a humane prison system. It also emphasises rehabilitation, reintegration, and non-discrimination.
This framework was strengthened in Sathyan Naravoor v. Union of India. The Supreme Court directed every State and Union Territory to implement the directions laid down in Muruganantham and provide reasonable accommodation to incarcerated persons with disabilities. It treated the principles laid down in Muruganantham as binding constitutional standards rather than mere guidelines, required structured compliance and periodic reporting, and later referred the matter to a High-Powered Committee to monitor implementation. As a result, the Court transformed Muruganantham from a case concerning an individual prisoner into a nationwide framework governing the treatment of prisoners with disabilities.
However, one needs to question whether prisons can be made fair simply by improving conditions within them. This matters because disability in prisons is not always something that exists before a person enters custody. Prison conditions themselves can worsen existing impairments or create new ones. Overcrowding, prolonged confinement, restricted movement, isolation, constant surveillance, and lack of meaningful activity can have serious physical and psychological consequences. In this sense, disability may be produced or intensified by imprisonment itself.
When disability is shaped by the conditions of custody, then reasonable accommodation, while necessary, cannot be a complete response. It helps individuals cope with the prison environment but does not address how that environment contributes to disability in the first place. The judgments therefore expand important legal protections for prisoners with disabilities, but they stop short of examining how the structure and conditions of imprisonment may themselves undermine disability rights.
Prisons Are Built for Able Bodies
Prisons are built around certain assumptions about what prisoners can do. They assume that prisoners can move independently through the prison, understand and follow instructions, regulate their behaviour, and perform physical or mental work. These assumptions are reflected in prison law. The Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act, 2023, for example, makes it the duty of every prisoner to obey the orders of prison officers and treats wilful disobedience as a prison offence. It also makes refusal to work, wilful idleness, and disabling oneself from labour disciplinary violations. Likewise, the Model Prison Manual, 2016 links remission to good conduct, discipline, participation in prison activities, and satisfactory performance of work. These rules reward prisoners who can meet the behavioural and physical expectations of prison life. Prisoners are also expected to move between barracks, work areas, hospitals, cells, and other parts of the prison according to fixed routines and under constant supervision. Together, these rules assume a prisoner who can move independently, understand instructions, regulate behaviour, and meet the physical demands of prison life. For many prisoners with disabilities, these expectations cannot be met without support or modifications.
Reasonable accommodation becomes necessary only because prison rules begin with a particular idea of the “normal” prisoner, rather than recognising different ways of moving, communicating, understanding, or participating. This assumption shapes many institutions. Science assumes a “species-typical body”, political theory imagines a “normative citizen”, and the law often speaks of the “reasonable person”. Those who fall outside these aspirational standards are treated as exceptions who must adapt to existing institutions, instead of questioning whether those institutions were designed around too narrow an idea of what is “normal”. Prisons are organised around a similar idea of the “normal” prisoner. Rather than questioning that underlying assumption, the law responds by offering reasonable accommodation, or at least the promise of it, to those who do not fit the standard. Before such accommodation can be provided, however, the law must first determine who qualifies for it.
In prisons, this legal recognition conferred by the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act operates alongside a medical system that classifies prisoners according to their physical and mental condition. Prison hospitals routinely record whether a prisoner is “fit”, “unfit”, “mentally ill”, “infirm”, or capable of work. These categories determine how prisoners are managed within the institution.
The interaction between these two systems is significant. The Act identifies who is entitled to disability rights, while prison hospitals identify who can perform the ordinary routines of prison life. Together, they reinforce a distinction between the prisoner who is treated as capable of complying with prison rules and the prisoner who is recognised as requiring special measures. Reasonable accommodation may reduce the disadvantages faced by the latter, but it leaves intact the assumption that the ordinary prisoner is physically and cognitively able to meet the demands of prison life. Recognising disability primarily as an exception requiring special measures creates a juridical category of the prisoner with disabilities as someone who requires additional protection because they are seen as vulnerable. The enjoyment of rights then depends on whether those measures are actually provided.
When Rights Depend on Discretion
The recognition of disability does not guarantee that rights will be realised in practice. Even where courts acknowledge the need for reasonable accommodation, prisoners remain dependent on prison authorities for medical care, assistive devices, accessible facilities, transfers, and day-to-day living conditions. Rights therefore continue to operate within a prison system that exercises extensive control over every aspect of a prisoner’s life.
The experiences of Dr. G. N. Saibaba and Father Stan Swamy show how this dependence operates. Both required accommodations that were not extraordinary. Dr. Saibaba, a wheelchair user with more than 90% disability, repeatedly sought access to medical treatment, mobility aids, and conditions of detention compatible with his disability. He later described how years of incarceration left him with serious additional health complications and spoke of being treated “like baggage” when taken to hospital. Father Stan Swamy, who had Parkinson’s disease, struggled for something as basic as a straw and sipper before they were eventually provided after court intervention. Every request became the subject of administrative decision-making and repeated legal intervention.
The experiences of Dr. Saibaba and Father Stan Swamy also reveal something about the language through which disability is understood in prison. Accommodation often appears less as the fulfilment of an existing constitutional obligation than as a response to exceptional hardship. Requests for medical care, assistive devices, or accessible conditions are treated as appeals for compassion, to be weighed against concerns of security, discipline, or administration. The result is that prisoners with disabilities are recognised not simply as rights-holders, but as vulnerable individuals whose claims depend on persuading authorities that their suffering has become sufficiently serious to justify intervention.
This shifts the focus from equality to exception. The question is no longer simply whether prisoners with disabilities are entitled to participate in prison life, including its opportunities for reformation and rehabilitation, on an equal basis with others. Instead, their claims often become tied to assessments of vulnerability, deteriorating health, or humanitarian need. The actual enjoyment of rights therefore depends not only on legal entitlement but also on whether decision-makers consider a prisoner’s circumstances sufficiently exceptional to justify intervention. The language of “special consideration” reinforces this shift by presenting disability primarily as a basis for protection rather than as an ordinary claim to equality.
In Why Do You Fear My Way So Much?, Dr. Saibaba writes: “I don’t believe in sympathy, I only believe in solidarity… I believe my freedom is your freedom.” His words reject the idea that disability should be recognised primarily through pity or compassion. Instead, they insist that prisoners with disabilities are political actors whose claims arise from equality rather than charity. Read alongside the Court’s language of “special consideration”, Dr. Saibaba’s insistence on solidarity highlights the difference between being recognised as an object of protection and being recognised as a constitutional rights-holder.