After spending decades behind bars, many formerly incarcerated people expect freedom to feel like a second chance. For some disabled prisoners in the United States, however, release can feel like a different kind of sentence altogether.
A troubling multiyear study highlighted by The Sentencing Project paints a devastating picture of what happens when people leave prison after 20, 30, or even 40 years, only to discover there is no real system waiting to help them survive on the outside.
At the center of the report is Evan Smith, a wheelchair user who spent 42 years incarcerated in New York. When he was finally released, there was no home waiting for him, no family support, and no meaningful transition plan. According to the report, corrections officials effectively advised him to identify as homeless.
“They wanted me to find housing,” Smith told researchers. “However, I have no family. They’re all deceased. I have no friends. I’ve not had a visit from anyone since 1996…”
That quote captures the crushing loneliness many long-term prisoners face after release. Decades in prison often mean fractured relationships, outdated life skills, declining health, and little connection to the modern world they are suddenly expected to navigate alone.
The study followed 33 formerly incarcerated people returning to society after serving more than two decades behind bars. Researchers found that prison systems routinely failed to prepare them for reentry. Many were denied access to rehabilitative programs because of the length of their sentences. Others received little or no meaningful help finding housing, employment, transportation, or medical care before release.
For disabled individuals, the obstacles were even more severe.
Smith eventually secured placement in an accessible hotel room, but the situation quickly became another form of confinement. His disability made it difficult to leave the building independently, transportation options were limited, and finding work became nearly impossible. According to the report, hotel management even restricted his movement out of concern that his presence might disturb paying guests.
For Smith, freedom began to resemble incarceration all over again.
He described the experience bluntly: “more like a prison—another prison cell.”
The story exposes a deeper national failure. Nearly two in five people in state and federal prisons report having at least one disability. On top of that, roughly 41% of incarcerated people have a history of mental health struggles. Yet reentry systems across the country remain dangerously unequipped to support people with complex physical and emotional needs.
The consequences can be catastrophic. Without stable housing, transportation, healthcare, or social support, many formerly incarcerated people are pushed into homelessness, isolation, unemployment, and despair almost immediately after release.
Researchers argue that current policies are fundamentally broken. While politicians and institutions often talk about rehabilitation and “second chances,” the reality for many disabled former prisoners tells a very different story.
A person can survive decades of incarceration, complete their sentence, walk out the prison gates, and still find themselves trapped by poverty, disability, bureaucracy, and abandonment.
The report makes one point unmistakably clear: freedom without support is not freedom at all.
Evan Smith’s experience is heartbreaking, but it also reflects a growing truth about modern America. Conditions that once would have shocked the public are becoming normalized. People who have served their time are too often released into systems that leave them invisible, unsupported, and confined in new ways.
For disabled former prisoners especially, the promise of a second chance remains painfully out of reach.