And those are the little issues. There are other ways they get taken advantage of. Use your imagination. Thirty-seven mentally retarded inmates are waiting to get into Allen's special unit, which offers counseling, life skills and some measure of protection. But even in the unit, called Sugar Creek, problems exist.
Inmates still steal from each other and act out sexually.
About half also are mentally ill. We have individuals who hear voices and see things. Some of them need a lot of stimulation. The rocking chair is the hottest thing in the unit. If inmates with mental retardation are tough to handle behind bars, officials say, they're even more difficult to deal with once they are released.