In the past, many believed that people with disabilities were better served in institutions. It was believed that people with what is known today as an intellectual disability, were a threat to society. In many states, support for this erroneous way of thinking resulted in legislation requiring mandatory sterilization, incarceration, and in many cases, the castration of persons with disabilities. In each state, hundreds of thousands of people with mental illness or intellectual disabilities were placed in institutions. It was common for well-meaning physicians, and other professionals, to tell families of children with disabilities that it was “best that you put him away and forget about him."
It was also common for children and adolescents who might be difficult to handle, or even young girls who were pregnant, to be institutionalized. Within the state institutional system, there was no basis for rehabilitation or treatment. No one ever "got better" because the intent was to protect society, not to ensure the well-being of individuals living in the institution.
In the mid-1940s, research demonstrated that society had been misled; however, hundreds of thousands of people had been admitted to state institutions by this time. Pennsylvania was home to over three dozen state hospitals that housed people with intellectual disabilities and individuals with mental illnesses.
In the late 1960s, state institutions across the nation housed almost 156,000 people with intellectual disabilities, and 550,000 people experiencing mental illness. It was common for over 100 people to share a single bedroom. Often, people were naked and lay prostrate on the floors to cool off because the rooms had inadequate ventilation. Facilities were filthy, with excrement and urine on the floors and walls, and the odor was horrific.
Early in the 1970s, the Pennsylvania's Association of Retarded Citizens (ARC) and PHILCOP brought litigation against the Commonwealth over the horrendous conditions at the Pennhurst State Center in Spring City, Pennsylvania. This case was finally settled in 1976 in a consent decree that committed the Commonwealth to closing Pennhurst. Pennhurst closed in 1987 and in its last year of operation, the courts placed undercover federal marshals in Pennhurst to protect the residents.