NEW YORK — Public Advocate Jumaane Williams introduced legislation Thursday to require mandatory dyslexia screenings for all detainees at Rikers Island.

​The bill, introduced in the City Council's Committee on Criminal Justice, would require the Department of Correction to screen all persons who do not have a high school diploma for dyslexia within 72 hours of intake into a jail facility.

Dyslexia is a learning disorder usually first found in children when they have difficulty learning to read or interpret words, letters and other symbols. The disorder does not affect intelligence but when undiagnosed it can result in severe delays and difficulty in learning as children move through school and into adulthood.

A 2014 study by the U.S. Department of Education found about a third of incarcerated people at 98 prisons around the country struggled to read simple texts. Despite that, most prisons at the federal, state and local level typically do not conduct dyslexia screenings, which advocates say prevents inmates from making up ground in their education while they're incarcerated.

"Dyslexia is already under-discussed– and likely under-diagnosed– in our city, and evidence suggests that this problem is exponentially worse among incarcerated people," Williams told NY1 in a statement. "By screening and servicing affected individuals, we can help correct an educational services gap, providing new opportunities for people on the inside and helping to prevent them from re-entering the criminal justice system in the future.”

The proposal will also require the Department of Correction to offer programs to treat dyslexia to incarcerated individuals who are diagnosed during the screening.

According to Williams, Dyslexia and other learning disabilities have long been cited as contributing factors in the rate of incarceration among Black and Latino men in addition to a lack of other resources. The bill's introduction comes as the department deals with record high rates of absenteeism among correction officers and rising violence. A federal monitor told a court this week levels of violence at Rikers over the summer were "unreasonably high" citing several incidents of violence among inmates and staff.

“Conditions at Rikers Island were already inhumane and unsustainable. This summer, they've deteriorated rapidly, and dangerously, in part because the foundations on which the system was built were not designed to truly support the needs or well-being of people on the inside," Williams said in a statement. "We need immediate action to meet this crisis in our jails and protect the rights and safety of incarcerated people and corrections officials alike, while also addressing the underlying factors that lead to incarceration and recidivism."