Challenging Prison Conditions

I was encouraged to see the New York Times editorializing this week on the challenges American prisoners face in airing human rights abuses in court.

The Times is right: the 1996 Prison Refrom Litigation Act has been warped and misused and plays a role in keeping the worst prison abuses under wraps. It must be fixed.

The Clinton-era law sought to curb frivolous lawsuits about imagined abuses and prison food and by raising the barrier to file such a claim. The law requires that prisoners exhaust administrative grievance procedures before suing the state and they must show that they were physically injured. It directs courts to keep decision narrow when they absolutely must correct an abuse. It has been used by corrections agencies, however, to silence legitimate cries for help.

A report this summer from Human Rights Watch found that not only had lawsuits filed by prisoners fallen by 60 percent since 2005, but they were also succeeding less frequently. Meanwhile, abuse in prison hasn’t stopped. From the report:

If the effect of the PLRA were to selectively discourage the filing of frivolous or meritless lawsuits, as its sponsors predicted, then we would expect to find prisoners winning a larger percentage of their lawsuits after the law’s enactment than they did before. But the most comprehensive study to date shows just the opposite: since passage of the PLRA, prisoners not only are filing fewer lawsuits, but also are succeeding in a smaller proportion of the cases they do file.

I wrote in March about Mumia Abu-Jamal’s newest book, Jailhouse Lawyer, which argues that the PRLA has further silenced a group that already struggled to find a voice.

Maybe yesterday's Times editorial is sign of growing hope that the prisoners' rights argument is finally being heard.