[featured image of a solidarity rally in Des Moines, Iowa outside of the Iowa Prison Industries office]
As supporters of the national prison strike, we must remember that the call to end prison slavery isn’t the only of prisoners demands. In 2016 this was a major focus nationwide and this has continued to be a central aspect in coverage of this year’s strike however we must shine a light onto the other 8 demands that aren’t receiving as much attention in the mainstream. I say eight demands because demand number one calling for an end to in inhumane conditions has also been widely discussed. Today I want to draw attention to demand number 3, “The Prison Litigation Reform Act must be rescinded, allowing imprisoned humans a proper channel to address grievances and violations of their rights.” The establishment of this policy in 1996 effectively ended judicial oversight of Prisons and protection over the civil rights of prisoners. Those who supported this law claim that prisoners were over saturating court systems with requests to have their matters heard. I’d like to push back in saying that if Court requests were oversaturated by prisoners’ issues, violations of their rights, then its obvious that more attention needed to be paid to prison environments that caused these increased number of abuses rather than to completely silence prisoners’ ability to have their matters heard and rights protected.
Give Prisoners Access to Judicial Protections
It’s been 22 years since prisoners’ protections were withdrawn from them and this has had detrimental effects on the relationships between inmates, their staff and officials as well as on families of prisoners seeking restitution for the abuses on their incarcerated loved ones. Many prisoners have suffered from extreme abuses and have even lost their lives as a result of the enactment of this policy. A call for recognizing the rights of individuals to have access to the courts requires that the Prison Litigation Reform Act be rescinded immediately. It is impossible for the prison system to govern itself in this area. Currently when a prisoner submits a request for investigation, the ones who are doing the investigating are are in cahoots with the people who’ve perform the offenses being investigated if not the same exact people. This is an absolute abuse of power and there’s absolutely no reason why we should allow this type of internal investigating (ass covering) to continue. We need to call an end to the Prison Litigation Reform Act because the fact that millions of individuals are unable to effectively access judicial protections is appalling.
While it is extremely difficult, t’s not absolutely impossible for a prisoner to submit a request to have their case heard by a court but many barriers have been put in place to have substantially impeded prisoners access to the courts. Which I’ve outlined in detail below. It is essential that in order for us to have a true democracy that everyone who is a citizen within our democracy have access to the protections provided by our democracy regardless of their status or their label as an elder, a minority, homosexual, or criminal. It doesn’t matter what label we place on someone they should have access to the protections provided by the law even if they’ve been accused or convicted of breaking the law. An effective law to be respected is one that equally protects the victim as well as the perpetrator, there is no one who should outside of the realms of the law’s protection in a just democracy. The law should protect all people equally. we cannot ask a person to forfeit their life by serving time as an incarcerated member of our society, if we’re unwilling to protect their life and their human rights.
Cases Increased as Populations Swelled
The first provision of the Prison Litigation Reform Act states that incarcerated people must exhaust all internal administrative grievances available to them prior to taking their case to the court which has proven futile. I have had incarcerated individuals tell me that their grievances were lost in the middle of their proceedings or were never responded to. In Michigan for example, a friend of mine had documents, obituaries of family members, poetry and writings that were lost/destroyed when we was sent to solitary confinement. Those items were never returned to him by officials. There are three steps to Michigans grievance process. At step two he had not yet received a response and asked me to call on his behalf, then I was told that a Sep two was never received. At that point it had been more than ten business days and there was no way for him to take any further action on getting his irreplaceable collection of documents back. The officers who were responsible for mailing in his grievance documents on his behalf after he’d completed and submitted the forms failed to do so or did not in a timely manner. Not only were his documents lost but his ability to take advantage of grievance proceedings was abused and his access to judicial protections were completely restricted. In the majority of these cases prisoners have no one advocating on their behalf or following up on their grievance, it was only when I made that call did my friend know what happened in his grievance process that caused the delay. In many cases they only have themselves and with little access to making calls or sending mail especially certified mail (al of which have a cost) it’s nearly impossible to follow up on grievance procedures that have two, three and sometimes even four steps which are easy to lose track of and fall through the cracks when facilitated by the officials that are accused of the wrongdoing within the grievance.
The second fact that suits are denied which allege only to mental and emotional harm is based on an idea that prisoners aren’t afforded the privilege of living in an emotionally stable and mentally healthy environment where they can be safe. This restriction implies that the places where we put prisoners are inherently violent and abusive, and if we were to allow prisoners to voice their concerns about their mental or emotional health then every prisoner would have an overwhelming amount of concerns. We should not be trying to maintain an environment that’s mentally and emotionally abusive. Instead we should be working hard to correct the aspects of prison environments that maintain emotional and mental abuse within facilities. Whether that mean redesigning the facilities, providing more nutritious meals, offering programming that cater towards individuals emotional health or offering more classes that cater towards developing one’s mental stability, there are so many alternatives to correcting this issue rather than shutting out prisoners for voicing their concerns about their emotional and mental health.
Prisoners Must Pay, but their Lawyers Don’t Get Equal Wage
Provision number three in which courts are no longer allowed to waive incarcerated persons court fees is ridiculous seeing as how most incarcerated people are incarcerated because of the fact they could not afford the fees associated with fighting a lawsuit or compensating a lawyer to adequately and effectively fight on their behalf. Incarcerated people should not be responsible for outstanding court fees whether they’re paid in lump sum or installments, especially when they aren’t being paid the prevailing wage for their work. When we create financial barriers for people who are already in poverty that effectively restricts those people from being able to participate in the privileges that financial stability would provide. In this case court fees should be substantially reduced to the ratio at which prisoners on average make at a job or completely waived knowing that many prisoners don’t have access to the funds needed to pay for exceptional court fees. The fourth provision restricts the amount that a lawyer is able to receive after winning a lawsuit on the behalf of an inmate. This is a hypocritical contrast to the third provision. The inmate is forced to pay the state for their involvement in a court case but the state limits inmates reward for their involvement. This hypocritical provision restricts the ability for lawyers to effectively serve inmates. There is absolutely no class of people in more need of legal protection than incarcerated individuals. All of these provisions were created to delay prisoners actions in holding officials accountable. The Prison Litigation Reform Act works to cut off the the judicial oversight of prison activity. We must allow for lawyers to be compensated justly for their work on a prisoner’s behalf. This would greatly reduce the amount of abuse that staff are engaging in against prisoners. Currently staff are able to engage in abusive behavior at absolutely no cost with absolutely no oversight.
The last provision places limits on the ability of courts to change prison policy even if there is a policy within a prison that is detrimental to the well-being of those who are forced to reside there. Courts should have the power to influence that policy the same way that they can do for schools how we saw in Brown v. Board of Education and medical facilities in the way that Roe v. Wade changed medical options for potential mothers. Prisons like schools and hospitals, house individuals that are dependent on political oversight but unlike these institutions there are no lights being shinned on prison activity that allow us to regulate and protect those that are there. Every prison operates under their own individual policies called operations procedures. These change from state-to-state and even prison to prison making it impractical for an inmate to keep up with the rights they have in any particular facility where they are housed. Tthe fact that prison officials have so much unchecked power is something that our country was supposedly built to buffer against however there are obviously no checks and balances on this system with absolutely no judicial supervision or consequences prisons able to set their own rules, make their own policies, monitor their own investigates and repress victims of abuse entirely.
Legislators who enacted this law claimed that it was to aid in reducing the number of frivolous cases that were submitted. They claimed that the number of cases coming from incarcerated individuals was growing rapidly. However rather than than this being due to the fact that there were many frivolous cases being submitted this was due to the fact that the number of incarcerated persons was raising substantially and due to that number rising conditions within the prisons were deteriorating and resources offered to prisoners were decreasing rapidly. Our nation took the absolute wrong turn in the enacting of the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act. In order for us to turn back into the right direction we must open the doors of the court to prisoners and allow them to access these resources.
Another 1996 Born Legal Barrier to Prisoners
I received a letter from a prisoner a few weeks ago, D. Foster, incarcerated in Michigan’s department of corrections. His correspondence stated that his incarceration was due to limitations that were set by Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) which was also enacted in 1996. I will include a portion of his letter below:
Foster and hundreds of thousands of others are being wrongfully incarcerated without any way of seeking justice due to their being barred from participating in their right to the judicial system. Imagine the hopelessness of this feeling, knowing that your incarceration and life behind bars is due to this type of policy that completely overlooked your humanity and your rights as a citizen of this country. Its time that we liberate the voices of prisoners suffering from abuses and human rights violations by calling for an end to laws like AEDPA and the Prison Litigation Reform Act. Prisoners as humans with much added value to our society economically should have the right to strike and the right to access the courts. Add that to your banners at your next march. End AEDPA. Rescind Prison Litigation Reform. Give Prisoners Court Access!
