Prison Litigation Reform Acts

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-267
Author(s):  
Susan N. Herman
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Physical Injury ◽  
Prison Staff ◽  
Prison Systems ◽  
Challenging Question

Whether the Prison Litigation Reform Act was well aimed or effective is a challenging question. Advertised as stemming a flood of trivial prisoners' lawsuits in the federal courts, the PLRA erected obstacles to serious as well as frivolous complaints – like claims of racial discrimination or sexual abuse by prison staff that leaves no physical injury. And much of the time saved by dismissing cases is spent interpreting the PLRA's perplexing procedural rules. More and more often, courts are leaving prisoners (and pretrial detainees) to the vagaries of cash-starved prison systems. The author brings her years as a prisoners' rights litigator and Pro Se Law Clerk to bear on the issue of whether, in these days of economic recession and mass incarceration, it is prison rather than prison litigation that is truly in need of reform.

Child abuse and mandatory reporting: A review in progress

1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant Holland
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Abuse ◽  
Child Maltreatment ◽  
Physical Abuse ◽  
Psychological Abuse ◽  
Mandatory Reporting ◽  
Physical Injury

In Victoria, and to some extent Australia, the last two decades have seen some clarification in the classification of the various forms of child maltreatment and abuse. Currently, the major recognised forms of child abuse are acknowledged as being:• physical abuse or non-accidental physical injury;• sexual abuse and exploitation;• emotional/psychological abuse; and• neglect.

Critiquing Critical Pedagogies Inside the Prison Classroom: A Dialogue Between Student and Teacher

2017 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin L. Castro ◽  
Michael Brawn
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Educational Opportunity ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Critical Pedagogies ◽  
Prison Systems

In this article, Michael Brawn, an incarcerated student, and Erin L. Castro, a nonincarcerated instructor, engage in a dialogue about the politics of using critical pedagogies in prisons, where teaching and learning processes are severely restricted by the constraints of mass incarceration. Situated within the broader politics of postsecondary educational opportunity for incarcerated people, their dialogue highlights the ways that the prison context significantly limits the promises and praxis of critical pedagogies. The authors close by turning to an emplaced praxis for nonincarcerated educators working within prison systems that acknowledges the complicated and contradictory nature of authority in critical pedagogies.

Research Note: Parallel Reactions in Rape Victims and Rape Researchers

1989 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet G. Alexander ◽  
Mary de Chesnay ◽  
Elaine Marshall ◽  
Arthur R. Campbell ◽  
Sharon Johnson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Sleep Disorders ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Physical Injury ◽  
Rape Victims ◽  
Case Record ◽  
Subjective Responses ◽  
Rape Crisis Center ◽  
Parallel Reactions ◽  
Record Review

In a recent study, several nurse researchers assisted in a case record review on 1,215 rape crisis center records to determine demographic predicators of sexual abuse. Despite the relatively impersonal nature of the method used in collection of data, researchers experienced highly subjective responses to the often sketchy case records both during and after the study. Some of the reactions reported by data collectors included: anger, dreams, fear of physical injury, and sleep disorders. These responses closely parallel those reported in the literature on rape victims. This research note (1) describes the reactions of the five different data collectors, (2) compares these reactions to those reported for rape victims, (3) suggests some implications for those engaged in research on potentially distressing topics, and (4) offers suggestions on how to best prepare data collectors and others for research in emotionally charged areas.

scholarly journals Unlocking the Courthouse Door: Removing the Barrier of the PLRA's Physical Injury Requirement to Permit Meaningful Judicial Oversight of Abuses in Supermax Prisons and Isolation Units

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 268-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B. Mushlin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Physical Injury ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Supermax Prisons

In recent years the number of inmates held in isolation in American prisons has increased dramatically. At the same serious abuses have occurred in these isolation units. These abuses, which include subjecting inmates to degrading, humiliating and unnecessary suffering, often do not cause physical injury. Even though constitutional rights are violated by these acts, federal courts have often failed to provide relief to victims of these abuses. The reason is that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) deprives federal courts of the ability to provide relief from degrading and even torturous behavior if there is not physical injury. This article calls for the repeal or reform of the physical injury requirement of the PLRA so that the ability of federal courts to provide meaningful remedies for violations of the United States Constitution can be restored.

Child Abuse and Mandatory Reporting

1996 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Grant Holland
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Abuse ◽  
Child Maltreatment ◽  
Physical Abuse ◽  
Mandatory Reporting ◽  
Physical Injury ◽  
Abuse And Neglect ◽  
Single Child ◽  
Failure To Protect

In Victoria, and to some extent Australia, the last two decades have seen some clarification in the classification of the various forms of child maltreatment and abuse. Currently, the major forms of child abuse are acknowledged as being:In Victoria, and to some extent Australia, the last two decades have seen some clarification in the classification of the various forms of child maltreatment and abuse. Currently, the major forms of child abuse are acknowledged as being physical abuse or non-accidental physical injury; sexual abuse and exploitation; emotional/psychological abuse and neglect. These forms of maltreatment often convey an implied message of non-accidental or committed harm against children. Abuse, however, can often occur by neglect or a failure to protect children, and therefore can be characterised as abuse by ommission. Many practitioners and professionals now use the term 'child abuse and neglect' rather than the single 'child abuse' term.

Opening Up the Workplace

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Rosen ◽  
Joseph Mosnier
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Title Vii ◽  
Job Seekers ◽  
Disparate Impact ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
Employment Screening ◽  
Opening Up

This chapter describes the contributions of Julius Chambers and his partners, most particularly Robert Belton, to the LDF's national litigation campaign to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which new law outlawed racial discrimination in the workplace effective July 1965. In October 1965, Chambers filed the nation's first-ever Title VII suit, and soon after filed three additional cases which, when ultimately decided years later, substantially ended overt racial discrimination in American workplaces. These critical victories included Supreme Court triumphs in Griggs v. Duke Power (1971) and Albermarle Paper Co. v. Moody (1975), and the Fourth Circuit's Robinson v. Lorillard Corp. (1971). Griggs, recognized as the era's landmark employment ruling, established the "disparate impact" standard for adjudicating employers' use of "intelligence" tests and other pre-employment screening mechanisms. Together, Griggs, Moody, and Robinson did much to define the federal courts' interpretations of Title VII in a fashion that both opened workplaces to black job seekers and offered some compensatory remedy to those who had suffered under racially discriminatory workplace schemes. By these efforts, Chambers, his partners, and the LDF would leave the American workplace forever changed.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 389-406
Author(s):  
Robert T. Chase
Keyword(s):  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Judicial Intervention ◽  
Hostage Crisis ◽  
Prison Systems ◽  
State's Rights ◽  
And Control ◽  
Critical Moments

The epilogue reflects on what happened to the prisoners who brought civil suits to Texas and frames the legal and political legacy of Ruiz within the current political moment of national prison strikes and the ongoing struggle over mass incarceration. The chapter considers Ruiz’s legacy through the lens of the Tennessee prison hostage crisis of 1985 as well as ongoing contemporary prisoner politicization over mass incarceration. It considers the development of the Prison Litigation Reform Act as part of carceral federalism’s effort to overturn judicial intervention in favor a return to state’s rights and control of its prison systems. It concludes with an analysis the country’s first national prison strikes of 2016 and 2018 as critical moments tied to Ruiz and the case’s political legacy.

Dignity and its discontents: Towards an abolitionist rethinking of dignity

2020 ◽  
pp. 147737082097657
Author(s):  
Jonathan Simon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Good Time ◽  
Court System ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Legal System ◽  
Prison Systems

As we approach the decade anniversary of the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Plata (2011), it is perhaps a good time to take stock of some of the optimism expressed by this author (Simon, 2014) that the landmark prisoners’ rights decision, with its stark condemnation of the toxic combination of chronic illness, medical neglect, and overcrowding so typical of American prison systems in the era of mass incarceration, and its rhetorical invigoration of ‘dignity’ as a constitutional value, could play a role in taming mass incarceration in the United States. In doing so, part of the inquiry is juridical and jurisprudential. Did the opinion move the court system towards more protection of human rights for prisoners? The second aspect of the question is cultural and political. At a time of unprecedented public interest in reforming the criminal legal system in the United States, has the language or rhetoric of ‘human dignity,’ along with the problems of illness and overcrowding that the Plata case called national attention to, played a role in the foment? The Black Lives Matter movement, a major force in the street protests against policing in the summer of 2020, emerged just two years after Plata and, completely independently, has revitalized abolition discourse in the United States, leading to popular calls to ‘defund’ the police. To what extent should abolition and other goals of the movement for racial justice, supplant human dignity, with its liberal legal genealogy, as a meaningful lodestar for legal and political efforts to end mass incarceration? As an essay in normative sociological jurisprudence, my answers will be both descriptive and prescriptive.

Cumulative Default

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (8) ◽  
pp. 943-955 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Toch
Keyword(s):  
Positive Impact ◽  
Prison Staff ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Administrative Segregation ◽  
Past Behavior ◽  
Prison Systems ◽  
Over Time

The careers of chronically disruptive prisoners are unquestionably problematic for prison staff members but are equivalently inauspicious for the prisoners themselves, who acquire off-putting reputations and must spend increasing portions of time in punitive or administrative segregation. When we review long-term disruptive careers, we are apt to encounter recurrent ineffective interventions and deteriorating sequences of behavior. This is the case even in relatively humane prison systems, though in such settings we also come across junctures at which positive impact has been achieved with ameliorative moves. Over time, a trend involving personal maturation and amelioration of misbehavior will be observed in many disruptive careers. It is important, as this occurs for prison staff not to react based on extrapolations from past behavior trends. It is also important for members of the prison staff who are assigned to work directly with the inmate to counter or modulate custodial risk-based assessments that the inmate otherwise invites.

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