Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2016

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the United States has seen a marked decline in the frequency and depth of court interventions in prisons and jails. Prisoners’ rights litigation has not disappeared—but it has been drastically curtailed by the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), along with myriad other forces, doctrinal and political. The PLRA, enacted as part of the Newt Gingrich “Contract with America,” undermined prisoners’ ability to bring, settle, and win lawsuits. (Schlanger 2003; Schlanger 2006)

The resulting impact on jail and prison litigation has been extremely substantial. Significant prisoners’ rights cases certainly remain on court dockets, and new ones continue to be filed—mostly by a dozen or so prisoners’ rights advocacy organizations, private counsel with a commitment to prisoners’ rights, and topic-specific advocacy organizations that do some prisoners’ rights work.

By no means do I mean to argue that litigation has become unimportant. Still, there is no doubt that, nationwide, litigation plays a smaller role than it used to as a corrections oversight mechanism.

Comments

This is an author-accepted manuscript published as Schlanger, M., The Just Barely Sustainable California Prisoners’ Rights Ecosystem. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 664(1), 62-81. Copyright © 2016 the author and American Academy of Political & Social Science. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716215598972

The entire Symposium Issue on California's Criminal Justice Realignment can be accessed at https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/anna/664/1

A webinar recording is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw5k4psQBVA

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