Prisoners' Rights

Prisoners who seek to protect a constitutional or civil right are entitled to complain, but they are required to pursue whatever procedures exist within the prison before taking the case to court.

The most popular vehicle for prisoner lawsuits has been a federal civil rights statute, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983 (1871; recodified 1979). A "SECTION 1983 action" permits a prisoner to sue in federal court for an alleged deprivation of a federally protected or constitutional right by a person acting under the authority of state law. A prisoner may sue the warden or supervisor, a guard, or the local government that owns and runs the prison.

In the early 1980s, as many as 15,000 section 1983 actions were filed each year, many of them frivolous. The Supreme Court responded by requiring many prisoners to use state TORT claims acts rather than the federal statute and the federal courts. The Court also established difficult standards of proof for prisoners to meet.

In 1995, Congress sought to restrict prisoner lawsuits by devoting numerous provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act to this subject. The statute requires prisoners to exhaust administrative remedies before bringing a lawsuit, expands the federal courts' ability to dismiss lawsuits filed by prisoners, imposes numerous restrictions on the fees that can be awarded to a prisoner's attorney, and forbids a prisoner from filing an action for mental or emotional injury without a prior showing of physical injury. In addition, the act imposes restrictions on the ability of prisoners to proceed without paying filing fees. Another provision requires courts to prescreen lawsuits filed by prisoners and expands the grounds for dismissal of such suits. Finally, the act grants federal courts the power to revoke the good time credits of prisoners who file frivolous or harassing lawsuits or present false testimony or evidence to the court.

A prisoner's ability to file a habeas corpus action in the federal courts challenging prison conditions was also diminished. A writ of habeas corpus is a legal document ordering anyone who is officially holding the petitioner to bring him into court to determine whether the detention is unlawful. A federal court can hear an application for a writ of habeas corpus by a state prisoner who is being held in custody, allegedly in violation of the Constitution or the laws of the United States.

Traditionally a writ of habeas corpus was granted only for the purpose of ordering an immediate release of a prisoner from all restraints. A court would have to find that the imprisonment itself was illegal, for example, if the petitioner was convicted but his constitutional rights were violated during the trial. The scope of federal habeas corpus expanded in the 1970s and early 1980s, entitling prisoners to the writ even if they were legally in custody but the conditions of the confinement violated their constitutional rights. The writ is rarely used in these circumstances, however, because federal courts prefer to improve prison conditions rather than set a convicted felon free.

Provisions of the Antiterrorism and Death Penalty Act of 1996 further limited the power of federal courts to review cases through habeas corpus review. The act lowered the applicable STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS to one year after the judgment convicting the defendant becomes final, which is generally the date of a final appeal or the final date when an appeal would be available. The act also provides several restrictions on the ability of a federal court in a habeas corpus review from reconsidering the factual and legal bases for the defendant's incarceration.