Slamming the Courthouse Door: 25 years of Evidence for Repealing the Prison Litigation Reform Act (2021)

When the PLRA was being debated, lawmakers who supported it claimed that too many people behind bars were filing frivolous cases against the government. In fact, incarcerated people are not particularly litigious. Instead, they often face harsh, discriminatory, and unlawful conditions of confinement — and when mistreated, they have little recourse outside the courts. And when incarcerated people do bring lawsuits, those claims are extremely likely to be against the government since nearly all aspects of life in prison are under state control. While prison and jail officials may occasionally feel overwhelmed by these lawsuits, cutting off access to justice ensures only that civil rights violations never reach the public eye, not that such violations never occur.