By Alissa Hull
The Prison Law Project (Pby Alissa Hull The Prison Law Project (PLP) of the NLG sends over 5,000 copies of the Jailhouse Lawyer’s Handbook every year to people in prison free of charge. The Handbook is a pro se guide to filing Section 1983 claims against prisons and also provides basic information about the United States legal system.
For the past three years, each Handbook contained a survey asking inmates why they requested it, how they found out about it, and whether or not the Handbook impacted their case or decision to file a lawsuit. PLP has recently compiled these surveys and will be publishing a report of the findings.
Our results show that the most common reasons for requesting the Handbook were three serious constitutional violations: inmates were not able to access the law library (55%), were denied medical care (42%), and were abused by prison guards (33%). With no outside legal support, many inmates feel compelled to file their own Section 1983 claims to advocate for their rights and assert their dignity in this highly abusive environment.
Although prisons work very hard to isolate inmates, most of the respondents found out about the Handbook through another prisoner. Additionally, 90% of respondents stated that they had shared our Handbook with other inmates.
Our survey results show that most people who requested our Handbook were in a pre-filing stage of their lawsuit, either thinking about filing one or in the process of putting one together. This means that the Handbook is a key resource for prisoners who are determining whether their claim will be viable and pass the rigorous restrictions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA).
As continued budget cuts further restrict law library access and the ongoing overuse of solitary confinement continues, many prisoners have extreme difficulty in either physically going to a law library or gaining access to legal materials. Very few cases are successful against these restrictions because the standard for constitutionally adequate access to the courts is incredibly hard to prove. When inmates have their constitutional rights violated, our Handbook fills the gap of determining whether a violation has occurred and what the legal remedy is for those violations. For many prisoners, the Handbook is the only legal material available.
The full Prison Law Project Report will be available in January 2012 at nlg.org.
UPDATE : Find the latest edition of the Handbook at jailhouselaw.org