Prison Litigation Reform Act

The Prison Litigation Reform Act is legislation that makes it much more difficult than in the past for prisoners to bring lawsuits against the government. According to one commentator, "The debate and legislative processes leading to the passage of the PLRA were hasty, one-sided, and did not give much thought to the possible ramifications on prisoners' constitutional rights." The rise in prisoner lawsuits was blamed on prisoners filing frivolous lawsuits, rather than on the swelling prison populations and deteriorating prison conditions. In reality, prisoners were filing lawsuits at about the same rate as non-incarcerated persons.

The PLRA has been interpreted to require exhaustion of administrative remedies even when the damages sought are not available through the institution's grievance procedure. The PLRA, while intended to conserve judicial resources, could actually waste them by requiring an inquiry into the exhaustion requirements rather than disposition on the merits. That can lead to cases being dismissed and then re-filed. The exhaustion requirement can also delay time-sensitive claims of constitutional violations, such as where the relief requested is an injunction against prison officials.

Human Rights Watch notes, "If the effect of the PLRA were to selectively discourage the filing of frivolous or meritless lawsuits, as its sponsors predicted, then we would expect to find prisoners winning a larger percentage of their lawsuits after the law’s enactment than they did before. But the most comprehensive study to date shows just the opposite: since passage of the PLRA, prisoners not only are filing fewer lawsuits, but also are succeeding in a smaller proportion of the cases they do file. This strongly suggests that rather than filtering out meritless lawsuits, the PLRA has simply tilted the playing field against prisoners across the board."

HRW also notes, "A basic structural problem with the exhaustion requirement is that prison officials themselves—the defendants in most lawsuits brought by prisoners—typically design the grievance system that prisoners must exhaust before filing suit. This creates obvious incentives for prison officials to design grievance systems with short deadlines, multiple steps, and numerous technical requirements."