THE PRISON LITIGATION REFORM ACT (PLRA)

The PLRA is a federal statute that makes it difficult for prisoners to pursue legal claims in federal court and to get meaningful relief if they do pursue them. 

The PLRA requires indigent prisoners, unlike other indigent litigants, to pay filing fees in installments; it bars prisoners from using the informa pauperis (IFP) procedures at all under some circumstances; it limits the damages prisoners can receive for certain kinds of constitutional violations; it requires prisoners to exhaust administrative remedies before filing suit. Various prisons have been upheld against all constitutional challenges to date.

The PLRA exhaustion requirement says: “No action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under (42 U.S.C. 1983) … or any other federal law … by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison or other correctional facility until such administration remedies are exhausted”

This means you have to take your problem to the prison or county jail grievance system or whatever other complaint or appeal system applies before you can bring suit and you have to do it right and pursue the process to the end. More prisoners lose their cases because of failure to exhaust administrative remedies or to exhaust them correctly than from any other part of the PLRA.  Here is the bottom line If something happens to you that you may want to bring suit about:

• Find out what remedies are available right away. Better yet know your institutions grievance system and other remedies before you have a problem. Time deadlines are often very short. If you wait until you have a problem and have firmly decided to sue it may be too late to exhaust.

• Always use the prison grievance system or any other available remedy, such as disciplinary appeal.

• If you think there is reason why you shouldn’t have to exhaust – forget it. Exhaust anyway!

• Take all the available appeals even if you think you got a favorable decision at an earlier point.

• If you don’t get an answer to a grievance try to appeal anyway. Many grievance systems say that if a certain amount of time passes and there’s no decision you can treat the non-response as a denial of the grievance and appeal and if you don’t a court may say you didn’t exhaust.

• Be sure you use the right remedy if there is more than one possibility (e.g., grievance versus disciplinary appeal). If you aren’t sure which remedy to use – Do both.

• If prison employees tell you an issue is not a grievance but you think it is request that they process your grievance anyway so you will have a record of it (if there is a way to appeal grievance when you’ve been told there isn’t – Do it anyway!)

• Follow the rules of the grievance system or other remedy as best you can.

• If the people running the grievance system or other remedy tell you that you did it wrong and you need to do something different to fix it follow the instructions even if you think they are wrong and make a record of what was said and by whom.

• If you make a mistake like missing a time deadline don’t give up; file the grievance or appeal anyway explain the reasons you made the mistake, ask that your grievance be considered despite your mistake and appeal as far as you can if you lose.

The reason for all this is that, once you file suit, prison officials and their lawyers will look for any possible basis to say that you did not exhaust correctly and shouldn’t be allowed to sue. You need to be able to show the court you did everything you could to comply with the exhaustion requirements.  The PLRA makes exhaustion of the grievance system MANDATORY!

To sum things up the PLRA is a loophole for the system to not be held liable for their negligence. Currently, this law pertains to all litigation from police brutality to healthcare.

KEEP US HEALTHY is focused on the reforming of the healthcare side to ensure inmates receive proper, timely care and have a just means of recourse when they don’t. Let’s say you are an inmate and are having healthcare problems and bring it to your facilities attention and they don’t provide the care you need to be healthy; or if, after multiple verbal conversations with healthcare personnel, turn in multiple healthcare slips and go to multiple doctor appointments where you explain your health issues, ask for help and you still don’t receive care; or if the end result affects you for the rest of your life as in going blind to having a metal spine or worse – if you didn’t exhaust the grievance process within their timeline, usually 30 days, they are not responsible. 

Besides being unacceptable, the current system of recourse in many prisons needs to be ‘fixed’ and simplified. 90% of inmates that I have talked to do not even know how to exhaust the grievance process. Many don’t even know it exists.

From what I have experienced and learned, this whole system is a setup for failure in my eyes. If we need healthcare service and bring it to medical’s attention, then they should provide what we need to be healthy and to stay healthy. If they do not, they should be held responsible for the non-care and the outcome of said non-care…They went to school learned this field in healthcare and are now licensed/certified professionals. If they make a mistake, they need to take responsibility for it. A grievance exhaustion should not get them off the hook. 

I literally wrote a grievance that I had an infection “Please Help” over a week before I had a seizure and fell into a coma which very nearly took my life. Ironically from an infection!  I clearly told them what to check for way before I ended up going through what I went through!  It was avoidable I believe if treated sooner. Now because I did not fully exhaust the grievance process, the county I sued was not held 100% responsible I had to settle for a small portion of what my suit was worth.  They were let off the hook for not taking my health seriously. This needs to end!

I believe if the PLRA for medical care is reformed to a more justifiable way then the institution’s medical care system will provide better healthcare and take our health more seriously.  

This means so much to me and I think is important to all inmates that I’ve used part of my settlement to start the “KEEP US HEALTHY” Non-Profit Charity to hopefully make a difference and to help others before they to become either more ill, lose a body part or, worse of all, their life due to negligence that could have been prevented.