Taking full stock of the Prez Clinton's punishment legacy by looking at PLRA (and AEDPA and ....)

Though I have enjoyed seeing the 1994 Clinton Crime bill getting lots and lots of attention recently (example here and here), there is so much more to legacy of the "Clinton years" to the full story of US punishment practices.  This new New Republic commentary, headlined "Another Clinton-Era Law that Needs to Be Repealed: The Prison Litigation Reform Act is still trampling on prisoners' legal rights," tells another piece of the story, and here are excerpts:

Signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996 as a rider to the annual congressional appropriations bill, the PLRA laid waste to the ability of incarcerated people to bring prison officials to court for violations of their constitutional rights, whether it be racial discrimination, lack of medical care, or brutality by prison guards.  The act was championed as a solution to the thousands of supposed “frivolous lawsuits” by prisoners, with barely any discussion by Congress about its far-reaching effects.

Locked away, those in prison are easily demonized, unable to refute any exaggerations or myths created by those on the outside. One story publicly hyped by members of Congress leading up to the act’s passage had a prisoner filing suit after receiving crunchy peanut butter instead of creamy.  But when a federal judge researched the case later, he found that the issue wasn’t about that prisoner’s taste in condiments, but that the prisoner had never been reimbursed after returning the item.  The price of a jar of peanut butter might seem trivial to those of us on the outside, but most people in prison are poor and are often deeply in debt.  Plus, many prisons overcharge for simple items (the jar of peanut butter cost $2.50, significantly more than the average cost at the time).  Looking back, the PLRA did not solve a problem of “frivolous” litigation, rather it masked and discredited the legitimate claims of people with nowhere else to turn.

Since the PLRA became law, tremendous burdens have been placed on prisoners wishing to file suit for violations of their constitutional rights.  For example, one of the law’s provisions forces you to go through the prison’s administrative complaint procedures before bringing an actual lawsuit.  This can take months. Imagine a prisoner who is in pain and in need of medical treatment, but ignored by prison staff: She must not only file her complaint with the same staff that is denying her treatment, but wait for a refusal, appeal that decision, and only after a judgment on that appeal can she then file a legal case beyond prison walls.  By that time, it may be too late for a court to do anything.

As the title of this post is meant to suggestion, lots of other Clinton-era federal criminal laws and developments, particularly the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and Prez Clinton's decision to sign-on to Congress's rejection of the US Sentencing Commission's crack/powder amendment to equalize the guidelines, ought to be a continuing topic of conversation as we consider putting another Clinton in the White House this year.

Prior related posts:

• The many challenges of a fully nuanced understanding of the Clintons, crime, punishment and the 1994 Crime Bill
• Continued compelling commentary on the Clintons, crime, punishment and the 1994 Crime Bill