For nearly three decades, I’ve been hearing people scream for help. Screams of people being raped, robbed, stabbed. Screams of people left freezing in paper gowns in a suicide watch cell. Screams of people simply forgotten about behind these concrete walls. Prisons are filled with people screaming, but there’s no one besides us to hear them.
We lose many rights in prison, but legally we still have basic civil rights like protection from abuse. And when we suffer abuse anyway, we have the right to seek justice through the courts. But under the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, we can’t access the courts straightaway like you can in the free world. First we have to go through the grievance process.
Grievances are supposed to give us a means of advocating for ourselves. When you file a grievance, the supervisor responsible for the alleged issue will have an opportunity to resolve it. If you don’t think that the resolution was enough, a hearing will be scheduled and the warden will decide whether or not the resolution was enough. To appeal the warden’s decision, you can escalate to the department of corrections commissioner; their verdict is final. After you’ve done all that, then you’re allowed to begin accessing the courts. A process which often requires significant labor, money and legal expertise.
Fox guarding the hen house…what do they expect? Elected officials don’t care. As long as those jobs are there in these places, they don’t care. As long as sentences are there to be served in places like these, they don’t care. Absolute power absolutely corrupts the human.