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File Name | S22-Policy-NCFCA-38A-NEG-PLRAExhaustion.docx |
File Size | 57.13 KB |
Date added | March 7, 2022 |
Category | Policy (NCFCA) |
Author | Vance Trefethen |
Resolved: The United States Federal Government should significantly reform its policies regarding convicted prisoners under federal jurisdiction
Case Summary: The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) contains a number of provisions to discourage prisoners from filing hundreds of useless lawsuits to clog up the courts and waste everyone’s time. AFF is worried that prisoners may be denied valid lawsuits simply because of minor paperwork errors. There are several variations of PLRA reform including repealing it, replacing it with PARA, changing the standards of injury, and repealing only the “Exhaustion” rule. This brief covers only the Exhaustion rule.
The Exhaustion rule says a prisoner must “exhaust” (comply with and completely follow to the finish) all administrative complaint channels within the prison system itself before taking his complaint to court. AFF believes that prisons are creating extra hurdles and excuses to deny valid claims by making the process so complicated that it cannot successfully be followed, such that almost every complaint will be dismissed from court on the grounds of failing the Exhaustion rule. This brief points out, among other things, that if prisoners can’t follow the administrative complaint rules (so we just let them bypass and go right to federal court), they don’t have a prayer anyway, because federal court procedures are way more complicated – so their complaints will fail anyway. And we still have tens of thousands of federal lawsuits in Status Quo even with the supposedly “too complex” rules that supposedly keep valid claims out of court. Creating a standard that says they don’t have to follow the exhaustion rule means prisoners will intentionally bypass the administrative process and send everything directly to federal court. And that would defeat the entire purpose of PLRA and clog up federal courts again with thousands of useless lawsuits.