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ARTICLE
INMATE LITIGATION
Margo Schlanger
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I NTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................1557
I. INMATE LITIGATION TRENDS..........................................................................................1565
A. The Varied Subject Matter of Inmate Litigation .........................................................1570
B. Inmate Litigation Rates..........................................................................................1575
C. Inmate Filing Rates over Time: The “Deluge”...........................................................1578
D. Of Babies and Bath Water: The Processing of Inmate Cases........................................1587
II. OUTCOMES IN I NMATE CASES (P RIOR TO THEPLRA).......................................................1590
A. Outcomes: The Data ...............................................................................................1593
B. Outcomes: Explanations..........................................................................................1605
1. Limited Legal Rights/Exacting Decision Standard................................................1605
2. Easy Access to Courts........................................................................................1607
3. The Absence of Counsel....................................................................................1609
4. Obstacles to Settlement......................................................................................1614
(a) The Impact of the Low Quality of the Docket..................................................1614
(b) Asymmetric Information...............................................................................1616
(c) Low Litigation Costs....................................................................................1617
(d) Perceived High External Settlement Costs......................................................1617
(e) Corrections Culture ......................................................................................1620
5. Trial Win Rates..................................................................................................1621
6. Low Damage Awards..........................................................................................1622
C. Conclusion............................................................................................................1626
III. SEA CHANGE : T HE PLRA (AND OTHER 1996 CHANGES).................................................1627
A. Exhaustion.............................................................................................................1627
B. Filing Fees.............................................................................................................1628
C. Costs.....................................................................................................................1629
D. Judicial Screening..................................................................................................1629
E. No Obligation To Respond.......................................................................................1630
F. Telephonic Hearings................................................................................................1630

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G. Limitation on Damages...........................................................................................1630
H. Diversion of Damages............................................................................................1631
I. Limitation on Attorneys’ Fees....................................................................................1631
J. Coverage................................................................................................................1632
K. Other Legal Changes Concurrent with the PLRA .......................................................1632
IV. L ITIGATION EFFECTS OF THEPLRA .............................................................................1633
A. The Shrinking Inmate Docket...................................................................................1634
1. State Court .......................................................................................................1634
2. Habeas.............................................................................................................1637
3. Jail and Prison Filings........................................................................................1641
4. The Impact on Courts of Filing Declines..............................................................1642
B. Plaintiffs’ Declining Success....................................................................................1644
1. The Statute and Its Expected Effects....................................................................1645
(a) Imposition of a Filing Fee, Payable over Time, for All Civil Actions by
Inmates.......................................................................................................1645
(b) The Frequent Filer Provisions........................................................................1648
(c) Exhaustion ..................................................................................................1649
(d) Limitations on Attorneys’ Fees......................................................................1654
(e) Coverage.....................................................................................................1657
(f) Summary of Expected Outcome Effects .........................................................1657
2. Observed Trends.................................................................................................1658
V. BROADENING THE FIELD OF VIEW..................................................................................1664
A. Minimizing Litigation’s Burden ................................................................................1668
B. Reducing Liability Exposure: Overdeterrence, Antideterrence, Underdeterrence............1672
1. Overdeterrence.................................................................................................1672
2. Antideterrence ..................................................................................................1677
3. Deterrence/Underdeterrence...............................................................................1680
C. Operational Effects of the PLRA..............................................................................1690
VI. CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................1692
DATA APPENDIX................................................................................................................1698
A. Putting Together the Dataset....................................................................................1698
B. Accuracy of the Data...............................................................................................1699
1. Nature of Suit Codes.........................................................................................1699
2. Subsequent Activity...........................................................................................1700
3. Federal vs. Nonfederal Inmates...........................................................................1700
4. “Judgment for” .................................................................................................1702
5. Damages..........................................................................................................1702
6. Class Actions....................................................................................................1703
C. Grouping Case Categories......................................................................................1704

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INMATE LITIGATION
Margo Schlanger*
In 1995, prison and jail inmates brought about 40,000 new lawsuits in federal court —
nearly a fifth of the federal civil docket. Court records evidence a success rate for inmate
plaintiffs under fifteen percent. These statistics highlight two qualities long associated with
the inmate docket: its volume and the low rate of plaintiffs’ success. Then, in 1996, Congress
enacted the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), which dramatically altered the litigation
landscape, restricting inmates’ access to federal court in a variety of ways. This Article
examines inmate litigation before and after the PLRA. Looking first at the litigation process
itself, it brings together prior research, the results of new quantitative analysis of a
comprehensive database of federal district court cases, and interviews and other qualitative
inquiry. The Article canvasses filing trends, subject matter, and settled and litigated
outcomes, exploring what is happening in each of these areas and why. Then it uses a
variety of analytic tools to uncover and assess the PLRA’s impact. Most obviously, the PLRA
has shrunk the number of new federal filings by inmates by over forty percent,
notwithstanding a large increase in the affected incarcerated population. Simultaneously, the
statute seems to be making even constitutionally meritorious cases harder both to bring and
to win. Finally, the Article looks beyond federal courthouses to the ways litigation affects
jail and prison operations. Specifically, it explores agencies’ efforts to respond efficiently to
the high-volume, low-probability docket and to reduce their liability exposure, and offers
some tentative observations about the PLRA’s likely impact on these efforts. The Article
suggests in conclusion that use of the PLRA as a model for broader litigation reforms should
proceed with enormous caution given the statute’s problematic effects.

INTRODUCTION
n any given day there are over two million people in jail or prison in
O
the United States, a population that has nearly quadrupled since 1980.
Driven at least in large part by the steep increase in the number of jail and
1

prison inmates, and notwithstanding the nearly complete disappearance of
what used to be an active and influential prisoners’ rights movement,2 the
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
* Assistant Professor, Harvard Law School (mschlang@law.harvard.edu). Thanks to Harvard Law
School, Dean Robert Clark, the Harvard University Center for Ethics and the Professions, and the Harvard University Milton Fund for time and resources to complete this project. And thanks to Elizabeth
Alexander, Ted Eisenberg, Dick Fallon, Jerry Frug, Phil Heymann, Howell Jackson, Christine Jolls,
Steve Martin, Dan Meltzer, Martha Minow, David Shapiro, Bill Stuntz, Guhan Subramanian, Michael
Tonry, Kip Viscusi, Elizabeth Warren, Lucie White, David Wilkins, participants in the 2002 Law & Society Conference, and (especially and as always) Sam Bagenstos for helpful comments. Mike Bloch,
Lara Garner, Beth Mellen Harrison, and H.L. Rogers provided excellent research assistance, as did Josh
Kantor of the Harvard Law School library reference department. Finally, thanks to the dozens of people, listed below in note 21, who shared their time and thoughts with me in extensive interviews as I
prepared to write this Article.
1 See infra Table I.A.
2 See generally RONALD BERKMAN, OPENING THE GATES: T HE RISE OF THE P RISONERS’
MOVEMENT (1979); James B. Jacobs, The Prisoners’ Rights Movement and Its Impacts, in NEW

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amount of civil litigation brought by inmates in federal court increased
ste adily during the 1980s, and more steeply in the early 1990s. In 1995 ,
inmates filed nearly 40 ,000 new federal civil lawsuits 3 — nineteen percent
of the federal civil docket.4 About fifteen percent of the federal civil trials
held that year were in inmate civil rights cases.5
But in the mid- 1990s, the state officials who were the most frequent
targets of the growing inmate docket were finally able to capitalize on the
rightward move in American politics 6 and mobilize a major campaign
against the lawsuits. Building on years of (noninmate) tort reform drives
as well as law-and-order rhetoric,7 state officials got their proposed legisla-

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
P ERSPECTIVES ON P RISONS AND I MPRISONMENT 33 (1983 ) [hereinafter Jacobs, Prisoners’ Rights
Movement].
3 To compute the figures for 1995 , I followed the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and
used a fiscal year; fiscal 1995 runs from Oct ober 1, 1994 to September 30, 1995.
This and all filing and outcome figures in this Article are derived from a database compiled by
the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and cleaned up by the Federal Judicial Center, the research
arm of the federal court system. The database includes each and every case “terminated” (that is,
ended, at least provisionally) by the federal district courts since 1970. The data, that is, cover not just a
sample but the entire universe of federal civil litigation (except for bankruptcy filings in the bankruptcy
courts). The Federal Judicial Center lodges this database for public access with the Inter-University
Consortium for Political and Social Research, which maintains it at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu. See
Federal Judicial Center, Federal Court Cases: Integrated Data Base, 1970–2000 (pts. 38 –55 , 64–65,
73–74, 86–88 , 98 , 103–04, 115–17 (civil termin ations 1970–2000), 118 (civil pending 2000 )) (ICPSR
Study No. 8429 , last updated Apr. 25 , 2002) [hereinafter Federal Court Cases Database, 1970–2000 ],
at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080 / ICPSR -STUDY/08429 .xml; Federal Judicial Center, Federal
Court Cases: Integrated Data Base, 2001 (pts. 2 (civil terminations), 3 (civil pending)) (ICPSR Study
No. 3415 , last updated June 19 , 2002 ) [hereinafter Federal Court Cases Database, 2001 ], at
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080 / ICPSR -STUDY/03415 .xml. The Federal Judicial Center also publishes periodic reports culled from this dataset. Except where otherwise noted, my figures are not from
these written reports, but are instead based on my extensive analysis compiling and manipulating the
raw data. This work is discussed in the Data Appendix to this Article, which appears at its end, but the
basic idea is not complicated: I put all the different years of data together and eliminated duplicates. I
cite my compiled dataset and all other supporting analysis as Margo Schlanger, Inmate Litigation Technical Appendix (2003) [hereinafter Schlanger, Technical Appendix], available at http://www.
law.harvard.edu/faculty/schlanger/projects/index.php. This website posts the code I used to compile the
dataset, run the charts, and perform other analyses discussed in this Article.
4 The “civil docket” I refer to does not include habeas co rpus petitions and other like actions by
prisoners seeking collateral criminal review. If such filings were included, both the number of inmate
filings and their proportion of the docket would be much higher. I omit them because I think they are
properly conceptualized as part of the criminal, rather than civil, justice sy stem.
5 More precisely, of trials in federal nonhabeas civil cases “terminated” in 1995 , fifteen pe rcent
were in inmate civil rights cases. The figure remains consistent whether the set of trials includes only
cases whose recorded judgments are trial verdicts, or any case ended by any proc edural means during
or after a trial. Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3.
6 See generally, e.g., T HOMAS BYRNE E DSALL & MARY D. E DSALL, CHAIN REACTION: T HE
I MPACT OF RACE , RIGHTS , AND TAXES ON AMERICAN P OLITICS (1992).
7 Cf. Roger Roots, Of Prisoners and Plaintiffs’ Lawyers: A Tale of Two Litigation Reform Efforts,
38 W ILLAMETTE L. REV. 210 (2002) (comparing noninmate tort reform efforts and the campaign
against inmate litigation).

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tive solution into the Republican Congress’s 1994 Contract with America.8
When it could not be passed as a freestanding bill,9 the initiative was eventually included as a rider to an appropriations bill,10 and was finally enacted in that form as the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA).11 The
statute drastically altered the corrections litigation environment, imposing
filing fees on even indigent inmates, requiring them to exhaust administrative remedies prior to filing lawsuits, and limiting their damages and attorneys’ fees. The PLRA’s passage was aided by its connection to several
longstanding political trends. In particular, it marked the overlap of conservatives’ discontent with so-called “imperial” judging,12 tort reformers’
concern with the problem of frivolous lawsuits, and new congressional
willingness to legislate federal court procedure. The PLRA has had an impact on inmate litigation that is hard to exaggerate; to set out just the most
obvious effect, 2001 filings by inmates were down forty-three percent
since their peak in 1995, notwithstanding a simultaneous twenty-three percent increase in the number of people incarcerated nationwide.13
Clearly, anyone who is interested in corrections or in civil rights litigation needs to understand both inmate litigation and the PLRA. But the
litigation, even apart from its recent congressional regulation, is of broader
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
8 CONTRACT WITH AMERICA: T HE BOLD P LAN BY REPRESENTATIVE NEWT GING- RICH,
REPRESENTATIVE DICK ARMEY, AND THE HOUSE REPUBLICANS TO CHANGE THE NATION 53 (Ed
Gillespie & Bob Schellhas eds., 1994) [hereinafter CONTRACT W ITH AMERICA].
9 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Improvement Act of 1995, S. 3, 104th Cong. § 103
(Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons) (Jan. 4, 1995); Taking Back Our Streets Act of 1995: Hearing
on H.R. 3 Before the House Comm. on the Judiciary, Subcomm. on Crime, 104th Cong. (1995) [hereinafter Hearing on H.R. 3]; Violent Criminal Incarceration Act of 1995, H.R. 667, 104th Cong. tit. II
(Stopping Abusive Prisoner Lawsuits) & tit. III (Stop Turning Out Prisoners) (Jan. 25, 1995); Stop
Turning Out Prisoners Act, S. 400, 104th Cong. (Feb. 14, 1995); Civil Justice Fairness Act of 1995, S.
672, 104th Cong. tit. V (Control of Abusive Prisoner Litigation Practices) (Apr. 4, 1995); Local Law
Enforcement Enhancement Act of 1995, S. 816, 104th Cong. § 102 (Stopping Abusive Prisoner Lawsuits), § 103 (Appropriate Remedies for Prison Conditions) (May 17, 1995); Prison Litigation Reform
Act of 1995, S. 866, 104th Cong. (May 25, 1995); Prison Conditions Litigation Reform Act, S. 1275,
104th Cong. (Sept. 26, 1995); Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, S. 1279, 104th Cong. (Sept. 27,
1995); Prisoner Lawsuit Efficiency Act of 1995, H.R. 2468, 104th Cong. (Oct. 11, 1995); Crime Prevention and Family Protection Act of 1996, H.R. 2992, 104th Cong. subtits. B (Stopping Abusive Prisoner Lawsuits) & C (Stop Turning Out Prisoners) (1996); Criminal Correction and Victim Assistance
Act of 1996, H.R. 3206, 104th Cong. § 5 (Stopping Abusive Prisoner Lawsuits) (Mar. 29, 1996).
10 Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, H.R. 2076, 104th Cong. tit. VIII.
11 Pub. L. No. 104-134, §§ 801–810, 110 Stat. 1321, 1321-66 to -77 (Apr. 26, 1996) (codified at 11
U.S.C. § 523; 18 U.S.C. §§ 3624, 3626; 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346, 1915, 1915A; 42 U.S.C. §§ 1997–1997h).
The PLRA was part of the Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions and Appropriations Act of 1996, Pub. L.
No. 104-134, 110 Stat. 1321, which ended the 1996 federal government budget standoff. See Ann Devroy & Eric Pianin, Government Shuts Again After Talks Collapse: Partial Closing To Idle 280,000,
WASH. P OST, Dec. 16, 1995, at A1; Eric Pianan & John F. Harris, Clinton, Congress Reach ‘96 Budget
Agreement, WASH. P OST, Apr. 25, 1996, at A1.
12 This phrase seems to have originated with Nathan Glazer, Towards an Imperial Judiciary?, P UB.
I NT., Fall 1975, at 104. For a recent full-length treatment, see ROBERT H. BORK, SLOUCHING
TOWARDS GOMORRAH: MODERN LIBERALISM AND AMERICAN DECLINE (1996).
13 See infra Table I.A.

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interest. The inmate docket provides a fruitful field for inquiry into how
litigation’s processes work, a topic that has preoccupied both theorists and
empiricists. Even more generally, examination of inmate litigation can
elucidate the complex ways in which litigation influences out-of-court behavior: specifically, whether and how liability and litigation, and the fear
of liability and litigation, influence non-litigation behavior by potential defendants situated in complex social institutions. Yet remarkably little work
has been done along these lines. While the enormous number of inmate
lawsuits has ensured that judges, prison and jail officials, and policymakers
have paid serious and sustained attention to them, 14 the cases have attracted relatively little scholarly interest.15 (In this, they are quite different
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
14 See generally FEDERAL JUDICIAL CENTER, RECOMMENDED P ROCEDURES FOR HANDLING
P RISONER CIVIL RIGHTS CASES IN THE FEDERAL COURTS 7 (1980) [hereinafter ALDISERT REPORT]
(“giving special attention to prisoner conditions-of-confinement cases” because “[t]he volume of cases
is large”); FEDERAL JUDICIAL CENTER, RESOURCE GUIDE FOR MANAGING P RISON LITIGATION,
WITH SPECIAL E MPHASIS ON THE P RISON L ITIGATION REFORM ACT (1996) [hereinafter FJC, PLRA
RESOURCE GUIDE]; sources cited infra note 31. Researchers from the National Center for State Courts
and the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics have published particularly valuable statistical studies. See
ROGER A. HANSON & HENRY W.K. DALEY, U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , CHALLENGING THE
CONDITIONS OF P RISONS AND JAILS: A REPORT ON SECTION 1983 LITIGATION 16 (1994) [hereinafter HANSON & DALEY, REPORT ON SECTION 1983 LITIGATION]; JOHN SCALIA, U.S. DEP’ T OF
JUSTICE , P RISONER P ETITIONS FILED IN U.S. DISTRICT COURTS, 2000, WITH T RENDS 1980–2000
(2002) [hereinafter SCALIA, P RISONER P ETITION T RENDS].
15 Work examining the constitutional doctrines governing corrections is extremely voluminous, but
there are just a handful of extended treatments with an empirical rather than doctrinal base: The most
extensive body of work is by Theodore Eisenberg, with several coauthors. See Theodore Eisenberg,
Section 1983: Doctrinal Foundations and an Empirical Study, 67 CORNELL L. REV. 482 (1982) [hereinafter Eisenberg, Section 1983]; Theodore Eisenberg & Stewart Schwab, The Reality of Constitutional
Tort Litigation, 72 CORNELL L. REV. 641 (1987) [hereinafter Eisenberg & Schwab, Constitutional Tort
Litigation]; Stewart J. Schwab & Theodore Eisenberg, Explaining Constitutional Tort Litigation: The
Influence of the Attorney Fees Statute and the Government as Defendant, 73 CORNELL L. REV. 719
(1988) [hereinafter Schwab & Eisenberg, Explaining Constitutional Tort Litigation]; Theodore
Eisenberg, Litigation Models and Trial Outcomes in Civil Rights and Prisoner Cases, 77 GEO. L.J.
1567 (1989) [hereinafter Eisenberg, Litigation Models]; Theodore Eisenberg & Stewart J. Schwab,
What Shapes Perceptions of the Federal Court System?, 56 U. CHI. L. REV. 501 (1989) [hereinafter
Eisenberg & Schwab, What Shapes Perceptions]; T HEODORE EISENBERG, CIVIL RIGHTS LEGISLATION: CASES AND MATER- IALS 534–42 (4th ed. 1996) [hereinafter E ISENBERG , CASES AND
MATERIALS]; Kevin M. Clermont & Theodore Eisenberg, Plaintiphobia in the Appellate Courts: Civil
Rights Really Do Differ from Negotiable Instruments, 2002 U. I LL. L. REV. 947 [hereinafter Clermont
& Eisenberg, Plaintiphobia]. In addition, much of Eisenberg’s more general work on civil litigation
includes data about inmate cases in federal court. See Theodore Eisenberg, Testing the Selection Effect:
A New Theoretical Framework with Empirical Tests, 19 J. LEGAL STUD. 337 (1990); Theodore
Eisenberg, The Relationship Between Plaintiff Success Rates Before Trial and at Trial, 154 J. ROYAL
STAT. SOC’ Y, SERIES A 111 (1991) [hereinafter Eisenberg, Plaintiff Success Rates]; Kevin M. Clermont
& Theodore Eisenberg, Trial by Jury or Judge: Transcending Empiricism , 77 CORNELL L. REV. 1124
(1992) [hereinafter Clermont & Eisenberg, Trial by Jury or Judge]; Orley Ashenfelter, Theodore
Eisenberg & Stewart J. Schwab, Politics and the Judiciary: The Influence of Judicial Background on
Case Outcomes, 24 J. LEGAL STUD. 257 (1995) [hereinaft er Ashenfelter, Eisenberg & Schwab, Politics
and the Judiciary]. Important contributions by other authors include: JIM T HOMAS, P RISONER
LITIGATION: T HE PARADOX OF THE JAILHOUSE LAWYER (1988) [hereinafter THOMAS, P RISONER
LITIGATION]; Howard B. Eisenberg, Rethinking Prisoner Civil Rights Cases and the Provision of

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from the more-studied “court order” cases — litigation in which groups of
inmate plaintiffs, represented by counsel, seek court-enforceable orders to
govern some general set of prison or jail practices.16)
The PLRA and its effects ought to be of similarly broad concern, far
beyond those who care about the immediate topic or parties, to those interested in our civil justice system more generally, including the politics of
civil justice reform and its associated debates. While the PLRA has hardly
been a stealth statute, its status as a federal tort reform measure and as a
congressional modification of the generally trans-substantive 17 Federal
Rules of Civil Procedure have both gone nearly unrecognized. As to the
latter, for example, one close observer recently wrote: “In only one instance during [1988–2001] did Congress adopt legislation — the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act — that altered the operation of an existing rule.”18 In fact, however, the PLRA changed the operation of numer–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Counsel, 17 S. I LL. U. L.J. 417 (1993) [hereinafter Howard Eisenberg, Rethinking Prisoner Cases];
William Bennett Turner, When Prisoners Sue: A Study of Prisoner Section 1983 Suits in the Federal
Courts, 92 HARV. L. REV. 610 (1979) [hereinafter Turner, When Prisoners Sue].
16 The normative and qualitatively descriptive literature about these cases is both voluminous and
distinguished. See, e.g., MALCOLM M. FEELEY & EDWARD L. RUBIN, JUDICIAL P OLICY MAKING
AND THE MODERN STATE: HOW THE COURTS REFORMED AMERICA’ S P RISONS (1998) [hereinafter
FEELEY & RUBIN, JUDICIAL P OLICY MAKING]; Abram Chayes, The Role of the Judge in Public Law
Litigation, 89 HARV. L. REV. 1281 (1976). For an analytic review of the scholarship on correctional
court orders, see Malcolm M. Feeley & Roger A. Hanson, The Impact of Judicial Intervention on Prisons and Jails: A Framework for Analysis and a Review of the Literature, in COURTS, CORRECTIONS,
AND THE CONSTITUTION: T HE I MPACT OF JUDICIAL I NTERVENTION ON P RISONS AND JAILS 12
(John J. DiIulio, Jr. ed., 1990) [hereinafter Feeley & Hanson, Judicial Impact on Prisons]. Much of the
most interesting work has been case studies. See, e.g, LEO CARROLL, LAWFUL ORDER: A CASE
STUDY OF CORRECTIONAL CRISIS AND REFORM (1998) (Rhode Island prison litigation); BRADLEY
STEWART CHILTON, P RISONS UNDER THE GAVEL: THE FEDERAL COURT TAKEOVER OF GEORGIA
P RISONS (1991) (Georgia prison litigation); BEN M. CROUCH & JAMES W. MARQUART, AN APPEAL
TO JUSTICE : L ITIGATED REFORM OF T EXAS P RISONS (1989) (Texas prison litigation); STEVE J.
MARTIN & SHELDON EKLAND-OLSON, T EXAS P RISONS: T HE WALLS CAME T UMBLING DOWN
(1987) [hereinafter MARTIN & EKLAND -OLSON , TEXAS P RISONS] (same). And Susan Sturm’s work is
also extremely useful. See Susan P. Sturm, Lawyers at the Prison Gates: Organizational Structure and
Corrections Advocacy, 27 U. MICH. J.L. REFORM 1 (1993); Susan P. Sturm, The Legacy and Future of
Corrections Litigation, 142 U. PA. L. REV. 639 (1993); Susan P. Sturm, The Promise of Participation,
78 I OWA L. REV. 981 (1993); Susan P. Sturm, A Normative Theory of Public Law Remedies, 79 GEO.
L.J. 1355 (1991); Susan Sturm, Resolving the Remedial Dilemma: Strategies of Judicial Intervention in
Prisons, 138 U. PA. L. REV. 805 (1990); Susan P. Sturm, Note, “Mastering” Intervention in Prisons, 88
YALE L.J. 1062 (1979).
17 See Robert M. Cover, For James Wm. Moore: Some Reflections on a Reading of the Rules, 84
YALE L.J. 718, 732 (1975). On the “trans-substantive” debate, see, for example, Stephen B. Burbank,
Procedure and Power, 46 J. LEGAL EDUC. 513, 514 (1996); Cover, supra ; Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr.,
Discovery Vices and Trans-Substantive Virtues in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 137 U. PA. L.
REV. 2237 (1989); Stephen N. Subrin, Fudge Points and Thin Ice in Discovery Reform and the Case for
Selective Substance-Specific Procedure, 46 FLA. L. REV. 27 (1994).
18 Thomas E. Willging, Past and Potential Uses of Empirical Research in Civil Rulemaking, 77
NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1121, 1196 (2002). Willging is in a singularly good position to observe the
congressional-judicial fight; he is a senior researcher at the Federal Judicial Center and has been the
Center’s representative at meetings of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules since 1988. Id. at 1121
n.*. So his omission of the PLRA from his account is unlikely to be idiosyncratic. For a similar omis-

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ous civil rules — including, for example, Rule 4 (issuance of a summons);
Rule 53 (special masters); and Rule 55 (default judgments). Anyone who
cares about civil rights remedies, tort reform, or the raging debates over
both the appropriate locus of procedural rulemaking activity and whether
that activity should be trans-substantive or topic -specific, needs to pay attention to the PLRA, which may very well serve Congress as a model for
future interventions in non-corrections arenas.19
This Article examines inmate litigation before and after the PLRA shut
the courthouse doors to many inmates. My investigation is of individual
cases — lawsuits brought by individual inmates seeking damages or, occasionally, individual accommodations. I should be very clear that I am not
discussing court-order cases; they need their own, quite separate analysis.
The Article proceeds as follows: I begin, in Part I, by looking at the cases
in the courthouse, focusing by necessity on federal filings because little information about state court cases is available. I describe first the constellation of empirical claims made by the PLRA’s supporters, and then what we
know about individual inmate cases — especially their subject matter and
changing numbers over time. My task here is analogous to that undertaken
more generally by a large group of scholars, mostly writing in the Law and
Society tradition, who have attempted to answer anecdotes about abusive
and frivolous litigation with systematic data 20 — the primary difference
being that more of the inmate docket is low-merit than such scholars typically describe.
In Part II, I continue the examination of the inmate docket, looking at
the outcomes of the cases — how many get dismissed, how many settled,
how many tried, and with what result. The purpose is again to report what
actually goes on (or, more precisely, what went on in cases filed prior to
1996; for later filings, the PLRA’s enactment and the large number of stillpending cases complicates interpretation), and to compare inmate and noninmate case outcomes. Several findings emerge: Inmates fare worse than
all other federal court plaintiffs in all measures of success. But they none–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
sion from someone similarly well-informed, see, for example, Burbank, supra note 17, discussing Congress’s new assertion of rulemaking authority and the challenge it poses to the judiciary’s rulemaking
process, and observing that “[i]f, however, the Civil Justice Reform Act was a wake-up call, the Private
Securities Litigation Act of 1995 was a fire alarm.” Id. (footnote omitted).
19 See, e.g., Judicial Improvement Act of 1998, S. 2163, 105th Cong. § 3 (proposing limits on how
long prospective relief can last in any case against state or local governmental officials); 144 CONG.
REC. S6181 (daily ed. June 11, 1998) (statement of Sen. Ashcroft) (describing the bill as “expanding
provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act to cover other local and state instit utions”); 146 CONG.
REC. H1089 (daily ed. March 16, 2000) (debate over the Private Property Rights Implementation Act of
2000, H.R. 2372, 106th Cong., comparing the proposed modification of court procedures for constit utional takings claims to the PLRA).
20 Marc Galanter discusses the early work in this tradition in The Turn Again st Law: The Recoil
Against Expanding Accountability, 81 T EX. L. REV. 285, 300 & nn.83–88 (2002), and lists a sampling
of the relevant literature in An Oil Strike in Hell: Contemporary Legends About the Civil Justice System , 40 ARIZ. L. REV. 717, 721–22 n.14 (1998) [hereinafter Galanter, Oil Strike].

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theless settle a large portion of the cases that survive motions practice. In
addition, inmates win punitive damages in an extraordinarily large portion
of their trial victories. I assess the causes of both findings, and also the
stakes of inmate cases.
Continuing to focus on in-court effects, I move next to the impact of
the PLRA. Part III summarizes the provisions of the 1996 statute as well
as the legal regime it replaced. Part IV examines the impact of the PLRA
on filings and outcomes, arguing that the PLRA did indeed reduce the
quantity of inmate lawsuits but that its interventions were far from neutral
for constitutionally meritorious cases, which it simultaneously made more
difficult both to bring and to win.
Part V substantially broadens the frame, looking outside the courthouse
to the operational and deterrent effects of individual inmate litigation on
jail and prison administrators. The relevant antecedents to this Part are sociolegal inquiries into how legal authority and fear of liability get translated into organizational practice, and more general academic and judicial
theorizing about “deterrence,” “overdeterrence,” and what I call “antideterrence” (a tendency to encourage the very behavior sought to be deterred).
The Part ends with a brief look at the preliminary evidence about the
changes the PLRA is causing in these areas. Part VI offers some concluding thoughts.
My project is, thus, a hybrid. This Article is in large part an empirical
undertaking, with varied sources. I have examined all the quantitative systematic data available — data from records of district court cases coded by
court clerks as relating to “prisoner civil rights” or “prison conditions.” I
have audited and supplemented this data using hundreds of actual case
docket sheets, which are more reliable and far more detailed. I also have
conducted a written survey of administrators of state departments of corrections and large and small jails, with good if not amazing response rates.
I have conducted dozens of interviews of correctional and detention
administrators and their lawyers, litigation officers, corrections experts,
plaintiffs’ lawyers, court personnel and researchers, and others.21 And I
have
read a good many of the rich memoir accounts of life in prison (by
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
21 Telephone interviews with Elizabeth Alexander, Director, ACLU National Prison Project (Mar. 6,
2001); Calvin L. Beale, Senior Demographer, Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (May 16, 2002); John Boston, Director, Prisoners’ Rights Project of the Legal Aid Society of New
York (Spring 2002); Patrick Bradley, Superintendent, Suffolk County (Mass.) House of Correction
(Mar. 30, 2001); Kevin C. Brazile, Assistant County Counsel, Los Angeles County (Apr. 24, 2002);
Jean Bysse, General Counsel, Prison Health Services (Mar. 5, 2003); Catherine Campbell, prisoners’
attorney (May 7, 2001); William C. Collins, Editor, Correctional Law Reporter (Apr. 18, 2001); Gary
W. DeLand, corrections consultant, former Executive Director, Utah Department of Corrections (Mar.
26, 2001); Bernard J. Farber, Editor-in-Chief, Americans for Effective Law Enforcement publications
(Apr. 2, 2001); David C. Fathi, attorney, ACLU National Prison Project (Mar. 5, 2001); Chuck Fissette,
litigation officer, Duval County (Fla.) Jail (Mar. 29, 2000); Captain Alan Griner, legal counsel, Leon
County Sheriff’s Office (Mar. 28, 2001); Caitlin Halligan, New York Solicitor General (May 13, 2002);
Edward Harrison, President, National Commission on Correctional Health Care (Mar. 5, 2003); Sarah
Vandenbraak Hart, former Philadelphia prosecutor, current Director, National Institute of Justice (May

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read a good many of the rich memoir accounts of life in prison (by both
inmates and correctional officers), as well as academic writing on corrections.22 But in addition to its empirical base, the piece builds on economically minded litigation theory, more traditional legal scholarship on constitutional tort litigation, and sociolegal inquiry into how law functions in
organizational contexts.
Throughout, I aim not only to illuminate inmate litigation using whichever tools seem most appropriate to each subtopic,23 but also to put these
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
30, 2002); Thomas C. Hnatowski, Chief, Magistrate Judges Division, Administrative Office of the U.S.
Courts (Apr. 29, 2002); Gerard Horgan, Superintendent, Suffolk County (Mass.) Jail (Apr. 13, 2001);
Susan Hunter, Chief, Prisons Division, National Institute of Corrections (Apr. 5, 2001); Virginia Hurley,
Operations Manager, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts (Jan. 14, 2003); Thomas W.
Hussey, attorney, Office of Immigration Litigation, U.S. Department of Justice (Spring 2001); Richard
A. Jaffe, Chief, Judicial Impact Office, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (May 3, 2002); W.
Kenneth Katsaris, Florida corrections consultant, former Leon County (Fla.) Sheriff (May 11, 2001);
Kathleen Kenney, Deputy General Counsel, Federal Bureau of Prisons (May 4, 2001); Patrick King,
Senior Deputy Attorney General, Litigation Division, Nevada Attorney General’s Office (Sept. 5, 2001);
Elizabeth Koob, plaintiffs’ attorney specializing in prisoner damage actions (May 22, 2002); Dan R.
Larsen, Assistant Attorney General, Utah Attorney General’s Office (Apr. 2001); Joseph D. Lehman,
Secretary, Washington Department of Corrections (May 1, 2001); Patricia Lombard, Senior Researcher,
Federal Judicial Center (May 1, 2002); Robert Lowney, Chief, District Court Administration Division,
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (Apr. 30, 2002); Mel Mahoney, Vice President, Correctional
Medical Services (Mar. 5, 2003); Susan Munsat, former State Initiatives counsel, National Association
of Attorneys General (May 1, 2002); Gary McWilliams, Vice President, Correctional Medical Services
(Mar. 5, 2002); Vincent Nathan, frequent special master in prison cases (Aug. 16, 2001); James Pauley,
Director, Government Affairs, National District Attorneys Association (May 2, 2002); Michael J. Pybas,
Senior Litigation Counsel, Federal Bureau of Prisons (Feb. 17, 2002); William G. Saylor, Director, Office of Research and Evaluation, Federal Bureau of Prisons (Apr. 11, 2001); Dora Schriro, thenDirector, Missouri Department of Corrections (May 30, 2001); Donna Smith, Director of Risk Services,
National Association of Counties (June 25, 2002); Richard L. Stalder, Secretary, Louisiana Department
of Public Safety and Corrections (Spring 2001); Sue Ann Unger, Senior Deputy Attorney General,
Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office (June 4, 2002); Reginald A. Wilkinson, Director, Ohio Depart ment of Rehabilitation and Correction (Apr. 27, 2001); Thomas E. Willging, Senior Researcher, Federal
Judicial Center (Mar. 22, 2001); Paul Wright, inmate and Editor, Prison Legal News (May 15, 2002);
Ruth A. Zittrain, (non-prisoner) plaintiffs’ attorney (Apr. 8, 2002); Joyce A. Zoldak, Associate General
Counsel, Federal Bureau of Prisons (Feb. 22, 2001).
22 These sources are cited throughout as relevant. I have some personal knowledge of the subject as
well because I used to sue jails and prisons as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S.
Department of Justice. This knowledge, I should note, is of quite limited use in this Article’s context
— I worked entirely on large injunctive cases, which are not my subject here. Still, it should be obvious that any conclusions expressed here are mine and have nothing to do with the Justice Department.
23 I have, that is, tried to meet the challenge posed by my subject matter. As Deborah Hensler
writes, “many of the civil justice phenomena that need study are not suited to current quantitative analytic techniques,” so qualitative research is necessary.
But such research should follow,
she continues:
standards . . . [that] derive from the same methodological paradigms that more quantitative
analysts use: observing a large enough number of courts, lawyers, judges, or disputes; including the variety that exists among the population; and using techniques that are systematic
enough so that another researcher using the same approach could expect to uncover the same
facts. A researcher needs to provide enough raw descriptive information to enable a critic to
decide whether the story constructed from these observations is supported by the data, or
whether a contrary story is equally plausible.

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sources in generative conversation with each other. Understanding how
this and any other flavor of litigation 24 work requires a combination of
theoretical open-mindedness and a highly concrete grasp of the institutional settings in which the litigation operates. This is, in sum, an institutional microanalysis — a form of inquiry often urged25 but somewhat less
often attempted.
I. INMATE LITIGATION TRENDS
Congress enacted the sweeping changes of the Prison Litigation Reform Act based on a highly critical vision of the effects of inmate litigation. In September 1995, Senator Orrin Hatch, Chair of the Senate Judic iary Committee, introduced the Act on the Senate floor. In his speech,
Hatch explained the goals of the legislation:
This landmark legislation will help bring relief to a civil justice system overburdened by frivolous prisoner lawsuits. Jailhouse lawyers with little else to
do are tying our courts in knots with an endless flood of frivolous litigation.
Our legislation will also help restore balance to prison conditions litigation and
will ensure that Federal court orders are limited to remedying actual violations
of prisoners’ rights, not letting prisoners out of jail. It is past time to slam shut
the revolving door on the prison gate and to put the key safely out of reach of
overzealous Federal courts. . . . While prison conditions that actually violate
the Constitution should not be allowed to persist, I believe that the courts have
gone too far in micromanaging our Nation’s prisons.26

These were the basic themes of supporters of the PLRA. Their reform,
they said, had two targets: frivolous litigation by inmates, especially by
recreational “frequent filers” (part of my subject in this Article); and population caps and other inappropriate regulatory orders imposed on prisons
and jails by prisoners’-rights crusaders on the federal bench who had
seized control of state and local systems (a subject for another day). The
PLRA thus marked the thematic joining of conservative tort reform and
anti-judicial-activist rhetoric.27
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Deborah R. Hensler, Researching Civil Justice: Problems and Pitfalls, 51 L. & CONTEMP. P ROBS. 55,
63 (1988).
24 Cf. Marc Galanter, The Life and Times of the Big Six; or, the Federal Courts Since the Good Old
Days, 1988 W ISC. L. REV. 921, 951–53 (urging scholars and policymakers interested in litigation to
disaggregate available case data into subject matter cohorts so specific issues may be analyzed without
reliance on mere anecdote).
25 See, e.g., Edward L. Rubin, The New Legal Process, the Synthesis of Discourse, and the Microanalysis of Institutions, 109 HARV. L. REV. 1393 (1996).
26 141 CONG. REC. S14,418 (daily ed. Sept. 27, 1995) (statement of Sen. Hatch). Hatch was introducing S. 1279, a bill version nearly identical to the enacted statute.
27 The PLRA and its habeas-reform counterpart, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act
of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (Apr. 24, 1996) (amending 28 U.S.C. §§ 2244, 2253–
2255, and adding 28 U.S.C. §§ 2261–2266), were only one component of the litigation reform program
on the Contract with America agenda of the 104th Congress. Other measures proposed included: the
Common Sense Product Liability and Legal Reform Act, H.R. 956, 104th Cong. (1995), see William J.

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Critiques of inmate litigation did not, of course, originate in the Congress. The PLRA was put on the agenda of the 104th Congress (via the
1994 Republican Contract with America, which included a pledge to enact
the Taking Back Our Streets Act, a broad statute that included the earliest
version of the PLRA)28 by the potent alliance of the National Association
of Attorneys General (NAAG) and the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA). NAAG, which came to the topic first, led the charge against
what it characterized as frivolous inmate cases (these received more of the
focus in the House). The NDAA took the lead against population caps in
particular and court orders in general (these received more of the focus in
the Senate).29 Members of these groups wrote early drafts of many PLRA
provisions, gathered the information and anecdotes cited in support of the
bill, and worked hard to secure its passage.30 The state attorneys general
of NAAG and the local prosecutors of the NDAA in turn relied on longexisting strands of scholarship and policy analysis,31 as well as their own
experience and interests. In 1995, they found ready allies, particularly in
members of Congress whose states were the sites of particular and long–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Clinton, Message on Returning Without Approval to the House of Representatives the Common Sense
Product Liability Legal Reform Act of 1996, in 32 W KLY. COMP. P RES. DOC. 780, May 31, 1996 (vetoing a bill that would have imposed a variety of controls for products liability cases, including punitive
damages caps); Attorney Accountability Act of 1995, H.R. 988, 104th Cong. (passed by the House, but
not the Senate, under threat of veto); Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Pub. L. No. 104-67, 109
Stat. 737 (1995) (codified in scattered sect ions of 15 U.S.C.) (passed over presidential veto, see 109
Stat. 765 (1995)). The merger of tort -reform and anti-judicial activism rhetoric has been a broader
trend as well. See Charles R. Epp, The Fear of Being Sued: Variations in Perceptions of Legal T hreat
Among Managers in the United States 1 (Paper Presented at the Law & Society Association, Budapest,
Hungary, July 4–7, 2001) (on file with author) (“The national Republican party in recent election campaigns has labored to construct the ‘litigation explosion’ and ‘judicial activism’ as twin enemies.”).
28 CONTRACT W ITH AMERICA, supra note 8, at 53.
29 The difference in emphasis in the two chambers is evident from the hearings held in each. Com pare Hearing on H.R. 3, supra note 9, with Prison Reform: Enhancing the Effectiveness of Incarceration: Hearing on S. 3 Before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 104th Cong. (1995).
30 Hart Interview, supra note 21; Pauley Interview, supra note 21. (Hart and Pauley were both active players in the NAAG and NDAA campaign.)
31 See, e.g., FEDERAL JUDICIAL CENTER, REPORT OF THE STUDY GROUP ON THE CASELOAD
OF THE SUPREME COURT (1972), reprinted in 57 F.R.D. 573, 586–88 (1972) (Paul A. Freund, Chairman) (“The number of these petitions found to have merit is very small, both proportionately and absolutely. . . . It is satisfying to believe that the most untutored and poorest prisoner can have his complaints or petitions considered by a federal judge, and ultimately by the Supreme Court of the United
States. But we are, in truth, fostering an illusion.”); Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice Burger Issues
Yearend Report, 62 A.B.A. J. 189, 190 (1976) (“Federal judges should not be dealing with prisoner
complaints which, although important to a prisoner, are so minor that any well-run institution should be
able to resolve them fairly without resort to federal judges.”); I LA JEANNE SENSENICH, FEDERAL
JUDICIAL CENTER, COMPENDIUM OF THE LAW ON P RISONERS’ RIGHTS 10–11 (1979) (“[I]t is generally agreed that most prisoner rights cases are frivolous and ought to be dismissed under even the
narrowest definition of frivolity. . . . Most of the money damage claims, realistically evaluated, could
be handled by a small claims court at the state level.”). (U.S. Magistrate Sensenich wrote her Compendium in connection with the Federal Judicial Center’s Committee on Prisoner Civil Rights.)

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standing contention over inmate litigation. 32 In the first heady days of Republican control of both chambers of Congress, prisoners made awfully
attractive targets — and Republican leaders vying for support from the
party faithful were happy to outbid one another in anti-criminal
33
toughness.
The government
officials and legislators who were the driving force
behind the PLRA presented the following account of the cases: inmates,
they said, were unduly litigious, making federal cases out of the most trivial mishaps; the cases were deluging both executive and judicial officials
who were supposed to respond to them, and the serious cases therefore
risked getting drowned out by the frivolous; and the entire apparatus led to
remarkably few successes for inmates.34 Their conclusion seems logically
compelled: inmate litigation was a wasteful system demanding drastic
amendment, even all-but-complete elimination.
The official critics of inmate litigation did not, of course, present anything like a balanced view of the inmate docket. As is typical in litigationreform efforts (and, perhaps, in most of lawmaking), they instead used
stylized anecdotes and gerrymandered statistics.35 The critics’ arguments
about inmate cases were summed up by Letterman-like “Top Ten Frivolous
Filings Lists,” compiled by NAAG members.36 Two such lists made it
into the Congressional Record;37 many others were released by state attorneys general back home.38 The lists were full of silly lawsuits about topics
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
32
33

Hart Interview, supra note 21.
ACLU National Prison Project director Elizabeth Alexander recalls that Senators Dole and
Gramm, both presidential hopefuls, seemed to be competing to be the toughest. Alexander Interview,
supra note 21.
34 In all but its last clause, this account should look entirely familiar to anyone who has read about
the tort reform wars. And the PLRA’s method will look equally familiar. As Marc Galanter has summarized, the tort reformers’ ideas for
needed reforms, it turns out, make it more difficult for individual claimants to use the system
to challenge corporate entities, reduce levels of accountability, place ceilings on remedy, and
in some cases move organizational disputes with workers, customers, and patients from public forums into ‘alternative’ forums sponsored by the corporation itself.
Galanter, Oil Strike, supra note 20, at 719. Galanter is a stalwart opponent of tort reform — but this
description seems to me factually entirely accurate, if skeptical in tone.
35 Cf. id. at 725 (arguing that the “jaundiced view” of litigation pushes “three kinds of items: global
characterizations, atrocity stories, and assertions about aggregate patterns”).
36 See Press Release, Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, CALA Praises Attorneys General Efforts;
Officials Working To Stop Frivolous Lawsuits by Prisoners (Aug. 2, 1995) (on file with author) (praising the “move by the National Association of Attorneys General” and describing the coordinated release
of “Top 10 lists” by twenty-four attorneys general).
37 141 CONG. REC. S14,629 (daily ed. Sept. 29, 1995) (statement of Sen. Kyl) (“Top 10 List: Frivolous Inmate Lawsuits in Arizona”; “Top 10: Frivolous Inmat e Lawsuits Nationally”). For other examples of purportedly frivolous lawsuits, see 141 CONG. REC. S14,626–27 (daily ed. Sept. 29, 1995)
(statement of Sen. Hatch); 141 CONG. REC. S14,413–14 (daily ed. Sept. 27, 1995) (stat ement of Sen.
Dole); id. at S14,418 (statement of Sen. Kyl); 141 CONG. REC. S7524–25 (daily ed. May 25, 1995)
(stat ement of Sen. Dole).
38 See, e.g., Francie Noyes, Most Frivolous Inmate Lawsuits on Woods’ List, ARIZ. DAILY STAR,
Aug. 2, 1995, at 1B, available at 1995 WL 3278735 (Arizona); Kris Newcomer, Norton’s Top 10 Lawsuits: Attorney General Compiles a List of Wildest Inmate Claims, ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS (Den-

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like melted ice cream39 and mind control devices.40 Perhaps the paradigmatic case, as described by NAAG members, was about peanut butter: “an
inmate sued, claiming cruel and unusual punishment because he received
one jar of chunky and one jar of creamy peanut butter after ordering two
jars of chunky from the prison canteen.”41 (The peanut butter case thus
took its place in the pantheon of outrageous lawsuits, a long with spilled
McDonald’s coffee,42 damage to a patient’s psychic powers by a CAT
scan,43 and, back in the inmate realm, the Church of steak and wine.44)
Some of the lawsuits were indeed just as trivial as presented, though others
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ver), Aug. 3, 1995, at 4A, available at 1995 WL 3205653 (Colorado); Associated Press, No Matter Too
Trivial for State’s Inmates: Frivolous Inmate Lawsuits Cost Taxpayers $2 Million a Year, Attorney General Says, ORLANDO SENTINEL, Aug. 3, 1995, at C3, available at 1995 WL 9702762 (Flo rida); Barb
Albert, Attorney General Seeks To End Frivolous Suits, I NDIANAPOLIS STAR, Nov. 15, 1994, at A1
(Indiana); Dianne Williamson, Frivolous Litigation Is “a Joke”: AG’s Bill Would Stop Prisoners’ Absurdity, SUNDAY TELEGRAM (Worcester, Mass.), July 2, 1995, at B1, available at 1995 WL 4277894
(Massachusetts); Carl Manning, State Is Working To Cut Number of Inmates’ Suits, ST. LOUIS P OSTDISPATCH, June 26, 1994, at 7D, available at 1994 WL 8166723 (Missouri); Ed Vogel, Prisoner Litigation Targeted, LAS VEGAS REV.-J., Aug. 2, 1995, at 3B, available at 1995 WL 5798649 (Nevada);
Eugene Kiely, State Targets Frivolous Suits by Inmates, RECORD (Northern New Jersey), Aug. 2, 1995,
at A3, available at 1995 WL 3473469 (New Jersey); Associated Press, Vacco Targets Frivolous Lawsuits Filed by Inmates, BUFFALO NEWS, June 13, 1995, at A4, available at 1995 WL 5481447 (New
York) [hereinafter Associated Press, Vacco Targets Frivolous Lawsuits]; James Bradshaw, Inmates
Would Pay Costs of Frivolous Suits, COLUMBUS DISPATCH, Aug. 2, 1995, at 2B, available at 1995
WL 8809288 (Ohio); Ron Jenkins, State Attorney General Campaigns for Federal Restraints on Inmate
Suits, J. REC. (Okla. City), Aug. 3, 1995, available at 1995 WL 6388853 (Oklahoma); Brett Lieberman,
Prisoner Suits: They Want Their MTV, HARRISBURG PATRIOT, Aug. 2, 1995, at A2, available at 1995
WL 5071930 (Pennsylv ania) [hereinafter Lieberman, Prisoner Suits]; Stephen Hunt, Graham: Put Lid
on Prisoners’ Lawsuits, SALT LAKE T RIB., Aug. 2, 1995, at B1, available at 1995 WL 3149959 (Utah).
39 Associated Press, Vacco Targets Frivolous Lawsuits, supra note 38 (New York).
40 Lieberman, Prisoner Suits, supra note 38 (Pennsylvania).
41 Dennis C. Vacco, Frankie Sue del Papa, Pamela Fanning Carter & Christine O. Gregoire, Letter
to the Editor, Free the Courts from Frivolous Prisoner Suits, N.Y. T IMES, Mar. 3, 1995, at A26 (letter
from Attorneys General of New York, Nevada, Indiana, and Washington).
42 Liebeck v. McDonald’s Rests., P.T.S., Inc., No. CV-93-002419, 1995 WL 360309 (D.N.M. Aug.
18, 1994). The plaintiff suffered very severe burns when she spilled coffee on her lap. The jury
awarded $200,000 in compensatory damages (less 20% for comparative negligence) and $2,700,000 in
punitive damages. The trial judge later reduced the punitive award to $480,000, and the case was ultimately settled for an amount not disclosed. For a comprehensive report of the McDonald’s coffee trial
and its subsequent cultural reception, see Michael McCann, William Haltom & Anne Bloom, Java Jive:
Genealogy
of
a
Juridical
Icon,
56
U.
MIAMI
L.
REV.
113,
119–20, 128, 130 (2001).
43 The case, Haimes v. Temple University Hospital, 39 Pa. D. & C.3d 381 (Pa. Ct. Com. Pl. 1986),
is discussed in Galanter, Oil Strike, supra note 20, at 726–28. The plaintiff, who worked as a “spiritual
adviser,” had suffered a severe allergic reaction to the dye used for the CAT scan; the jury was instructed to award her damages for the immediate reaction only — not for any claimed loss of psychic
powers. In any event, her jury award was set aside by the trial judge, and she was eventually nonsuited
prior to retrial.
44 See Theriault v. Silber, 453 F. Supp. 254, 260 (W.D. Tex. 1978) (denying religious recogn ition to
the Church of the New Song — CONS — and noting that plaintiffs’ “one attempt at a paschal type
feast produced a tongue-in-cheek request for prison authorities to supply steak and wine”).

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were less so.45 And the counterpunches offered by the PLRA’s opponents
were no more systematic. Prisoners’ rights advocates publicized their own
“Top Ten Non-Frivolous Lawsuits,” which were filled with horror stories
that had led to both individual and court-order lawsuits.46 The debate,
then, was a war of extremes, and generally failed to mention any lessanecdotal evidence. But less-anecdotal evidence is both available and important for assessing either the value or the function (or dysfunction) of
inmate litigation. Accordingly, my goal in this Part is to correct the omission.
In section A, I collect and present prior research by others, summarizing and explaining the broad scope of inmate cases’ subject matter. In section B, I take up the issue of inmate litigiousness or, as sometimes alleged,
hyperlitigiousness. I conclude that while inmates are extraordinarily more
litigious than noninmates in federal court, the obvious differential disappears once it is recognized that the appropriate comparison should include
state-court filing rates as well. I then discuss some possible causes of any
slight differential in tendency to file lawsuits. In section C, I set out longitudinal data on inmate case filings, and observe, as have others before me,
that although the number of inmate filings in federal court rose over time
(until 1996, that is), the increase was largely driven by rising incarceration.
Here, what I am adding to prior scholarship is more detailed, accurate, and
up-to-date information on filing rates; some statistical support relating to
the connection between filings and inmate population; and a working hypothesis about the proportion of the inmate case docket filed by jail inmates. In section D, assessing the charge that the mass of trivial or friv olous cases filed by inmates has actually rendered courts unwilling or
unable to find and process the serious cases, I adduce relevant quantitative
evidence (in particular, Administrative Office data not previously discussed
by scholars) as to the time spent by federal judges on inmate cases. I conclude that it does seem to be true that judges and court staff spent remarkably little time on the average inmate case.
A. The Varied Subject Matter of Inmate Litigation
This Article’s quite extended look at inmate civil rights litigation requires clarity about the subject matter of the cases. The several published
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
45 Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jon Newman invest igated the three frivolous-sounding
cases described by several Attorneys General in a letter to the New York Times. See Vacco et al., supra
note 41. Newman researched each of the cases discussed in the letter, and found them far less trivial
than the descriptions, which he described as “at best highly misleading and, sometimes, simply false.”
Jon O. Newman, Pro Se Prisoner Litigation: Looking for Needles in Haystacks, 62 BROOK. L. REV.
519, 520 (1996) (detailing fin dings).
46 Paul Wright & Dan Pens, Prison Legal News’ Top Ten Non-Frivolous Prisoner Lawsuits, in T HE
CELLING OF AMERICA 58, 58–61 (Daniel Burton-Rose with Dan Pens & Paul Wright eds., 1998);
ACLU National Prison Project, The Top Ten Non-Frivolous Lawsuits Filed by Prisoners (Feb. 11,
1996), at http://www.prisonwall.org/ten.htm.

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detailed inquiries into district court inmate case dockets47 relate quite consistent accounts, together establishing that four leading topics of correctional-conditions litigation in federal court are physical assaults (by correctional staff or by other inmates), inadequate medical care, alleged due
process violations relating to disciplinary sanctions, and more general living-conditions claims (relating, for example, to nutrition or sanitation). 48

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
47 Assessing case subject matter requires laborious field research looking at case files. (Reported
judicial opinions are not at all reliable as a window into the filed docket, since only a small and decidedly nonrandom portion of the docket results in published opinions. See, e.g., Eisenberg & Schwab,
What Shapes Perceptions, supra note 15, at 535.) I am aware of eight such field studies, which between them cover inmate cases filed at various times in a large number of federal district courts from
1971 to 1994. They are: William S. Bailey, The Realities of Prisoners’ Cases Under 42 U.S.C. Section
1983: A Statistical Survey in the Northern District of Illinois, 6 LOY. U. CHI. L.J. 527, 529, 550 tbl.2
(1975) (examining all 366 § 1983 cases filed by inmates in the federal district court for the Northern
District of Illinois in 1971 and 1973); Turner, When Prisoners Sue, supra note 15, at 616 (1979) (examining 664 inmate civil rights cases filed or terminated between 1975 and 1977 in five district courts —
the District of Massachusetts, the Eastern District of Virginia, the District of Vermont, the Northern District of California, and the Eastern District of California); Eisenberg, Section 1983, supra note 15, at
524, 530 (examining all 212 § 1983 cases filed by prisoners in 1975 and 1976 in the Federal District
Court for the Central District of California); T HOMAS, P RISONER LITIGATION, supra note 15, at 117–
19 tbl.5e (examining all 3232 inmate civil rights findings filed between August 1977 and 1986 in the
federal district court for the Northern District of Illinois); HANSON & DALEY, REPORT ON SECTION
1983 LITIGATION, supra note 14, at 8 (examining a random sample of 2738 § 1983 inmate litigation
cases terminated in sixteen large federal district courts in 1992); Howard Eisenberg, Rethinking Prisoner Cases, supra note 15, at 455–56 (examining all 737 inmate civil rights suits filed in 1991 in the
district courts for the Southern District of Illinois and the Eastern District of Arkansas, and 200 of the
800 such cases filed in the Eastern District of Missouri); Kim Mueller, Note, Inmates’ Civil Rights
Cases and the Federal Courts: Insights Derived from a Field Research Project in the Eastern District
Court of Califo rnia , 28 CREIGHTON L. REV. 1255, 1284–85 (1995) (examining all fifty-three inmate
civil rights cases filed in April 1991 in the Eastern District of California); Henry F. Fradella, In Search
of Meritorious Claims: A Study of the Processing of Prisoner Cases in a Federal District Court, 21
JUST. SYS. J. 23, 28 & n.4 (1999) [hereinafter Fradella, In Search of Meritorious Claims] (examining a
random sample of 200 cases filed in 1994 and terminated prior to February 1997).
48 The following table summarizes eight prior studies of inmate litigation, listing the portion of each
studied docket in each of these categories:

Source
Bailey, supra note 47, at
550–51 tbl.2.
Turner, When Prisoners Sue,
supra note 15, at 623 & n.78.
Eisenberg, Section 1983,
supra note 15, at 555 tbl.VI.
T HOMAS, P RISONER
LITIGATION, supra note 15,
at 117–19 tbl.5e.

Assaults

% of total docket
Medical
Care
Discipline

Conditions

16.9%

13.4%

32.5%

13%i

7.5–10.4%ii

20–25%iii

3.7–18.8%

5–12%

8.5%iv

13.2%

12.7%

5.2%

18.1%

10.8%

12.0%

5.3%

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Less frequent but often seen are complaints about freedom of speech, free
exercise of religion, and access to courts or mail. In addition, a significant
portion of what is usually counted as part of the “inmate civil rights”
docket actually consists of filings that less comfortably fit this classific ation. A small but noticeable percentage of filings are placed in the category by court clerks because their plaintiffs are in prison or jail, though the
cases actually concern alleged tortious conduct by non-correctional defendants (usually police). And many more of the cases seek to challenge their
plaintiffs’ terms of confinement, based on alleged infirmities in the original
convictions, in calculation of sentence, or in parole or probation decisions. 49 The decision to file such cases as ordinary civil complaints rather
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
HANSON & DALEY,
REPORT ON SECTION 1983
LITIGATION, supra note 14,
at 17 tbl.3.
Howard Eisenberg,
Rethinking Prisoner Cases,
supra note 15, at 457.v
Fradella, In Search of
Meritorious Claims,
supra note 47, at 34 tbl.5.
Mueller, supra note 47,
at 1285–86.

21%

17%

13%

13%

17.3%

17%

16.3%

13%vi

6.2%

14.8%

6.9%

11.4%

21.2%

19.2%

11.5%

can’t tell

Table notes: (i) This figure is an extrapolation; (ii) Staff brutality only — no discussion of violence between inmates; (iii) D. Vt. not included; (iv) Includes “guard harassment” and “mistreatment by other
inmates”; (v) Figures are averaged across three districts; (vi) Includes 7% in segregation units.
49 The following table summarizes the same eight studies’ findings about the portion of the studied
inmate dockets not involving conditions of confinement:

Source
Bailey, supra note 47, at 550–51
tbl.2.
Turner, When Prisoners Sue, supra
note 15, at 623.
Eisenberg, Section 1983, supra note 15,
at 555 tbl.VI.
T HOMAS, P RISONER LITIGATION, supra note 15, at 117–19 tbl.5e.
HANSON & DALEY, REPORT ON
SECTION 1983 LITIGATION, supra note
14, at 17 tbl.3.
Howard Eisenberg, Rethinking Prisoner
Cases, supra note 15, at 457.
Fradella, In Search of Meritorious
Claims, supra note 47, at 34 tbl.5.

% of total docket
Nonprison
Challenges to
defendants
conviction, etc.
None listed

34.4%

Combined: over 20% in
each district except D. Vt.
8.5%

42.0%

5.3%

18.6%

3%

12%

None listed
9.7%
(averaged across the three subject districts)
None listed

10.3%

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than as petitions for a writ of habeas corpus is their plaintiffs’, but under
current doctrine, it is a disqualifying mistake.50
It seems from this listing that notwithstanding the many top-ten lists,
inmates’ civil rights suits, at least in federal court (where the information
is), mostly concern real hardships inherent in prison life, not peanut butter.
Of course, the categories I mention could be capacious enough that even
lawsuits about peanut butter (or mind-control or other sillinesses) are hidden in them. But the researchers who did the work compiling the categories and putting cases in them say otherwise.51 The lawsuits may be obviously legally nonmeritorious — suing immune defendants, or alleging
mere negligence rather than deliberate indifference, say. They may even
be full of lies (something researchers have no way of telling). But the best
evidence available demonstrates that the 1995 top-ten lists’ major accusation — that typical inmate complaints were, on their face, trivial, laughable, and obviously undeserving of serious concern, much less legal accountability — was incorrect.
The above topic analysis covers only the federal civil rights suits; there
are also a good many suits, about which far less is known, brought under
state law and non-civil rights federal causes of action. 52 So while the top–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Mueller, supra note 47, at 1285–86.

None listed — but this may be
the result of the selection criteria

50 See Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 487 (1994) (“[W]hen a state prisoner seeks damages in a
§ 1983 suit, the district court must consider whether a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would
necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence; if it would, the complaint must be
dismissed unless the plaintiff can demonstrate that the conviction or sentence has already been
invalidated.”); Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 500 (1973) (“[W]hen a state prisoner is challenging
the very fact or duration of his physical imprisonment, and the relief he seeks is a determination that he
is entitled to immediate release or a speedier release from that imprisonment, his sole federal remedy is
a writ of habeas corpus.”).
51 Ted Eisenberg noted in 1982 that “[a]s is true of nonprisoner cases, most prisoner section 1983
complaints are not plainly trivial assertions implicating little or no federal interest.” Eisenberg, Section
1983, supra note 15, at 538. Thomas’s observations in the Northern District of Illinois were that 38%
of prison conditions cases were screened out as meritless (though not necessarily frivolous), and then
about 60% of the remaining cases resulted in some kind of plaintiffs’ relief. THOMAS, P RISONER
LITIGATION, supra note 15, at 177 tbl.7b. He summarizes: “the high proportion of prisoner suits receiving some relief (about half) suggests that there are far fewer frivolous cases than commonly assumed.” Id. at 120–21. Hanson and Daley found that only 19% of the cases they looked at were dismissed as frivolous. HANSON & DALEY, REPORT ON SECTION 1983 LITIGATION, supra note 14, at
20 tbl.5. Fradella noted that only six of 290 claims (in 200 cases) were “factually absurd”; he characterized another nine as “I don’t like it” claims. Fradella, In Search of Meritorious Claims, supra note
47, at 47 tbl.12. And Howard Eisenberg conceded that many inmate cases were unsuccessful, legally,
because of “restrictive decisions in previous cases,” but he emphasized that his file reviews demonstrated to him that the cases “present serious claims that are supported factually,” and that the “most
‘frivolous’ cases are neither fanciful, ridiculous, nor vexing.” Howard Eisenberg, Rethinking Prisoner
Cases, supra note 15, at 440.
52 Inmates typically enforce their federal constitutional rights using the federal Civil Rights Act of
1871, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2000), which authorizes private suits in federal or state court against nonfederal government actors for violation of federal rights. Constitutional lawsuits against federal official

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ten lists are misleading as general characterizations of inmate litigation’s
subject matter, there is a reality that underlies state and local officials’ feeling that they are overwhelmed by lawsuits over a huge range of issues:
they are. Indeed, individual inmate civil rights litigation itself covers a far
wider range of topics than most federal civil rights litigation. The reason
is the one the Supreme Court noted in a much-quoted passage from Preiser
v. Rodriguez:
For state prisoners, eating, sleeping, dressing, washing, working, and playing
are all done under the watchful eye of the State, and so the possibilities for
litigation under the Fourteenth Amendment are boundless. What for a private
citizen would be a dispute with his landlord, with his employer, with his tailor,

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
defendants proceed similarly, though without statutory authorization. See Bivens v. Six Unknown
Named Agents of the Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971). But lawsuits may be founded on
a variety of nonconstitutional bases as well. The relevant areas of law vary a good deal by jurisdiction.
Federal inmates can file administrative claims and eventually Administrative Procedure Act lawsuits
relating to discipline and other grievances, including those about lost and damaged property and workplace injuries. On discipline, see 28 C.F.R. § 541.19 (2001), which provides for administrative appeals
of Federal Bureau of Prisons disciplinary decisions. On grievances in general, see 28 C.F.R. pt. 542
(2001), which establishes the Administrative Remedy Program. On workplace injuries in particular,
see 18 U.S.C. § 4126(c)(4) (2000), requiring compensation for inmates’ work injuries, and 28 C.F.R. pt.
301 (2001), establishing the Inmate Accident Compensation program. On the availability under the
Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 706 (2000), to federal inmates of judicial review for arbitrary
and capricious decisions, see, for example, Thompson v. U.S. Federal Prison Industries, 492 F.2d 1082,
1084 (5th Cir. 1974). In many circumstances, federal inmates seeking compensation for a variety of
personal injuries also can first file administrative claims, 28 C.F.R. §§ 543.30–.32, and then federal
court cases under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b), 2401(b), 2671–2680 (2000). See
United States v. Muniz, 374 U.S. 150 (1963) (allowing Federal Tort Claims Act lawsuit by federal prisoners for personal injuries caused by the negligence of government emplo yees).
State and local inmates can file analogous lawsuits in state court, under a variety of common-law
and statutory causes of action. Because so little information is available about state filings by nonfederal inmates and non-civil-rights filings by federal inmates, the rest of this Article focuses on federal
civil rights filings by inmates and, in particular, those federal court filings classified by the various district court clerks’ offices as “prisoner civil rights” cases. But I pause here to note that such data as are
available demonstrate that state-court litigation is an important piece of the litigation landscape: a very
gross estimate might be that about a quarter of what prison and jail officials think of as inmate litigation
is currently filed in state court. I derive this estimate from twenty-five responses to a survey I sent last
year to all fifty state prison systems as well as large jails around the country. The proportion of litigation in state court varied widely: four agencies estimated that 15% or less of their litigation was in state
court; four estimated between 20% and 40%; five estimated 50%; seven between 60% and 75%; and
three estimated 90%. The average estimate was 50% — but the agencies that reported a lower percent age of state litigation also tended to report more litigation overall. Adding up all reported litigation
across agencies, one quarter of the total was in state court. This simple sum is not very satisfactory
methodologically, but additional analyses and fuller results of the survey are beyond the scope of this
Article and will be reported in a future publication. For now, suffice it to note that a 25% estimate is
not inconsistent with the tiny bit of evidence available elsewhere. See Dean J. Champion, Jail Inmate
Litigation in the 1990s, in AMERICAN JAILS: P UBLIC P OLICY I SSUES 197, 211 (Joel A. Thompson &
G. Larry Mays eds., 1991) [hereinafter AMERICAN JAILS] (reporting a declining proportion of civil
rights litigation in state court by inmates in seventy-one non-randomly chosen jails, from over half in
1981 to one-third in 1985).

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with his neighbor, or with his banker becomes, for the prisoner, a dispute with
the State.53

That is, first, more types of injuries are federally actionable for inmates
than for people whose relationships with the state are less all-embracing. 54
And second, in any area of law in which inmates retain legal rights similar
to those of noninmates, those rights tend to run not against many different
persons, firms, or agencies, but against one litigating opponent — the
prison or jail that holds them, which is bound to feel unusually burdened
by the resulting litigation.
B. Inmate Litigation Rates
The comparatively broad scope of constitutional rights in prison and
jail explains not only the variety of topics in inmate litigation, but also inmates’ filing rates in federal courts, which, as the litigation’s critics have
emphasized, have long been extremely high. 55 The national average shows
a dramatic filing difference between inmates and noninmates. In 1995, for
example, inmates filed federal civil rights cases at the rate of about twentyfive per 1000 inmates;56 noninmates, in contrast, filed civ il suits in federal
court at a rate of about 0.7 per 1000 noninmates.57 So nationally, inmates
filed about thirty-five times as frequently as noninmates.
Disaggregated, both inmate filing rates and their trends over time have
varied enormously from state to state and even from prison to prison. In
1993,58 Iowa had the highest state rate: nonfederal inmates there filed law–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
53
54

Preiser, 411 U.S. at 492.
Compare Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104 (1976) (holding that “deliberate indifference to
serious medical needs of prisoners” violates the Eighth Amendment), and Youngberg v. Romeo, 457
U.S. 307, 324 (1982) (holding that a mentally retarded person involuntarily committed to a government
institution has “constitutionally protected interests in conditions of reasonable care and safety”), with
DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 201 (1989) (distinguishing Estelle
and Youngberg , and holding that, ordinarily, state and local governments have no constitutional obligation to protect citizens from harm by private actors).
55 See, e.g., Cleavinger v. Saxner, 474 U.S. 193, 211 (1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (“With less
to profitably occupy their time than potential litigants on the outside, and with a justified feeling that
they have much to gain and virtually nothing to lose, prisoners appear to be far more prolific litigants
than other groups in the population.”); 141 CONG. REC. S7524 (daily ed. May 25, 1995) (stat ement of
Sen. Dole).
56 See infra Table I.A.
57 The Administrative Office reports that 162,268 nonprisoner/nonforfeiture cases were filed in federal district court in 1995 (bankruptcy filings not included), ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE OF THE U.S.
COURTS, JUDICIAL BUSINESS OF THE UNITED STATES COURTS: 1995 REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR 144
tbl.C-3 [hereinafter JUDICIAL BUSINESS: 1995], while the total U.S. population in 1995 was
262,803,000, see U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Reports, in STATISTICAL ABSTRACT OF THE
UNITED STATES: 2001, at 16 tbl.14.
58 I chose 1993 for this computation because it is the last year before the PLRA for which state-bystate jail population data are available. For jail population data, see BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS,
U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , NATIONAL JAIL CENSUS, 1993 (ICPSR Study No. 6648, July 13, 1996)
[hereinafter
BUREAU
OF
JUSTICE
STATISTICS,
1993
JAIL
CENSUS],
at

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suits at a rate of over eighty cases per 1000 inmates. Massachusetts and
North Dakota had the lowest: nonfederal inmates there filed only three or
four petitions per 1000 inmates. Nearly as much variability exists among
prisons. Wisconsin conducted an audit of its own inmate litigation from
1988 to 1992 and found that the litigation rate at its most litigious facility
(a maximum security men’s prison) was over five times the rate at another
maximum security men’s prison, and nearly fifteen times the rate of litigation at the least lit igious facility (a medium security men’s prison).59 Not
only do the rates vary by state, but the trends do as well. 60 Still, while this
detail may be interesting for a full assessment of inmate filings, it is
clearly the general situation that inmates file more federal claims, proportional to their population, than do noninmates. But the Supreme Court’s
point in Preiser suggests that comparison of inmates’ and noninmates’ fe deral filing rates is misleading. For noninmates, grievances analogous to
inmate cases (against “landlord[s],” “tailor[s],” “neighbor[s],” or
“banker[s],” for instance) are lit igated in sta te rather than federal court.
And noninmate filing rates are vastly higher in state court than in federal
court. In 1995 , the nation’s state courts reported nearly fifteen million filings; excluding family and traffic cases, overall filing rates were fifty-six
per 1000 population 61 — double the inmate federal filing rate.62 Even if
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080 /ICPSR -STUDY/06648 .xml. For other data and compilation, see
Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3. Using data from 1995 , Lynn Branham makes a sim ilar
point. See LYNN S. BRANHAM, CRIMINAL JUSTICE SECTION, AM. BAR ASS’ N, LIMITING THE
BURDENS OF PRO S E I NMATE LITIGATION: A T ECHNICAL-ASSISTANCE MANUAL FOR COURTS ,
CORRECTIONAL OFFICIALS, AND ATTORNEYS GENERAL 23–27 (1997) [hereinafter BRANHAM, PRO
S E I NMATE LITIGATION].
59 Derived from BRANHAM, PRO SE I NMATE L ITIGATION, supra note 58 , at 26 tbl.2 (report in g
1993 research by the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau).
60 Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3.
61 Figures derived from BRIAN J. OSTROM & NEAL B. KAUDER, E XAMINING THE WORK OF STATE
COURTS, 1995: A NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE FROM THE COURT STATISTICS P ROJECT 19 (1995). Because
Georgia and Pennsylvania did not report, neither the numerator nor the denominator includes figures
from those states.
62 For many states, total filing figures include probate and other estate cases as well. But when estate cases are subtracted, the state filing rate drops only by three per 1000 population. See id. at 17
(estimating estate cases at twelve percent of the unified and general jurisdiction docket, and under two
percent of the limit ed jurisdiction docket). And a good many cases — as much as forty percent —
were brought by corporations rather than individuals. But even corporate cases resolve disputes
among natural persons. This estimate is derived from BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T
OF JUSTICE , SPECIAL REPORT : CIVIL JUSTICE SURVEY OF STATE COURTS, 1992: CONTRACT CASES
IN L ARGE COUNTIES 2 tbl.1, 3 tbl.3 (1996); and BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP’ T OF
JUSTICE , SPECIAL REPORT, CIVIL JUSTICE SURVEY OF STATE COURTS, 1992: T ORT CASES IN
LARGE COUNTIES 4 tbl.5 (1995). These sources report that there were about 764,000 civil cases in the
categories of tort, contract, and real property disposed of in state courts in the nation’s seventy-five
largest counties between July 1, 1991 and June 30, 1992. Of this total, 354,000 of the tort cases (93.6%
of all tort cases) and 94,000 of the contract cases (25.7% of all contract cases) were brought by individuals. No information is provided on the nature of the plaintiffs in real estate cases. Assuming (implausibly but conservatively) that none of the real estate cases were brought by individuals, 58% of the
cases in the sampled docket were brought by individual plaintiffs. The full state court docket also in-

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inmates file as many cases in state court as they do in federal court (a very
high estimate of state court filings — it’s more likely that inmates file only
one-third as many cases in state court as in federal court63), the total (state
and federal) inmate filing rate approximates the total noninmate filing rate.
Oddly enough, given Preiser’s prominence, I am not aware of any prior
scholarship that has undertaken this analysis, though it seems to me crucial
for any fair account of inmate litigiousness.
It is important to note, however, that the litigation rate per person does
not really capture what is usually meant by “litigiousness” — something
more like a “taste” for litigation as a means of resolving disputes. As
Deborah Hensler has commented:
Most researchers would agree that measuring litigiousness requires relating the
number of claims or suits filed (or some other measure of litigation) to the
number of opportunities that arise. At best, however, researchers tracking the
amount of litigation nationwide have been able to relate aggregate filings only
to population. By themselves, such data do not show much about the propensity to sue.64

Researchers have found that in many (non-automobile) contexts, unincarcerated people file lawsuits around ten percent as often as they experience
a loss of at least $1000 that they blame on someone else.65 Whether inmates’ claiming behavior is similar is unknown. It is not implausible that
inmates are more likely to bring lawsuits over their disputes, all else equal,
than noninmates. After all, inmates’ relationship with the state is highly
negative, so the frequently observed neighborly avoidance of litigation in
the interest of an ongoing amicable relationship 66 seems inapplicable. And
inmates obviously lack the option of problem-solving by “exit” rather than
by “voice,” 67 and they have plenty of time on their hands. There may be
something about prison culture, too, that stigmatizes “lumping it,” as theorists, following Felstiner, 68 often term a decision not to seek a remedy for
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
cludes, especially, small claims — which presumably are more often filed by individual plaintiffs. See
OSTROM & KAUDER, supra note 61, at 17 (reporting that in 1995, small claims made up 22% of the
caseload in unified and general jurisdiction courts in seventeen states and 32% of the caseload in limited jurisdiction courts in twelve states). So, again, estimating corporate filings at 40% of state court
dockets is, if anything, too high.
63 This estimate is explained above. See supra note 52.
64 Hensler, supra note 23, at 56 (footnotes omitted).
65 See, e.g., David M. Trubek, Austin Sarat, William L.F. Felstiner, Herbert M. Kritzer & Joel B.
Grossman, The Costs of Ordinary Litigation, 31 UCLA L. REV. 72, 86–87 (1983) (reporting that 11.2%
of all disputes between individuals involving at least $1000 result in a lawsuit).
66 See, e.g., ROBERT C. E LLICKSON, ORDER W ITHOUT L AW: HOW NEIGHBORS SETTLE
DISPUTES 64 (1991) (concluding in the context of cattle trespass, that “[o]rdinary people, it seems, do
not often turn to attorneys to help resolve disputes”).
67 See generally ALBERT O. HIRSCHMAN, E XIT, VOICE AND L OYALTY: RESPONSES TO DECLINE
IN FIRMS, ORGANIZATIONS, AND STATES (1970).
68 William L.F. Felstiner, Influences of Social Organization on Dispute Processing, 9 L. & SOC’ Y
REV. 63, 81 (1974). See generally William L.F. Felstiner, Richard L. Abel & Austin Sarat, The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blam ing, Claiming . . ., 15 L. & SOC’ Y REV. 631

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an event conceptualized as an injury. Prison memoirs and accounts by observers are replete with the idea that, in prison, to “lump” a grievance is to
be perceived as weak and thereby to be rendered an attractive target for
predators.69 This attitude could easily contribute to litigiousness over what
outsiders might consider to be minor annoyances. For example, Kenneth
Parker, the poster child for the anti-inmate lawsuit forces, explained to the
New York Times why he brought his lawsuit over peanut butter: “It was just
the idea of them taking something from me . . . . If I didn’t file the suit, I
would have felt like I was punked out. Like you could take anything from
me and get away with it.”70
Yet presumably at least some inmates avoid suing because they are
afraid of retaliation; one survey found that inmates were more likely to
have observed jailhouse lawyers being disciplined than any other group of
prisoners.71 The prevalence of such retaliation is unknown, but retaliation
certainly occurs.72 And regardless of retaliation’s real prevalence, the survey results demonstrate that inmates believe it happens, which is the point
here.
Whatever the impact of these factors (which would tend respectively to
boost and dampen inmate propensity to litigate), ultimately the evidence is
clear: once state and federal filings are combined, inmates and noninmates
have comparable per capita civil litigation rates. Unless everyone in
America is hyperlitigious,73 the charge of inmate hyperlit igiousness proves
inapt.
C. Inmate Filing Rates over Time: The “Deluge”
The next piece of the PLRA advocates’ case was that inmate suits had
skyrocketed and were deluging both courts and state and local governments. Figures I.A and I.B present the number of newly filed complaints
categorized since 1970 by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts as
pertaining to “prisoner civil rights” or “prison conditions,” together with
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
(1980–1981) (exploring the processes by which injury is or is not perceived, does or does not yield a
grievance, and does or does not yield a dispute).
69 See, e.g., Norval Morris, The Contemporary Prison: 1965–Present, in T HE OXFORD HISTORY
OF THE P RISON: T HE P RACTICE OF P UNISHMENT IN W ESTERN SOCIETY 227, 231 (Norval Morris &
David J. Rothman eds., 1995) (diary of a prisoner, explaining this dynamic).
70 Ashley Dunn, Flood of Prisoner Rights Suits Brings Effort To Limit Filings, N.Y. T IMES, Mar.
21, 1994, at A1 (internal quotation marks omitted).
71 T HE PRISON DISCIPLINE STUDY, T HE P RISON DISCIPLINE STUDY: E XPOSING THE MYTH OF
HUMANE I MPRISONMENT IN THE UNITED STATES (1991), reprinted in CRIMINAL I NJUSTICE :
CONFRONTING THE P RISON CRISIS 92, 96 (Elihu Rosenblatt ed., 1996).
72 See, e.g., Sisneros v. Nix, 884 F. Supp. 1313, 1323–24, 1333–35 (S.D. Iowa 1995) (describing
retaliation against an inmate who filed several grievances concerning prison policy).
73 The broad charge of American hyperlitigiousness, of course, animates many of the noninmate tort
reform efforts around the country. As the Contract with America put it, “[a]lmost everyone agrees that
America has become a litigious society: We sue each other too often and too easily.” CONTRACT
WITH AMERICA, supra note 8, at 144.

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filing rates per 1000 inmates. Table I.A presents the same data in more detail and includes inmate population figures.
Before I discuss the trends set out in the figures and table, two methodological points are important to underscore. First, the filings numbers in
Table I.A are somewhat different from the figures published annually by
the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. For a variety of reasons I
have, here and elsewhere, relied on my own manipulations of the Administrative Office’s raw data (described in more depth in the Data Appendix)
rather than on its published numbers. With respect to the current filings
discussion, the published filings numbers are quite appropriate for analy zing court workload (which is the primary reason the Administrative Office
collects its data). But for my purpose — scrutiny of litigation trends and
burdens — the published numbers inflate total filings, because they record
each time a case file is opened or reopened in any district court. 74 Thus
many cases are counted twice or more: cases that are transferred from one
district to another, or closed by the district court and then reopened for
some reason (for example, on remand from the court of appeals). In addition, using raw data allows calculation of a consistent statistical year.
(When I analyze outcomes, below, the assembled database becomes not
simply more accurate but absolutely necessary, because the published tables do not cover outcomes at all.)
In addition, the filing rates I set out below differ even more dramatically from those used in prior scholarship,75 because figures presented in
both Justice Department publications and prior academic discussions 76
were calculated using inmate population data from prisons only, completely omitting the one-third of the nation’s inmate population housed in
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
74 In 2001, for example, the Administrative Office reported 250,907 “total filings,” of which
203,931 were listed as “original” and 30,683 were “removals from state courts.” The remaining 16,293
filings were “remands,” “reopens,” “transfers,” or “cases of unknown origin” — each of which was also
counted at least one other time when it was itself “original.” See JUDICIAL BUSINESS OF THE UNITED
STATES COURTS: 2001 REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR 44 tbl.S-7. The charts that separate out cases by
“nature of suit” — including inmate civil rights — include only “total” numbers. Id. at 130 tbl.C-2.
Moreover, as I describe in the Data Appendix, infra, it is possible to detect numerous other cases that
are actually reopenings though classified by the Administrative Office as “original” filings.
75 See, e.g., Eisenberg & Schwab, Constitutional Tort Litigation, supra note 15, at 667 tbl.IV; Marc
Galanter, The Day After the Litigation Explosion, 46 MD. L. REV. 3, 16 tbl.2 (1986) [hereinafter Galanter, The Day After].
76 See, e.g., SCALIA, P RISONER P ETITION T RENDS, supra note 14, at 4 tbl.3. This is just an example of the broad tendency of observers of inmate litigation — indeed, observers of much about
corrections — to ignore jails. See, e.g., Michael O’Toole, Jails and Prisons: The Numbers Say They
Are More Different than Generally Assumed, AM. JAILS MAG. (1996) [hereinafter O’Toole, Jails and
Prisons], http://www.corrections.com/aja/mags/articles/toole.html. To be completely clear about my
terms, a “jail” is paradigmatically a county or city facility that houses pretrial defendants who are
unable to make bail, misdemeanant offenders, relatively short -term felony offenders (the term varies by
state — most often, it’s under a year, but it can be far more), and short- and long-term offenders
awaiting transfer to a state prison. A prison, by contrast, is a state (or federal) facility that houses longterm felony offenders. For more on the operative differences between jails and prisons, see infra
section V.B.1.

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local jails. Leaving jail inmates out of the denominators for litigation rates
would make sense if suits against jail officials were rare. But the available
evidence from field research establishes that there are a great many jail
cases,77 a fact that supports Table I.A’s inclusion of jail inmates in calculations of overall inmate filing rates.
But while Table I.A presents one filing-rate figure per year, that is not
to say that jail and prison inmates file cases at the same rate.78 Indeed, reanalyzing the same field research actually allows a ballpark estimate of the
relation between the filing rates of jail inmates and those of state prisoners.
The method by which I have derived this estimate is conceptually simple
(though somewhat complicated to carry out). I compared the amount of
jail litigation found in two studies with the number of jail inmates in the
relevant jurisdictions during the relevant time frame. The first study, by
Hanson and Daley, found that about one-third of inmate cases involved
jails, in districts that (taken together) turn out to have had an incarcerated
population about evenly split between jails and prisons.79 Thus, jail in–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
77 Three published studies include data on jail versus prison litigation. In the largest of the studies,
which randomly selected inmate cases terminated in 1992 in sixteen large district courts, Hanson and
Daley found just over a third of the cases they examined involved jails. HANSON & DALEY, REPORT
ON SECTION 1983 L ITIGATION, supra note 14, at 8, 16. Their sample was pulled from: M.D. Ala.,
N.D. Cal., M.D. Fla., S.D. Fla., N.D. Ind., S.D. Ind., M.D. La., E.D. La., E.D. Mo., W.D. Mo.,
E.D.N.Y., S.D.N.Y., E.D. Pa., W.D. Pa., N.D. Tex., and S.D. Tex. The general conclusion that jail inmates bring a large number of lawsuits is buttressed by two other studies. Jim Thomas looked at inmate civil rights cases in the Northern District of Illinois and found that fifteen percent of those filed
between 1977 and 1986 were brought by jail inmates. See THOMAS, P RISONER LITIGATION , supra note
15, at 122 tbl.5g. Henry Fradella looked at a sample of 200 inmate civil rights cases filed in 1994 and
terminated by early 1997 in two of the divisions of the federal district court for the District of Arizona,
and found that half were filed by jail inmates. See Fradella, In Search of Merito rious Claims, supra
note 47, at 29.
78 There are two ways to think of filing rates. A rate could be calculated from the typical number of
inmates in a given facility or set of facilities — either by average daily population or by a sample oneday count. This is what I have chosen to do, using the one-day count done at year-end by prisons and
mid-year by jails. A rate could, however, be calculated instead from annual admissions figures, which
record how many people are taken into a given facility in a given year. This would make sense in some
ways — the filing rate would represent the proportion of people who came into contact with an instit ution who decided to sue it. If filing rates were by admissions rather than a populat ion count, jail inmates’ filing rate would look vastly lower, because in the course of a year, jails admit over twenty times
as many people as they house on any given day. See O’Toole, Jails and Prisons, supra note 76.
79 See HANSON & DALEY, REPORT ON SECTION 1983 L ITIGATION, supra note 14, at 16. The
overrepresentation of jail inmates occurred because this study focused on large district courts, which are
typically in urban areas, where jail inmates are concentrated. My population estimate is derived as follows: I used data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics 1990 Prison Census, and 1988 and 1993
Jail Censuses. BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP’ T OF JUSTICE , CENSUS OF STATE AND
FEDERAL ADULT CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES, 1990 (ICPSR Study No. 9908, last updated Dec. 21,
2001),
at
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080/
ICPSR-STUDY/09908.xml; BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE, NATIONAL
JAIL CENSUS, 1988 (ICPSR Study No. 9256, last updated June 24, 1997), at http://
www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080/ICPSR-STUDY/09256.xml; BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, 1993 JAIL
CENSUS, supra note 58. Because the censuses do not include federal court district information, I first
pulled out facilities in the relevant states and then added in district information, after looking up the

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mates filed at one-half the rate of prison inmates. The second study, by
Thomas, found t hat jail inmates brought fifteen percent of all inmate litigation, in a district in which, by my calculation, jail inmates made up sixty
percent of the incarcerated population. 80 In that sample, the jail litigation
rate was about twelve percent of the prison litigation rate.81 In sum, while
it is clear that jail inmates often sue their jailers, they appear to sue at a
substantially lower rate than prison inmates.82 It may be possible to use
statistical methods to gain a more systematic sense of the relationship be–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
addresses from the censuses. Occasionally, where address information was missing in the census, I
used the name of the facility or its county code. I was unable to figure out the federal court district for
seven prisons and thirty -one jails, but they were small facilities, holding less than 0.3% of the total
relevant population, and I therefore simply left them out. In order to compare jails and prisons, I
needed populations in the same year. So to approximate the 1990 jail population, I took the 1988 jail
population and added two-fifths of the increase between 1988 and 1993 . Using this estimate, fifty -two
percent of the incarcerated population in Hanson and Daley’s districts lived in jails in 1990 .
80 See T HOMAS, P RISONER L ITIGATION, supra note 15 , at 122 tbl.5g. Like Hanson and Daley’s,
Thomas’s study was of an urban district (the Northern District of Illinois), which explains the overrepresentation of jail inmates. My methodology for deriving an estimate of the population split between
jails and prisons in the Northern District of Illinois was similar. I looked at the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1984 Prison Census and 1983 Jail Census. BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T OF
JUSTICE , CENSUS OF STATE ADULT CORRE CTIONAL FACILITIES, 1984 (ICPSR Study No. 8444, last
updated
Apr.
22,
1997),
at
http://www.icpsr.
umich.edu:8080 /ICPSR -STUDY/08444 .xml; BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T OF
JUSTICE , NATIONAL JAIL CENSUS, 1983 (ICPSR Study No. 8203 , last updated Feb. 13 , 1997 ), at
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080 /ICPSR -STUDY/08203 .xml. Significant unde rrepresentation of jail
inmates among the group of litigating prisoners makes some sense, because Thomas’s study district
included the Illinois prison Stateville, which has long been famous for its jailhouse lawyers. See , e.g.,
Cooper v. Pate, 378 U.S. 546, 546 (1964 ) (allowing a lawsuit by an inmate in Stat eville to proceed, in
the first modern inmate civil rights decision by the U.S. Supreme Court); see also JAMES B. JACOBS,
STATEVILLE: T HE P ENITENTIARY IN MASS SOCIETY 37 (1977 ) [hereinafter JACOBS, STATEVILLE]
(describing official efforts to squelch the activities of Stateville’s inmate writ -writers); THOMAS,
P RISONER LITIGATION, supra note 15 , at 87. For my work on both Thomas’s and Hanson and Daley’s
data, see Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3.
81 For each study, the comparison of the jail filing rate to the prison filing rate is equal to the ratio
of (jail filing proportion/jail population proportion) to (prison filing proportion/prison population
proportion).
82 The only data that suggest otherwise come from Henry Fradella’s study of inmate civil rights
suits in two divisions of the District of Arizona. Fradella found that jail inmates brought half of the
cases in his study. I estimate that at the relevant time, jail inmates made only about thirty percent of the
incarcerated population in the areas covered. (I used data from the Bureau of Just ice Statistics 1993
and 1999 Jail Censuses and 1995 Prison Census to derive the est imate. See BUREAU OF JUSTICE
STATISTICS, 1993 JAIL CENSUS, supra note 58; BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T OF
JUSTICE , NATIONAL JAIL CENSUS, 1999 (ICPSR Study No. 3318, last updated Aug. 16, 2002) [hereinafter
BUREAU
OF
JUSTICE
STATISTICS,
1999
JAIL
CENSUS],
at
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080/ICPSR-STUDY/03318.xml; BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATIS- TICS, U.S.
DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , CENSUS OF STATE AND FEDERAL ADULT CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES, 1995
(ICPSR
Study
No.
6953, Apr.
20,
1998),
at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080/
ICPSR-STUDY/06953.xml.) Jail inmates, then, filed at twice the rate prison inmates did. But the defendant in nearly all of the jail suits in Fradella’s study was the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. See
Fradella, In Search of Meritorious Cases, supra note 47, at 30 tbl.1. Maricopa County Sheriff was at
the time (and continues to be) Joe Arpaio, who boasts of being “America’s toughest sheriff” and has the
litigation docket to prove it. See infra pp. 1679–80.

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tween the jail and prison rates without further field research, by joining
available information on jail and prison populations by state and by year
with information on filing trends by state. But this awaits future research;
for present purposes, it is enough to say that if the Hanson and Daley and
Thomas studies yield a representative range of the proportion of individual
inmate cases filed by jail inmates, jail inmates file between six and twenty
percent of the individual inmate cases against nonfederal defendants in
federal court — far too high a percentage to ignore.83 For this reason, Table I.A includes jail inmates in its filing-rate calculations.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
83 The estimate is calculated as follows: Jail inmates constitute one-third of the total inmate population. If, as I derive from the Thomas study, their filing rate is 12% of prison inmates’ filing rate, then
jail inmates file four cases (12 ? 1/3) for every sixty-seven cases (100 ? 2/3) prison inmates file. The
jail inmates’ four cases amount to 5.7% of the total of the two categories, seventy-one. If, as I derive
from the Hanson and Daley study, jail inmates file at one-half the rate prison inmates do, then they file
16.67 cases (50 ? 1/3) for every sixty-seven cases prison inmates file — which makes 20% of the sum.

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TABLE I.A: INMATE P OPULATION AND CIVIL RIGHTS F ILINGS
IN F EDERAL DISTRICT COURT , 1970–2001 84
Incarcerated population (all figures
are for people in custody)
Fiscal
year of
filing
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001

Total
357,292

454,444
503,586
556,814
612,496
647,449
683,057
744,208
800,880
858,687
950,379
1,078,935
1,148,702
1,219,014
1,295,150
1,369,185
1,476,621
1,585,586
1,646,256
1,743,643
1,816,931
1,893,115
1,931,339
1,955,705

Inmate civil rights filings in
federal district court
NonState
Federal
federal Federal
prison,
prison,
Jail,
defendefenyear-end year-end mid-year Total
dants
dants

176,391
177,113
174,379
181,396
196,105
229,685
248,883
258,643
269,765
281,233
295,819
333,251
375,603
394,953
417,389
451,812
486,655
520,336
562,605
629,995
684,544
728,605
778,495
828,566
904,647
989,004
1,032,676
1,074,809
1,113,676
1,161,490
1,176,269
1,181,128

20,038
20,948
21,713
22,815
22,361
24,131
29,117
30,920
26,285
23,356
23,779
26,778
27,311
28,945
30,875
35,781
39,781
42,478
44,205
53,387
58,838
63,930
72,071
80,815
85,500
89,538
95,088
101,755
110,793
125,682
133,921
143,337

160,863

158,394
183,988
196,785
209,582
223,551
234,500
256,615
274,444
295,873
343,569
395,553
405,320
426,479
444,584
459,804
486,474
507,044
518,492
567,079
592,462
605,943
621,149
631,240

2267
3163
3620
4646
5559
6523
7076
8335
10,068
11,681
13,047
16,302
16,793
17,485
18,300
18,445
20,324
22,005
22,582
23,647
24,004
24,331
28,530
31,679
36,551
39,008
38,223
26,132
24,345
23,705
23,598
22,206

2106
2949
3373
4233
5156
6004
6661
7810
9473
11,094
12,439
15,483
16,019
16,719
17,377
17,560
19,506
21,231
21,661
22,580
22,814
23,355
27,501
30,614
35,153
37,649
36,770
25,002
23,185
22,566
22,412
20,973

161
214
247
413
403
519
415
525
595
587
608
819
774
766
923
885
818
774
921
1067
1190
976
1029
1065
1398
1359
1453
1130
1160
1139
1186
1233

Filings per
1000 inmates (estimates)
6.3
(8.8)
(10.2)
(12.8)
(14.7)
(15.8)
(16.2)
(18.5)
22.2
(24.6)
25.9
29.3
27.4
27.0
26.8
24.8
25.4
25.6
23.8
21.9
20.9
20.0
22.0
23.1
24.8
24.6
23.2
15.0
13.4
12.5
12.2
11.4

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
84

For year-end state prison population figures in 1970, see U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , P RISON-

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*

Figure I.A: New Inmate Civil Rights Filings
in Federal District Court, 1970–2001
45,000
The PLRA
40,000

New complaints filed

35,000
30,000
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000

2000

1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

1988

1986

1984

1982

1980

1978

1976

1974

1972

1970

5000

Fiscal year of filing

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
STATE AND FEDERAL I NSTITUTIONS: 1968–1970, NAT’ L P RISONER STATISTICS BULL., Apr.
1972, at 22 tbl.10c. For the 1971 to 1974 figures, see U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , P RISONERS IN STATE
AND FEDERAL I NSTITUTIONS ON DECEMBER 31, 1974, NAT’L P RISONER STATISTICS BULL., June
1976, at 14 tbl.1. For the 1975 figures, see U.S. DEP’ T OF JUSTICE , P RISONERS IN STATE AND
FEDERAL I NSTITUTIONS ON DECEMBER 31, 1975, NAT’ L P RISONER STATISTICS BULL., Feb. 1977,
at 36 app. 2, tbl.1. For the 1976 figures, see U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , P RISONERS IN STATE AND
FEDERAL I NSTITUTIONS ON DECEM- BER 31, 1977, NAT’ L P RISONER STATISTICS BULL., Feb. 1979,
at 10 tbl.1. For figures covering 1977 to 1998, see BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T OF
JUSTICE , P RISONERS IN CUSTODY OF STATE OR FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL AUTHORITIES (2000),
available at http:// www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/data/corpop05.wk1. For figures covering 1998 to 2001, see
BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , P RISONERS IN 2001, at 2 tbl.1 (2002),
available at http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/p01.pdf.
For year-end federal prison population figures, see the sources cited supra , which contain information for both state and federal prisons.
For mid-year jail population figures in 1970, see LAW ENFORCEMENT ASSISTANCE ADMIN.,
U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , NATIONAL JAIL CENSUS 1970, at 10 tbl.2 (1971). For figures covering 1978,
1983, 1988, and 1993, see BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP’ T OF JUSTICE , JAIL I NMATES,
BY SEX, HELD IN LOCAL JAILS (1997), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/data/corpop09.wk1.
For figures covering 1980 to 2000, see BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE ,
CORRECTIONAL P OPULATIONS
IN
THE
UNITED
STATES (2002), available
at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/sheets/corr2.wk1.
In order to approximate filing rates for years for which jail population data are not available, I
have assumed a jail population of 160,000 in 1971 to 1977 and 170,000 in 1979.
ERS IN

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As Figure I.A shows, those who claimed in 1995 that inmate filings
had increased sharply had a point. Federal inmate civil rights suits rose
quite steadily throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with that increase accelerating in the early 1990s. (The 1996 enactment of the PLRA caused the
number of filings to drop precipitously, and filings have so far continued to
decline slightly each year.)
But absolute filing numbers alone are helpful only if the issue is litigation processing, not litigation rates. That is, the increase in filings in the
early 1990s clearly put pressure on federal court personnel85 and may even
explain the overwhelmed feelings of state and local officials and their lawyers, but the claim of “deluge” trades implicitly on an accusation of increasing litigiousness. For that, what is relevant are filing rates, not absolute numbers.86 As Figure I.B demonstrates, over the same period, the
federal civil rights filing rate per inmate followed quite a different trend: it
increased steadily through the 1970s but peaked in 1981, then dipped and
rose again several times until 1996, when it dropped sharply because of the
PLRA. The rate has declined slightly every year since.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
85 Judicial complaints about the litigation have come not from state benches but from federal ones.
The reason is probably that inmate litigation is a far, far smaller fraction of state than of federal civil
dockets. As discussed in the text, state courts see vastly more cases than federal courts do. See supra
p. 1576. So even if there were just as much state inmate litigation as federal, which is unlikely, the
inmate docket would be a tiny portion of the entire state docket, and so would feel less overwhelming.
86 See, e.g., Eisenberg & Schwab, Constitutional Tort Litigation, supra note 15, at 666–67; Galanter,
The Day After, supra note 75, at 18.

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35

The PLRA
30

25

20

15

10

2000

1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

1988

1986

1984

1982

1980

1978

1976

1974

0

1972

5

1970

New complaints filed per 1000 inmates incarcerated

Figure I.B: Federal Civil Rights Filing Rates per 1000 Inmates (Includes Inmates in State and Federal Prisons, and Local Jails)

Fiscal year of filing

Making the strongest case available to the advocates of the PLRA, I
should note that the filing rate increases of the early 1990s were quite significant. After eight filing rate decreases in ten years, the annual rate increases — and, therefore, very steep absolute increases — from 1992 to
1994 must have been alarming to those whose job it was to process and
respond to the complaints. And given the vast growth in incarceration, the
increase in filings was very large: had inmates filed in 1995 at the 1991
rate, 7300 fewer federal cases would have been begun. Nearly twenty percent of the 1995 inmate filings in federal district court stemmed from the
recent filing rate increase. A claim of deluge in 1995, though inappropr iately short-term as a justification for a permanent legislative change, was
substantially more reasonable than such a claim would have been three or
four years before. Nonetheless, because after 1981, annual increases in
inmate federal civil rights filings were primarily associated, in nearly every
state, with the growing incarcerated population,87 it would be equally ap–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
87 Researchers at the National Center for State Courts report that “analysis indicates that between
1972 and 1997, every increase of 10,000 in the state prison population is associated with an increase of
about 363 lawsuits filed,” and that “[t]he dynamic regression model explains 93 percent of the yearly
variance in the number of Section 1983 cases.” Fred Cheesman II, Roger Hanson, Brian Ostrom &

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propriate to talk about a “deluge” of inmate requests for food. A claim of
“deluge,” that is, seems not exactly inaccurate but rather inappropriately
cens orious.
D. Of Babies and Bath Water: The Processing of Inmate Cases
The New York Times article that essentially marked the beginning of the
anti- inmate -lawsuit campaign by the National Association of Attorneys
General concluded with a quotation by New York Assistant Attorney General Alan Kaufman. Kaufman told the Times: “It’s a struggle not to throw
out the baby with the bath water.”88 Congressional supporters of the
PLRA made similar arguments: “The crushing burden of these frivolous
suits makes it difficult for the courts to consider meritorious claims,” 89
Senator Hatch explained in one typical speech. It’s a politically appealing
argument. The frivolous cases are worse than a waste of time, the PLRA’s
proponents suggested; they pose an affirmative obstacle to appropriate adjudication of the more serious cases.90 And indeed, the charge that serious
cases have frequently been overlooked seems plausible. After all, even if
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Neal Kauder, Prisoner Litigation in Relation to Prisoner Population , CASELOAD HIGHLIGHTS :
EXAMINING THE W ORK OF STATE COURTS, Sept. 1998, at 4, 5 n. 10 [hereinafter Cheesman et al.,
Prisoner
Litigation ],
available
at
http://www.ncsconline.org/D_
Research/csp/Highlights/Prisoner%20 V4%20 No2.pdf. (A later version of the same paper with more
met hodological information is available as Fred Cheesman II, Roger A. Hanson & Brian J. Ostrom, A
Tale of Two Laws: The U.S. Congress Confronts Habeas Corpus Petitions and Section 1983 La wsuits,
22 L. & P OL’ Y 89 (2000 ) [hereinafter Cheesman et al., Tale of Two Laws]. I cite the first one because
the years covered fit my purposes better.)
I have not done a comprehensive analysis, but I did check these results by “panelizing” the data
into observations by state as well as by year. Next, I performed a series of two -way linear regressions
of annual filings against state prison population for each state. In every state but one (Rhode Island),
there is a positive correlation between the state prison population and filings. And in every state but
Rhode Island and Wyoming, the correlation is highly significant (p < .001 for nearly all of the tests).
The coefficients vary from six per 1000 (that is, an increase of 1000 inmates is associated with an increase of six filings) to 131 per 1000 , and the rank order of the states is quite similar to their typical
filing-rate rank. See Schlanger, Technical Appendix , supra note 3.
88 Ashley Dunn, Flood of Prisoner Rights Suits Brings Effort To Limit Filings, N.Y. T IMES, March
21, 1994, at A1.
89 141 CONG. REC. S14,627 (daily ed. Sept. 29, 1995) (statement of Sen. Hatch); see also, e.g., 141
CONG. REC. S19,114 (daily ed. Dec. 21, 1995) (statement of Sen. Kyl) (“If we achieve a 50-percent
reduction in bogus Federal prisoner claims, we will free up judicial resources for claims with merit by
both prisoners and nonprisoners.”).
90 A structurally analogous critique from observers far to the left of the PLRA’s advocates is that the
litigation system ratifies a socially destructive criminal justice system by providin g only the false appearance of judicial review of prison life. See, e.g., Tammy Landau, Due Process, Legalism and Inmates’ Rights: A Cautionary Note, 6 CANADIAN CRIMINOLOGY FORUM 151, 161 (1984) (“The few
occasions where prisons have been subject to judicial or public scrutiny have been unsuccessful in
guaranteeing inmates even the most basic ‘rights.’ Still, reformers persist in ‘incessant demands for
more doses of the same, a belief that more will work where less has not.’ However, the effects of such
reform ideology is [sic] to win public consent and support for efforts which, in fact, legitimately reorder
or re-form the social structure, with the convicted prisoner at the bottom of the social hierarchy.” (cit ation omitted) (quoting Richard V. Ericson, The State of Criminal Justice Reform (Paper Presented to the
Annual Meeting of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, Vancouver, 1983))).

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1587

inmates were not increasingly litigious during most of the relevant time period, it’s certainly true that the courts were facing more and more prisoner
petitions. As Justice Jackson wrote about prisoners’ habeas petitions in
Brown v. Allen, “[i]t must prejudice the occasional meritorious applic ation
to be buried in a flood of worthless ones. He who must search a haystack
for a needle is likely to end up with the attitude that the needle is not
worth the search.”91
Indeed, a number of careful observers have found such attitudes in
practice. There has seemed to be a wide divergence between what judges
have been doing and the nominal requirement that judges read pro se
pleadings especially generously. 92 For example, in 1982, Ted Eisenberg
based the following on his laborious review of inmate case files in the
Central District of California:
[U]pon investigation so many prisoner claims prove weak that it is easy to lose
objectivity in assessing the merits of their allegations. The conscientious judge
who allows cases to proceed beyond the pleading stage may find the claims
fabricated or distorted. He then becomes less eager to allow future cases to
proceed, and his decisions dismissing cases rarely receive substantive appellate
review. Perhaps for these reasons, federal magistrates and judges in Los Angeles appear to have become less than fully sensitive to prisoner claims. Their
inclination to resolve ambiguities in pleadings against pro se litigants is the
clearest outward manifestation of this attitude.93

And Eisenberg’s findings accord with those of many other commentators.94
Judges themselves occasionally confess their disinclination to give pro se
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
91
92

Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 537 (1953) (Jackson, J., concurring in the result).
See Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520–21 (1972) (reversing dismissal of a prisoner’s pro se
complaint, when the Court could not “say with assurance that under the allegations of the pro se complaint, which we hold to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers, it appears
‘beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle
him to relief’” (quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45–46 (1957))).
93 Eisenberg, Section 1983, supra note 15, at 544–45.
94 See, e.g., Douglas A. Blaze, Presumed Frivolous: Application of Stringent Pleading Requirements
in Civil Rights Litigation, 31 W M. & MARY L. REV. 935, 971–72 (1990); Howard Eisenberg, Rethin king Prisoner Cases, supra note 15, at 444 (suggesting that in “[m]any of the cases reviewed in Missouri, Illinois, and Arkansas for this article . . . there were serious questions whether the liberal pleading
rules were actually applied”). Roger Hanson argues that the Administrative Office’s procedural progress data disprove Ted Eisenberg’s assertion. Hanson looked at Administrative Office data for cases
from four districts in the 1980s, comparing inmate cases and private civ il cases resolved “before issue
joined” — that is, prior to the filing of an answer. Roger A. Hanson, What Should Be Done When Prisoners Want To Take the State to Court, 70 JUDICATURE 223, 225 tbl.1 (1987). He argues that because
disposition of the median inmate case in this procedural category took only a month less than the median noninmate case in the analogous cohort (173 days compared to 202 days), “these data do not indicate that these decisions are made hastily or without a careful consideration of the facts and the law.”
Id. at 224. In fact, it makes no sense to compare groups of cases based on when in the process they
were terminated, because Eisenberg’s very claim is that they are disposed of at an inappropriately early
point in the process. If anything, Hanson’s data support Eisenberg’s point, since in Hanson’s dataset
sixty-eight percent of inmate cases, but only twenty-nine percent of other civil cases, were disposed of

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pleadings a full and fair examination. Jim Thomas presents the following
transcript of a 1986 interview with a federal district judge:
What makes a good case? Well, the first thing that makes a good case is good
spelling, good typing, good grammar. You don’t see a lot of that in prisoner
cases . . . . If I can read it, I take the time to read it. If it’s illegible, I don’t
take the time to translate it. I just can’t. I don’t have the time.95

More quantitative information cannot confirm that inmate cases typically have gotten less time than they should , but it certainly confirms that
they have received very little judicial attention. An exhaustive time study
carried out between 1987 and 1993 by the Federal Judicia l Center (the research arm of the federal court system) found that the average inmate civil
rights case took under an hour of judge time, from filing to disposition.
Because relatively few inmate cases settle, and because a small number of
cases (the court order cases) can take up a very large amount of time indeed, an average of less than an hour means that judges spent little time
on the rest, even though most of these remaining cases were resolved by
courts rather than the parties.96 (No information is available on the more
revealing median. 97) Using the case weights that resulted from the Federal
Judicial Center time study, in 1996 (the last year before the PLRA really
had an impact on filings) inmate civil rights filings made up 14.7% of the
total district court new docket, but just 5.1% of the judges’ weighted
caseload. 98
Still, even if judges spent little time on prisoner cases, most district
courts adopted a variety of mechanisms intended to process inmate cases
more efficiently and with less involvement of judges, who often do not
like the cases. “Pro se lawclerks” (called “staff attorneys” in some districts), whose jobs are nearly entirely dedicated to processing inmate cases,
became common — currently district courts around the country have over
130 such employees, who split all or most of their time between habeas
and other inmate filings, depending on the district.99 And many of the dis–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
at this stage. Id. at 225 tbl.1. But without baseline information about the comparative merits of the
dockets, this comparison, too, is only suggestive.
95 T HOMAS, P RISONER L ITIGATION, supra note 15, at 146.
96 The Federal Judicial Center used its time study to assign “case weights” to all cases filed in the
district courts, to try to estimate how much judge time those cases consume. “Prisoner civil rights”
cases were assigned a case weight of .28 (with those classified as involving a federal defendant given a
case weight of .48). Federal Judicial Center, New Case Weights for Computing Each District’s
Weighted Filings Per Judgeship 6 (1994) (memorandum, on file with author). A case weight of 1.0 is
supposed to represent about three hours of judge time, so the .28 case weight means that the Administrative Office estimates that each prisoner case consumes about fifty minutes of judge time from start to
finish. Lombard Interview, supra note 21.
97 Lombard Interview, supra note 21.
98 See id.; ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE OF THE U.S. COURTS, JUDICIAL BUSINESS OF THE UNITED
STATES COURTS: 1996 REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR 380 tbl.X-1A [hereinafter JUDICIAL BUSINESS : 1996].
Inmate filing numbers are from Table I.A, supra.
99 Lowney Interview, supra note 21.

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trict courts’ 500-odd magistrate judges spent a significant amount of their
time on inmate cases — as much as half of their time in districts with the
largest inmate caseload, although generally less.100 What is impossible to
know without detailed and careful inquiry is whether these kinds of court
institutions ameliorate the problem Justice Jackson and Eisenberg identified, or instead exacerbate it by fostering concentrated exposure to inmate
cases.
To return to the PLRA’s supporters’ babies-and-bathwater argument that
high case volume has deterred courts from being good screeners of inmate
cases, the criticism is quite credible. It is difficult to see how judges could
adequately process so many non-settling cases in so little time. (There is,
however, a notable disconnect between the argument and Congress’s 1996
solution of drastic filing limits.)
II. OUTCOMES IN INMATE CASES (P RIOR TO THE PLRA)
For many years, observers have commented that the two central features of the inmate docket are the large number of cases, discussed in Part
I, and the low rate of success, discussed in this Part.101 I present the data
in section A, along with some comparative observations. In section B, I
address some reasons for the observed outcomes. If a successful case is
one that leads to a litigated victory or to a settlement, it’s not a new finding that inmate plaintiffs have very, very few successes.102 But I add sev–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
100 Hnatowski Interview, supra note 21. In fiscal year 1996, magistrate judges disposed of 20,479
“prisoner civil rights” cases — approximately ten percent of their civil nonevidentiary caseload. See
JUDICIAL BUSINESS: 1996, supra note 98, at 351 tbl.M-4A. And they held hearings in 1318 prisoner
civil rights cases, approximately thirty-one percent of their nontrial evidentiary work (civil and crim inal). See id. at 354 tbl.M-5.
101 See, e.g., ALDISERT REPORT , supra note 14, at 8–11 (noting that because of the high volume of
cases, many of which are frivolous, “it is difficult to ensure that the meritorious complaint is found and
given careful attention”); Howard Eisenberg, Rethinking Prisoner Cases, supra note 15, at 435–46
(identifying “volume and frivolity” as the “twin devils” of the inmate civil rights docket, though disagreeing with prevalent assumptions that the cases are nearly all frivolous).
102 Prior work quantifying inmate litigation success rates has not been presented in easily comparable formats, and has very often merged together categories that need to be separate for a real understanding of the case dispositions. But to summarize as best as possible: William Bailey examined the
dispositions of 218 cases, of which plaintiffs won four; he did not discuss settlements. Bailey, supra
note 47, at 531 & n.21. Of Turner’s sample of 664 cases, seven plaintiffs won temporary restraining
orders, five won preliminary injunctions, three won permanent injunctions, and two won damages.
Turner did not discuss settlements. Turner, When Prisoners Sue, supra note 15, at 661–63. In Ted
Eisenberg’s sample of 212 cases, one settled and three reached trial. Eisenberg, Section 1983, supra
note 15, at 554 tbl.V. Thomas’s evidence was vastly different and has largely been ignored — he reported that of 2900 cases in the Northern District of Illinois, 1048 settled and 130 reached trial, with
sixty-five plaintiffs’ victories for a total plaintiffs’ success rate of 34.4%. THOMAS, P RISONER
LITIGATION, supra note 15, at 177 tbl.7b. Hanson and Daley are not entirely clear, but seem to report
that 4% of their sample of 4483 was disposed of by settlement (“stipulated dismissal”). It may be,
however, that this is only a portion of the actual settlements. They report a trial rate of 2% but do not
set out the verdicts. HANSON & DALEY, REPORT ON SECTION 1983 LITIGATION, supra note 14, at
19 tbl.4. Combining the data compiled in Howard Eisenberg’s study of inmate case disposition in three

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eral things to prior knowledge. First, although inmates settle fewer cases
than do plaintiffs in any other category, the settlement rates among cases
that survive pretrial litigation are nonetheless quite high. As for litigated
outcomes, I present several findings and a methodological innovation.
Most broadly, defendants in inmate civil rights cases filed prior to 1996
typically won dismissals in about eighty percent of the cases; the rest were
settled or tried, and inmate plaintiffs won about ten percent of the trials.
All this confirms prior scholarship, though it is more detailed, more up-todate, and broader in both geographical and temporal scope. I do have several new findings as well: First, and most dramatically, inmates won punitive damages in over a fifth of their trial victories. In addition, I present
information on litigated case stakes, which have not previously been analyzed. The method by which I uncovered both the startling punitive damage result and the new stakes data is somewhat novel as well — and is
likely to prove extremely useful to future civil litigation researchers.
Section B then analyzes why inmate plaintiffs fare so poorly. The answers are not surprises. Low inmate success rates prior to the enactment
of the PLRA were the result of a constellation of factors. A large portion
of the inmate cases filed in the district court were, as the cases’ critics insisted, legally insufficient. But while this deficit did contribute to the end
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
different states reveals that on average, 9% of inmate cases were voluntarily withdrawn by plaintiffs,
with or without settlements; another 4% settled, and 4% were tried to verdict. Apparently, his sample
did not include any plaintiffs’ verdicts. Howard Eisenberg, Rethinking Prisoner Cases, supra note 15,
at 458. In Fradella’s study of dispositions in the District of Arizona, one of 200 cases was litigated to a
plaintiff’s victory, and five more settled. Plaintiffs’ success rates in this study are surely somewhat depressed by its exclusion of the 8.9% of the docket filed in 1994 that was still pending when he conducted his study. Fradella, In Search of Meritorious Claims, supra note 47, at 36 (results); id. at 28 &
n.4 (method). Of Kim Mueller’s forty-eight cases, six were settled, one was tried to a defendant’s verdict, and six were still pending. Mueller, supra note 47, at 1285 fig.D.
Using the same dataset I treat in this Article (though with a somewhat different approach to coding particulars), Ted Eisenberg presents several summaries of inmate outcomes:

Source
Years
Districts
EISENBERG, CASES AND
N.D. Ga.,
1980–1981
MATERIALS, supra note 15,
E.D. Pa.,
filings
at 538 tbl.II.
C.D. Cal.
Eisenberg, Litigation Models,
1978–1985
All
supra note 15, at 1576, 1578.
trials
Clermont & Eisenberg, Trial
1979–1989
All
by Jury or Judge, supra note
trials
15, at 1175 app. A.
Eisenberg, Plaintiff Success
1978–1985
All
Rates, supra note 15, at 115
termin ations
app.A.
Table note: (i) Seems to include voluntary dismissals.

Settled
(% of
cases)
i

17%

Litigated
Plaintiffs’
Judgments
(% of cases)

Trial win
rate (%
of trials)

1%
14%
13%

2%

13%

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result of low plaintiff success, other causes also played an important role:
the absence of counsel in inmate cases, the problem of inmate inability to
make predictive judgments about likely outcomes and damages, the low
cost of litigation for both inmates and defendants, the high cost of settlements for defendants, and the oppositional culture of corrections.
Before I get to the data and my explanation of them, it is important to
note that litigation outcomes are notoriously difficult to interpret. Even the
definitions are slippery — should a case be counted as a plaintiff “success”
simply because the plaintiff recovered something (even, say, a dollar)? Or
need a plaintiff recover his or her costs, or perhaps even more? Is a case a
success if the defendant stops doing whatever it is that the plaintiff is objecting to as a result of the lawsuit, without any court compulsion? 103 It is
clear that settlements need to be counted, and that most of them ought to
count as plaintiffs’ successes, because they result in a transfer of money
from defendants to plaintiffs. But one certainly can imagine settlements
that are actually defendant victories — where, for example, a plaintiff
agrees to end the suit in exchange for withdrawal of a sanctions motion or
a counterclaim. Moreover, settlements further complicate the categorization of trial outcomes. If a plaintiff turns down a settlement and proceeds
to trial, should a subsequent plaintiff’s verdict be counted as a plaintiff
success only if it exceeds the defendant’s best offer? For my purposes, the
simplest definition seems adequate: I count as a plaintiff’s success any
plaintiff’s judgment and any settlement and, perhaps, any voluntary dismissal. 104
A. Outcomes: The Data
Three tables below present relevant outcome data from prior to the
PLRA’s enactment. Table II.A looks at inmate civil rights cases filed between 1990 and 1995, presenting results averaged across this six year period. 105 Table II.B is a one-year snapshot of outcomes of all nonhabeas
civil cases “terminated” by district courts in fiscal year 1995, grouped by
type of case.106 Table II.C looks at the small portion of the docket in
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
103 For a judicial discussion of this question in the context of attorneys’ fees awards, see Buckhannon
Board and Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, 532 U.S. 598
(2001), which held that a defendant’s voluntary change in conduct as the result of a lawsuit is insufficient to qualify a plaintiff as a “prevailing party” entitled to attorneys’ fees.
104 This seems particularly appropriate for inmate cases because they are so low-cost for plaintiffs. I
also list as possible successes voluntary withdrawals of lawsuits (to be precise, voluntary dismissals,
pursuant to Rule 41(a)(1)), some of which certainly occur because of out-of-court settlements, but others of which are actually decisions by plaintiffs to give up.
105 Note that while the filing date used is a case’s first appearance in the dataset (if a case appears
more than once), the outcome listed describes each case’s final appearance. This seemed the most appropriate way to get at case outcomes. See Data Appendix, infra .
106 For analysis of the appellate career of federal cases by category, looking at the small portion that
are appealed, see Clermont & Eisenberg, Plaintiphobia, supra note 15, at 953–70.

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which plaintiffs do in fact win monetary judgments, setting out data on
both compensatory and punitive damages; and Figure II.A relates punitive
damages to the compensatory awards they accompany.

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Table II.A: Outcomes in Federal District Court
Inmate Civil Rights Cases Filed Fiscal Years 1990–1995 107
(n = 184,103)
Average
per year
Filings
Filing rate per 1000 inmates
Non-judgment dispositions108
Still pending
Judgment dispositions
Pretrial resolution for defendant
Pretrial resolution for plaintiff109
Settled
Voluntary dismissals
Trials
Plaintiffs’ trial vict ories 110

30,700
22.6
1500
50
30,200
24,800
250
2000
2100
900
90

Average percentage
per year

4.6% of docket
0.1% (same)
95.3% (same)
82.0% of judgment dispositions
0.9% (same)
6.7% (same)
6.9% (same)
3.0% (same)
0.3% (same)
10.3% of all trials

Total plaintiffs’ successes 111

4400

14.9% of judgment dispos itions

Settlements “before issue is joined”
Settlements “after issue is joined”

1060
960

3.5% of all cases
48.6% of cases not disposed of
pretrial

In each year, the great majority of the inmate civil rights cases —
eighty percent or more of the cases that proceeded to an actual judgment
(that is, leaving out pending cases, interdistrict transfers, and the like) —
were resolved pretrial for the defendants. Pretrial resolutions often occurred on the judges’ own initiatives, without any motions by defendants.
Probably more ofte n, however, they were in response to defendants’ motions — either motions to dismiss,112 which provisionally assume the factual accuracy of the plaintiffs’ allegations but contest the legal conclusion
of resulting liability, or motions for summary judgment,113 which rebut the
plaintiffs’ factual assertions using documentary evidence and sworn state–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
107
108

Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3.
Non-judgment dispositions include interdistrict transfers, remands to state court, and statistical
closings.
109 An audit reveals that these outcomes are highly suspect. See infra note 115.
110 An audit reveals that cases coded as plaintiffs’ victories but with damages coded as equal to zero
are frequently but not always defendants’ victories. Assuming that all of the cases recorded as plaintiffs’ victories with zero damages are in fact defendants’ victories depresses the plaintiffs’ trial victory
rate by about a quarter.
111 Total plaintiffs’ successes include settlements, voluntary dismissals, and litigated victories.
112 See FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(6).
113 See FED. R. CIV. P. 56.

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ments. The remaining cases were either settled, voluntarily dismissed114
(withdrawn by the plaintiff without any court-acknowledged benefit for the
plaintiff), or trie d.115 The total settlement rate is very low — just six percent of all cases filed. In thinking about how cases proceed through the
litigation process, it is analytically useful to separate settlements into those
made prior to decision on dispositive motions (that is, prior to summary
judgment adjudication) and those made after such motions. 116 For inmate
cases, about half of settlements occurred prior to summary judgment adjudication, and about half after.117 The result was that about half of the
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
114
115

See FED. R. CIV. P. 41(a)(2).
Plaintiffs are coded as winning hardly any pretrial judgments. But even these few are somewhat
suspect: what I have grouped together as plaintiff pretrial victories are outcomes coded in the Administrative Office data as judgments for the plaintiff (or “both” parties) “on motion before trial” or “on
other” (a catchall that is supposed to exclude any category more specifically covered by another code,
such as trials, settlements, voluntary dismissals, default judgments, and pretrial motions). I looked at a
random sample of dockets of such cases from 1993 and 1996. Those cases in which plaintiffs actually
won are in fact a combination of judgments by magistrate judges, consent judgments, settlements, default judgments, a few trials and preliminary injunctions, and other miscellany. Importantly, however, a
good number — around half — are actually defendants’ judgments of various kinds. It might be justified, then, to recode, as defendants’ victories, the most likely errors — cases in which the plaintiff is
coded as winning, but no amount of money damages is coded and the type of judgment is not coded
either as an injunction or a “forfeiture or other” (the Administrative Office’s catchall for non-money
judgments). Doing this reduces the number of plaintiffs’ pretrial victories to nearly zero but does not
change the overall trend lines in any important way. Therefore, I have presented the raw rather than the
corrected version of the data in the charts.
116 I am resisting here some theoretical models of litigation in which the relevant moments/decisions
are the plaintiffs’ decision whether to file, the parties’ decision whether to settle, and the judge’s or
jury’s decision at trial. This approach, I think, loses sight of the most important periodicity in litigation
— the difference between motions practice and trial practice. In nearly every area of litigation, a case’s
value to the parties is very different before and after adjudication of dispositive motions (usually summary judgment), as are the litigation costs and incentives.
I do not mean to imply that all litigation theorists forget about non-trial adjudicated outcomes.
But litigation theory articles, including the most canonical, very frequently use the word “trial” when
they apparently mean all adjudicated outcomes. To cite as examples only two that I refer to often in
this Article, see George L. Priest & Benjamin Klein, The Selection of Disputes for Litigation, 13 J.
LEGAL STUD. 1 (1984); and Steven Shavell, Any Frequency of Plaintiff Victory at Trial Is Possible, 25
J. LEGAL STUD. 493 (1996). However, the insight that litigation occurs in stages is certainly not novel.
See Lucian Arye Bebchuk, A New Theory Concerning the Credibility and Success of Threats To Sue, 25
J. LEGAL STUD. 1, 25 (1996) (“Divisibility . . . can play a major strategic role in settlement bargaining. . . . Economic analysis in the field of litigation and settlement should recognize and pay close at tention to the strategic importance of divisibility.”); see also David Rosenberg & Steven Shavell, A
Model in Which Suits Are Brought for Their Nuisance Value, 5 I NT’ L REV. L. & ECON. 3 (1985) [hereinafter Rosenberg & Shavell, Nuisance Value] (discussing the costs of initial responses to negativeexpected-value suits).
117 To be precise, about half the cases are coded as settling “ before issue is joined,” by which the
Administrative Office means prior to a defendant’s filing of a formal answer to the plaintiff’s complaint; the other half are coded as taking place “after issue is joined.” Since summary judgment adjudication requires prior filing of an answer, FED. R. CIV. P. 56, while dismissal for failure to state a claim
does not, FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(6); 28 U.S.C. § 1915 (2000), I will use the Administrative Office’s category of “issue joined” as a rough approximation of summary motion adjudication. This makes sense in
inmate litigation, in which dismissals are the most common outcome. See supra Table II.A.

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cases that survived pretrial adjudication, and that were not voluntarily
withdrawn, settled. This is actually an unexpectedly high number — far
higher than one would think from most of the literature about inmate
cases, which has not usually distinguished between pre- and postsummary- judgment settlements.118 Even so, a large number of cases went
to trial. In 1995, for example, inmate civil rights cases accounted for fifteen percent of all civil trials held in federal district court.119 Of the cases
coded between 1987 and 1995 as going to trial, plaintiffs won at least
something in eight to fifteen percent; defendants prevailed in the rest.120
The final stage of litigation, appeal, is not on the charts, but I don’t think it
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Note that there clearly are errors in the “procedural pr ogress” variable — trials coded as taking
place “ before issue is joined,” and so on. Still, if there are errors, the noise they generate can’t block
out the fact that the pr oportion of settled inmate civil rights cases terminated “before issue is joined” is
consistently far higher than in the other categories of federal litigation.
118 But cf. T HOMAS, P RISONER L ITIGATION, supra note 15, at 176 –77 (separating those inmate
filings that survived in forma pauperis screening from those that did not, and pointing to the high set tlement rate in the former group).
119 See supra note 5.
120 Although the absolute numbers of inmate filings were increasing over the relevant time, see Table
I.A, the outcomes reported in Table II.A were largely longitudinally consistent. But even though out come changes over time were small, they certain ly happened. Most notably, the pretrial dismissal rate
began to inch up, very gradually, beginning in the late 1980s, with concomitant declines in trial and
settlement rates. At the same time, plaintiffs’ trial win rates began to decline as well. Table II.A.1
compares outcomes for inmate civil rights cases filed in fiscal year 1990 to those filed in 1995:
TABLE II.A.1: OUTCOMES, I NMATE C IVIL RIGHTS CASES FILED 1990 AND 1995
Disposition
All judgments
Pretrial dismissals
Settled
Voluntary dismissals
Trials
Plaintiffs’ trial victories
Total plaintiffs’ successes

(% of judgments)
(% of judgments)
(% of judgments)
(% of judgments)
(% of trials)
(% of judgments)

Fiscal year 1990
23,913
19,752 (82.6%)
1673
(7.0%)
1453
(6.1%)
814
(3.4%)
117 (14.4%)
3443 (14.4%)

Fiscal year 1995
38,718
32,013 (83.9%)
2329 (6.1%)
2466 (6.5%)
986 (2.6%)
83 (8.4%)
5110 (13.4%)

The table overstates the decline in trial wins somewhat, because 1990 was a peak year for inmate
plaintiffs’ trial victories. Fuller longitudinal information is available online. See Schlanger, Technical
Appendix , supra note 3; see also infra section IV.B.2. I have no confirmed explan ations for any of the
outcome shifts. Perhaps increasing filings led courts to clamp down a little in pretrial adjudication.
Perhaps increasing filing rates per prisoner, see supra Table I.A, meant that the “quality” of the docket
went down a little. It is even possible that part of what was going on was limited to several of the very
large districts, opening up all kinds of particular explanations: focused tort -reform campaigns, cf.
Stephen Daniels & Joanne Martin, “The Impact That It Has Had Is Between People’s Ears”: Tort Reform, Mass Culture, and Plaintiffs’ Lawyers, 50 DEPAUL L. REV. 453 (2000); Stephen Daniels &
Joanne Martin, Whatever Happened to the “Litigation Explosion” in Texas: The Strange Success of Tort
Reform (Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, May 30, 2002)
(on file with author), or even the appointment or retirement of a few judges. The dat aset is sufficiently
large and detailed that a well-designed study probably could suss out these or other phenomena by
comparing outcomes among different districts or states or circuits. But I have not undertaken this research task, except to check that no single district or state is dominating the trends reported.

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changes the story much, 121 except that appeals by defendants certainly
promote sub-verdict settlements in the few cases yielding large trial verdicts.
To summarize, before the PLRA’s passage in 1996, inmates typically
won some relief in about one percent of their federal civil rights cases;
they received something worth settling for in another six to seven percent;
and they either simply gave up and decided to quit, or received something
justifying the withdrawal of the lawsuit, in another six to eight percent of
cases. In the rest of the cases, defendants won.
These success rates sound low, and Table II.B demonstrates that inmate
cases were comparatively as well as absolutely unsuccessful
for plaintiffs. Table II.B groups cases from the dozens of separate
case categories into nine larger panels. It shows that, among cases terminated in 1995, not only did inmate plaintiffs rank last in their overall success rates,122 they also ranked last in every one of the
separate components of the overall success numbers; in pretrial victories,
settlements, and trial win rates, they fared worse than any grouped set of

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
121 Inmate plaintiffs occasionally appeal, though they do not often win their appeals. According to
data recently published by Clermont and Eisenberg, inmate plaintiffs win just 6.4% of their appeals
from trial losses and 8.3% of their appeals from pretrial losses. Clermont & Eisenberg, Plaintiphobia,
supra note 15, at 954–55 tbl.2, 967 tbl.5.B. Nearly all these victories are already accounted for in the
data I present, because my data are from cases’ final appearances in the district court terminations dat aset, which include the dispositions after appellate remand, if any. It’s true that defendants more often
win victories on appeal than do plaintiffs; Clermont and Eisenberg’s data show that of the trials defendants actually bring to a decisive appellate outcome (that is, leaving out the ones they drop or settle),
defendants win 37.7%. Id. at 954–55 tbl.2. And admittedly, these reversals are less often included in
my presentation because while sometimes defendants win vacate and remand orders, they often win
outright on appeal, so the cases never go back to district court for revision of the judgments. Still, what
Clermont and Eisenberg do not emphasize, because it is not what their article is about, is just how few
inmate cases are act ually in the group from which the rate of wins on appeal is calculated. They report
that of cases terminated in district court between 1988 and 1997, the number of trials won by inmate
plaintiffs, appealed by defendants, and actually affirmed or reversed by the courts of appeals was just
sixty-one. Id. By my calculation, that works out to a 10% reversal rate — 10% of plaintiffs’ victories
at trial are reversed or vacated on appeal — and a good number of these must have resulted in remands,
and are therefore already accounted for in my data. So extrapolating, if in a given year 0.5% of cases
were resolved by a plaintiff’s trial verdict, after appeal that number may have been reduced to between
0.5% and 0.45%. I don’t think this changes the picture presented in the text in any significant way.
(Clermont and Eisenberg do not report the number of plaintiff trial wins, but I calculate it as around
650. This number is lower than one would expect from the data reported in Table II.A, because Clermont and Eisenberg don’t count as plaintiffs’ victories cases coded as “judgment for both,” whereas I
do. As I explain in the Data Appendix, infra , I found no real distinction between the “judgment for
plaintiff” and “judgment for both” cat egories.)
122 For ease of presentation, Table II.B groups the cases into categories. But even looking at individual case codes, there is no nontrivial set of cases in which plaintiffs succeeded less, overall, than in
inmate civil rights cases — except habeas, which I have excluded from my analysis. (The three small
nonhabeas categories in which plaintiffs did worse, overall, had only sixteen cases terminated in 1995
among them.)

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plaintiffs and, in fact, worse in each column than nearly any other individual plaintiff category. 123

Dispositions by judgment (n)

Pretrial dismissals

Voluntary dismissals

Pretrial plaintiffs’ victories

Settlement rate

Pre-answer settlement
rate

Trial to post-answer settlement ratio

Trials

Plaintiff victory rate at
trial

Table II.B: Federal District Court Cases
Terminated by Judgment, Fiscal Year 1995 124

Contract

27,355

24%

17%

12%

43%

10%

9.8

3%

59%

Torts (non-product)

22,769

27%

13%

2%

50%

8%

6.2

7%

51%

5446

28%

14%

2%

49%

8%

6.1

7%

34%

Civil rights

15,209

53%

10%

2%

28%

6%

4.2

5%

31%

Civil rights
employment

14,987

37%

13%

1%

41%

5%

5.2

7%

30%

Inmate civil rights

39,080

82%

7%

1%

6%

4%

1.0

3%

10%

Labor

14,197

24%

19%

18%

36%

11 %

12.3

2%

48%

Statutory actions

26,044

42%

13%

10%

30%

10%

11.4

2%

53%

U.S. plaintiff

12,772

21%

12%

43%

21%

8%

7.5

2%

68%

Other

1357

40%

15%

14%

27%

7%

5.3

4%

54%

Total

179,216

43%

12%

9%

30%

8%

6.2

4%

40%

Total without
inmate cases

140,136

32%

14%

11%

37%

9%

7.1

4%

45%

Type of case

Product liability

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
123 Even if all of the inmate cases coded as plaintiffs’ pretrial victories were accurate — which is
clearly not the case, see supra note 115 — in 1995, the only group that saw fewer pretrial vict ories than
inmates was “airplane personal injury” plaintiffs (but their overall rate of litigated success plus settlements was nearly 70%); in settlements, only social security claimants did worse than inmates (but they
fared better enough in pretrial victories to do slightly better than inmate plaintiffs overall); in trials, social security claimants, again, did worse than inmates, as did plaintiffs in the miniscule category “motor
vehicle product liability” (but they had a very high settlement rate, and hardly ever went to trial).
124 See the Data Appendix, infra , for a description of the components of each category. As always,
the code for this analysis is included in Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3.

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The differential between inmates’ success and that of other plaintiffs is
most marked with respect to settlement; in 1995, inmates settled about
one-sixth as often as did plaintiffs in the rest of the docket as a whole, and
had fewer voluntary dismissals as well. 125 But while the analogous rate in
the noninmate docket is just under twice as high, the inmate settlement rate
“after issue is joined” is much higher than one might expect based on the
rhetoric of frivolity that surrounds inmate cases. Nonetheless, the data establish that the inmate docket is, abs olutely speaking, quite low in “merit”
(by which I mean not some abstract measure of quality, but simply high ex
ante probability of lit igated success). Even if all of the cases leading to
plaintiffs’ successes — that is, to voluntary dismissals, settlements, and
litigated victories — are meritorious cases, that is only about fifteen percent of the docket. (Presumably at least some of the trial losses are, ex
ante, high- probability plaintiffs’ successes that do not, in the end, pan out.
But I’ll leave this out for simplicity.)
What is somewhat less plain is just how the merits of the inmate
docket compare to other case categories. While it is true that inmates have
done far worse both at trial and in settlements than plaintiffs in other case
categories, it does not necessa rily follow that the inmate docket’s merits
(rather than its results) make it as much an outlie r as Table II.B might be
thought to suggest. This point builds on work by a generation of theorists
who have developed the insight, first presented by George Priest and Benjamin Klein in their landmark article The Selection of Disputes for Litig ation, tha t the distribution of filed disputes around a litigation decision sta ndard does not, in itself, have any dispositive connection to the success rate
at trial or, indeed, to the settlement rate.126 Lots of low-merit cases could
cause either lots of settlements (albeit at low amounts) or very few settlements, and the cases left over after settlement for adjudic ation could be,
on average, stronger or weaker than the full set of filings and so could
have a high or a low success rate at trial. 127 And the higher the settlement
rate, the weaker the logical relationship between litigated outcomes and the
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
125 Voluntary dismissals can mark a plaintiff’s decision simply to give up — in which case what the
voluntary dismissal column in Table II.B might be showing is that inmates give up less often than other
plaintiffs do. But voluntary dismissals can also be settlements, so that the voluntary dismissal column
might somewhat moderate the settlement differential between inmates and other plaintiffs.
126 Priest & Klein, supra note 116 , at 4.
127 Note, however, that Ted Eisenberg argues that case categories in the federal docket demo nstrate a
strong correlation between non-trial success rates and success rates at trial. Eisenberg’s results suggest
that while there is no necessary theoretical connection between results at trial and a docket’s underlying
merits, the two nonetheless tend to move in tandem. See Eisenberg, Plaintiff Success Rates, supra note
15, at 113–14; Theodore Eisenberg, Negotiation, Lawyering, and Adjudication: Kritzer on Bro kers and
Deals, 19 L. & SOC. I NQUIRY 275 , 292–99 (1994 ). I have essentially replicated Eisenberg’s results
using federal district court cases term inated in fiscal year 2000 , finding a highly significant correlation
between non-trial and trial success rates, though I use a classification protocol somewhat different from
Eisenberg’s. (For my results, see Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3). But exploration of the
point is beyond the scope of this Art icle.

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merit of a docket as a whole. In a case category — like the inmate civil
rights docket — with a very low settlement rate, a very low plaintiffs’ litigated victory rate necessarily indicates the low merit of the docket taken as
a whole. But as Table II.B shows, settlement is vastly more common in
other case categories. For them, then, one cannot infer the merits of the
docket from case outcomes.128 So while it is likely that the inmate civil
rights docket is relatively low-merit compared to other federal case categories, there is no way to assess the magnitude of this difference.
The logical next question about outcomes is what happens when inmates do win their cases? How much do they win? Or, stated more generally, how much is at stake in these cases? Answering this question with
any degree of accuracy would once have been extremely difficult. The
Administrative Office data on damages are quite unreliable,129 so an interested researcher would have had first to use the Administrative Office
dataset to identify cases won by plaintiffs,130 and then to obtain court records from a large number of district courts — an expensive and extremely
time-consuming process. But I was able to do the necessary research far
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
128 See generally Daniel Kessler, Thomas Meites & Geoffrey Miller, Explaining Deviations from the
Fifty-Percent Rule: A Multimodal Approach to the Selection of Cases for Litigation, 25 J. LEGAL
STUD. 233, 237–48 (1996) (summarizing research on different stakes, information and sophistication,
settlement and litigation costs, and agency arrangements that might affect the relation between trial out comes and merit); Priest & Klein, supra note 116 (arguing that, if a very large portion of a docket set tles, the few cases that go to trial will be the close cases, so that their outcomes will, all else equal, split
evenly); id. at 24–29 (discussing the way in which differential stakes and risk aversion could alter this
“fifty percent” hypothesis); Steven Shavell, Any Frequency of Plaintiff Victory at Trial Is Possible, 25 J.
LEGAL STUD. 493, 494 (1996) (agreeing with the central insight of the Priest and Klein paper that
cases that go to trial are unrepresentative of settled cases, and arguing that whatever the probability of
success in a docket taken as a whole, asymmetric information renders it possible for “the cases that go
to trial to result in plaintiff victory with any probability”).
129 See Data Appendix, infra . Scholars have used the Administ rative Office damages data with some
regularity, albeit with growing qualms as to their validity. See Theodore Eisenberg, John Goerdt, Brian
Ostrom & David Rottman, Litigation Outcomes in State and Federal Courts: A Statistical Portrait, 19
SEATTLE U. L. REV. 433, 439 n.13 (1996) [hereinafter Eisenberg et al., Litigation Outcomes]; Kimberly
A. Moore, Judges, Juries, and Patent Cases — An Empirical Peek Inside the Black Box, 99 MICH. L.
REV. 365, 381 (2000); Stewart J. Schwab, Studying Labor Law and Human Resources in Rhode Island,
7 ROGER W ILLIAMS U. L. REV. 384, 394 (2002). More systematic work has demonstrated serious
problems in other, similar, monetary-amount variables in the Administrative Office’s separate bankruptcy database. See Jennifer Connors Frasier, Caught in a Cycle of Neglect: The Accuracy of Bankruptcy Statistics, 101 COM. L.J. 307 (1996) (reporting on systematic analysis of AO bankruptcy statistics); Teresa A. Sullivan, Elizabeth Warren & Jay Lawrence Westbrook, The Use of Empirical Data in
Formulating Bankruptcy Policy, L. & CONTEMP. P ROBS., Spring 1987, at 195, 222–24 (criticizing the
accuracy and utility of AO bankruptcy data). But until this project, no systematic audit had demonstrated the depth of the problem in the “amount awarded” variable. This methodological finding is amplified and its import analyzed in Theodore Eisenberg & Margo Schlanger, The Reliability of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Database: An Empirical Analysis, NOTRE DAME L. REV.
(forthcoming 2003) [hereinafter Eisenberg & Schlanger, Reliability of AO Database].
130 Even though Administrative Office data on the amount of damages are very frequently incorrect,
the data on who won are extremely reliable, at least for cases in which some damages are coded.
Eisenberg & Schlanger, Reliability of AO Database, supra note 129.

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more efficiently by taking advantage of a technological innovation intended to assist litigators monitoring cases: the federal court system’s
“Public Access to Court Electronic Records,” or PACER, which enables
subscribers to obtain docket sheets over the Internet.131 Using PACER
(occasionally supplemented by old-fangled methods like calling a clerk’s
office), I conducted a study of plaintiffs’ victories in inmate cases terminated in one representative year, 1993. I gathered information on each
case coded by the Administrative Office as a damage judgment for the
plaintiff. 132 Table II.C summarizes my findings:
TABLE II.C: INMATE DAMAGE AWARDS GREATER THAN $0, CASES
TERMINATED FISCAL YEAR 1993
Compensatory
award group
$1–10

$11–100

n
Mean
M edian
Sum
n

Compensatory
award
21
$2.3
$1
$49
12

Punitive
award
7 (33%)
$547
$125
$3826
0 (0%)

Total
award
21
$185
$2
$3875
12

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
131 In nearly every district, PACER allows public internet -based access to docket sheets recorded
since 1993; in some districts, other case materials are also available. For details, see Data Appendix,
infra. PACER is well known among federal litigators, but much less so among researchers. In fact,
there are remarkably few scholarly references to PACER (references searchable on Westlaw, that is),
and all but one that I know of are in or about the bankruptcy literature. See, e.g., Lynn M. LoPucki,
The Politics of Research Access to Federal Court Data , 80 TEX. L. REV. 2161 (2002) (describing bankruptcy research strategies); Jennifer Shack & Susan M. Yates, Mediating Lanham Act Cases: The Role
of Empirical Evaluation, 122 N. I LL. U. L. REV. 287, 294 (2002); Jay Lawrence Westbrook, Empirical
Research in Consumer Bankruptcy, 80 TEX. L. REV. 2123, 2148 (2002).
132 More particularly, I started with the 143 cases terminat ed in fiscal year 1993 in which the Administrative Office dataset variable “judgment for” had a value of “plaintiff” or “both [plaintiff and defendant],” and the value for the variable “amount awarded” was greater than zero. Although most court
clerks do not include damages information for settlements, some do, so some of these cases actually
represented settlements rather than litigated victories. Of the 143 cases, I was unable to obtain dockets
for fifteen cases, and in three more the actual outcome was unclear from the docket. Thus, twelve percent of the original sample was unavailable. In addition, after discovering from the docket sheets the
actual outcomes and damages awarded, I eliminated any case in which plaintiffs did not receive damages in a litigated victory — twenty settlements and four (erroneously coded) defendants’ verdicts. The
remaining sample was precisely 100 cases. The only assumption I made as to these cases was that if
the docket did not mention punitive damages, I assumed none had been awarded. If this assumption
were incorrect, it would tend to dampen the punitive damage results reported in the text.
To be clear, this leaves out 330 cases coded as judgment for plaintiff or for “both,” but with no
damage award coded. I audited these cases by looking at twenty percent, or sixty-seven, of them chosen at random. About a third of the sample was unavailable, mostly because the relevant district court
had not made its dockets web-accessible (for a couple, the docket didn’t contain the relevant information). Of the others, only one was in fact a damage action with a “costs only” judgment. The others
were a combination of various non-judgment outcomes such as consolidations (4); injunctions and/or
consent decrees (5); settlements or voluntary dismissals (8); and erroneous coding of defendant victories (26). Thus, this category of cases may be safely left out of the denominator of the chart above.

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$101–500

$501–1000

$1001–5000

$5001–20,000

$20,001–50,000

$50,001–375,000

$6,463,275
Total

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Mean
M edian
Sum
n
Mean
M edian
Sum
n
Mean
M edian
Sum
n
Mean
M edian
Sum
n
Mean
M edian
Sum
n
Mean
M edian
Sum
n
Mean
M edian
Sum
n
Sum

$71
$86
$850
13
$334
$300
$4324
11
$820
$900
$9024
10
$3548
$3689
$35,478
17
$10,203
$10,000
$173,456
9
$33,797
$35,000
$304,176
6
$168,750
$93,750
$1,012,500
1
$6,463,274

n
Mean
M edian
Sum

100
$80,031
$687
$8,003,132

2 (15%)
$1250
$1250
$2500
2 (18%)
$4250
$4250
$8500
1 (10%)
$5000
$5000
$5000
5 (29%)
$38,600
$25,000
$193,000
3 (33%)
$9500
$10,000
$28,500
2 (33%)
$40,000
$40,000
$80,000
0 (0%)
22 (22%)
$14,606
$5000
$321,326

$71
$86
$850
13
$525
$400
$6824
11
$1593
$900
$17524
10
$4048
$3689
$40,477
17
$21,556
$13,600
$366,456
9
$36,964
$36,975
$332,676
6
$182,083
$116,250
$1,092,500
1
$6,463,274
100
$83,245
$1000
$8,324,458

As Table II.C shows, in 1993, even successful inmate cases led to quite
small returns. Leaving out one enormous award of $6.5 million, the mean
damages for cases won at trial by inmate civil rights plaintiffs was
$18,800, and the median was a mere $1000. Again, comparisons to other
kinds of cases may be useful. Because of the unreliability of the Administrative Office damages data, few valid federal comparisons are available.
But what data exist suggest that plaintiffs’ damages in other federal catego-

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ries are at least an order of magnitude higher. 133 More reliable state court
comparisons yield similar results: one large sample of state tort trials, for
example, put the mean verdict for winning plaintiffs at approximately
$430,000 and the median at $31,000. 134
At the same time, when inmate civil rights plaintiffs actually managed
in 1993 to win compensatory damages at trial, they quite often — twentytwo percent of the time — also won punitive damages. This rate is extraordinarily high: estimates of the general prevalence of punitive damages
converge on a rate of about four percent.135 And the high rate is not
unique to 1993 terminations. Among cases terminated in 2000, there were
fifty-five trials with damages coded for plaintiffs: twenty-seven percent of
those for which I could obtain information have punitives recorded on the
docket sheet.
Which cases tend to have punitive awards? That is harder to say.
Docket review does not reveal much that one would want to know to answer the question. And the small absolute number of punitive damage
awards counsels caution in any event. But for whatever it is worth, if the
spread of the data is reduced by using the natural logarithms, visual
inspection seems to indicate at least some relationship between the size of
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
133 See, e.g., Eisenberg et al., Litigation Outcomes, supra note 129, at 439 tbl.2; Eisenberg &
Schlanger, Reliability of AO Database, supra note 129.
134 BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , BULLETIN: CIVIL T RIAL CASES
AND VERDICTS IN L ARGE COUNTIES, 1996, at 7 tbl.6 (1999) [hereinafter BUREAU OF JUSTICE
STATISTICS, CASES AND VERDICTS, 1996] (reporting the results of the 1996 Civil Justice Survey of
State Courts, which looked at cases in state courts in the seventy-five largest counties in the United
States).
135 Several research institutions and scholars have gathered data for analysis of civil justice out comes. The most systematic data collection efforts are those by the Civil Trial Court Network (a project of the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for State Courts); RAND’s Institute
for Civil Justice; and Stephen Daniels and Joanne Martin. Studies based on each dataset confirm a low
rate of punitive damage awards. For analysis of Civil Trial Court Network data, see Theodore
Eisenberg, Neil LaFountain, Brian Ostrom, David Rottman & Martin T. Wells, Juries, Judges, and Punitive Damages: An Empirical Study, 87 CORNELL L. REV. 743, 749 tbl.1 (2002) [hereinafter
Eisenberg et al., Juries, Judges, and Punitive Damages] (finding punitive damages awards in 4% of
plaintiffs’ verdicts in a 1996 sample covering 9000 trials in forty-five large county state courts); Theodore Eisenberg, John Goerdt, Brian Ostrom, David Rottman & Martin T. Wells, The Predictability of
Punitive Damages, 26 J. LEGAL STUD. 623, 634 tbl.1 (1997) (6%); BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS,
SPECIAL REPORT: CIVIL JUSTICE SURVEY OF STATE COURTS, 1992: CIVIL JURY CASES AND
VERDICTS IN LARGE COUNTIES 8 tbl.8 (1995) [hereinafter BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, CASES
AND VERDICTS, 1992] (6%); and BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, CASES AND VERDICTS , 1996,
supra note 134, at 9 tbl.8 (4.5%). For analysis of RAND data, see ERIK MOLLER, T RENDS IN CIVIL
JURY VERDICTS SINCE 1985, at 54–55 tbl.A.9 (1996) (3.6%); MARK A. P ETERSON, SYAM SARMA &
MICHAEL G. SHANLEY, PUNITIVE DAMAGES: EMPIRICAL FINDINGS (1987); and Erik K. Moller,
Nicholas M. Pace & Stephen J. Carroll, Punitive Damages in Financial Injury Jury Verdicts, 28 J.
LEGAL STUD. 283, 301 tbl.3 (1999) (7.2%). Daniels and Martin published their research in STEPHEN
DANIELS & JOANNE MARTIN, CIVIL JURIES AND THE P OLITICS OF REFORM 215–16 tbl.6.1 (1995)
(8.3%); and Stephen Daniels & Joanne Martin, Myth and Reality in Punitive Damages, 75 MINN. L.
REV. 1, 45 (1990) (less than 15%).

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compensatory awards and the size of punitive awards.136 Figure II.A presents the data.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
136 After the log transformations, the Pearson’s correlation coefficient is 0.83, with an extremely high
degree of significance (p < 0.001). However, if no log transformation is performed, the degree of correlation as well as its significance is less: the coefficient is reduced to 0.36, and the p-value increases to
0.09. If the several cases with punitive awards and one-dollar compensatory awards are excluded, the
log-transformed results do not change importantly — the coefficient, now 0.731, remains highly significant. Leaving out the one-dollar cases makes the untransformed results insignificant.
A heated debate is currently going on about whether levels of compensatory and punitive awards
in noninmate cases are significantly correlated. See, e.g., Theodore Eisenberg et al., Juries, Judges, and
Punitive Damages, supra note 135, at 745 (fin ding substantial correlation); JONI HERSCH & W. KIP
VISCUSI, P UNITIVE DAMAGES: HOW JUDGES AND JURIES P ERFORM 4 (John M. Olin Ctr. for Law,
Econ. & Bus., Harvard Law Sch., Discussion Paper No. 362, May 2002), available at
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center (disputing existence of correlation). This is not my
main subject, and, again, the number of punitive awards in my set is small enough that firm conclusions
seem inappropriate.

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FIGURE II.A: INMATE CIVIL RIGHTS CASES T ERMINATED 1993
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMPENSATORY AND P UNITIVE DAMAGES
(n = 22)137
14

Punitives (natural log)

12
10
8
6
4
2
0
0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

Compensatories (natural log)

B. Outcomes: Explanations
Tables II.A and II.B demonstrate conclusively (for anyone who doubted
it) that inmates are only very rarely suc cessful in their federal civil rights
actions. Why is this so?
1. Limited Legal Rights/Exacting Dec ision Standard. — It only makes
sense that a la rge proportion of inmate cases filed prior to 1996 (as since)
were legally insufficient, given the way the entire system combines limited
legal rights with liberal court-access rights. Led by the Supreme Court,
federal courts have become quite hostile to many kinds of inmate
claims,138 especially
those about the
in-prison scope
of
rights also enjoyed by noninmates,139 or in which real but minor injury
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
137
138

Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3.
Susan N. Herman, Slashing and Burning Prisoners’ Rights: Congress and the Supreme Court in
Dialogue, 77 OR. L. REV. 1229, 1230 (1998).
139 See Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 476–77, 484 (1995) (refusing to find a constitutionally protected liberty interest in avoiding disciplinary segregation in prison, when conditions of segregation did
not amount to an “atypical and significant hardship . . . in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison
life”); Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89 (1987) (“[W]hen a prison regulation impinges on inmates’ constitutional rights, the regulation is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.”);
Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 543–44 (1981) (holding that states satisfy the Constitution’s due process

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results, or in which harm is likely but unproven. 140
Even in the relatively expansive Eighth Amendment jurispr udence,
which governs incarceration-specific constitutional claims,141 current doctrine directs judges and juries to focus less on the actual conditions inmates face and more on the prison officials’ mental culpability — a more
difficult standard to meet, especially for unsophisticated litigants. Specif ically, in cases alleging Eighth Amendment violations, plaintiffs must establish defendants’ “deliberate indifference to serious . . . needs of prisoners.”142 That is, the plaintiff needs to persuade the judge or jury of more
than a bad outcome, more than a defendant’s knowledge of and ability to
prevent that outcome, more than negligence. Deliberate indifference, the
Supreme Court held in 1994, amounts to a highly culpable mental state:
[A] prison official cannot be found liable under the Eighth Amendment for denying an inmate humane conditions of confinement unless the official knows
of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health or safety; the official must
both be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference.143

Finally, individual government officers are immune from damages suits,
even for proven constitutional violations, if their conduct was not obje ctively unreasonable because the right in question was not “clearly established.”144
These extremely defendant-friendly standards, joined with judge and
jury suspicion and dislike of incarcerated criminals, have made inmate
cases extremely hard to win. One telling piece of evidence is the high rate
of punitive damages among cases in which inmates win at trial, illustrated
by Table II.C, which demonstrates that juries were reluctant to award damages to inmates unless the conduct alleged was proven extremely egregious. Or, to state the same thing in terms of law-on-the-books doctrinal
requirements rather than law-in-action persuasive requirements, the high
rate of punitives underscores the high hurdle imposed by the law: even
compensatory liability requires decisionmakers to believe the defendant
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
requirements when they authorize inmates to seek return of lost or stolen property and that no federal
forum is required).
140 Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 346, 349 (1996) (holding that a prison system would be responsible for denying inmates “access to courts” only when inmates demonstrate “actual injury” from the denial of legal resources and services).
141 In this category, the Supreme Court has been fairly sympathetic to inmates — unexpectedly so,
given its general conservative inclinations in recent years, and its anti-prisoner moves in other contexts.
See Helling v. McKinney, 509 U.S. 25, 30 (1993) (holding that exposure to secondhand smoke may
violate the Eighth Amendment); Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 1 (1992) (holding thatcorrectional
officers’ use of excessive force against an inmate may constitute cruel and unusual punishment even if
the inmate does not sustain any serious physical injury).
142 Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104 (1976).
143 Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 837 (1994).
144 See, e.g., Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639 (1987).

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acted with the same kind of bad intent that can establish punitive liability. 145 Either way, the point is that the evidence of a very high prevalence
of punitive damages in cases in which an inmate plaintiff wins at trial
helps to establish just how hard it is for inmates to establish liability at all.
2. Easy Access to Courts. — While courts and their factfin ders use
very strict standards for liability in inmate cases, inmates remain able to
file cases very easily. Prisons and jails are required to provide inmates
with pen, paper, mail, and, more or less, a law library or other assistance.146 And, as indigents, prior to the PLRA inmates usually could file
without payment of the ordinary district court filing fee.147 Inmates had
essentially no other litigation costs.148 Thus, even if inmates understood
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
145 Under § 1983, punitive damages are permissible when the plaintiff shows “reckless or callous
disregard for the plaintiff’s rights,” Smith v. Wade, 461 U.S. 30, 51 (1983), a standard with significant
if not precise overlap with the compensatory liability standard under the Eighth Amendment. See
Farmer, 511 U.S. at 837 (allowing Eighth Amendment liability for poor conditions of confinement only
when a defendant corrections official actually knows of and consciously disregards an excessive risk to
inmate health or safety). Previous studies have found similarly high frequencies of punitive awards in
noninmate intentional tort cases, which also require a showing of culpable intent. See RESTATEMENT
(SECOND) OF T ORTS § 908 cmt. c (1979) (“[I]n torts like malicious prosecution that require a particular antisocial state of mind, the improper motive of the tortfeasor is both a necessary element in the
cause of action and a reason for awarding punitive damages.”); BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS,
CASES AND VERDICTS , 1996, supra note 134, at 9 tbl.8 (summarizing the results of a comprehensive
1996 survey of state court cases in the nation’s seventy-five largest counties, and setting out punitive
damages award rates by case category, including a rate of twenty-four percent for the category “intentional tort”); BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, CASES AND VERDICTS, 1992, supra note 135, at 8
tbl.8 (summarizing the results of a similar study in 1992, and reporting a punit ive damages award rate
of 18.5% in the intentional tort case cat egory).
146 See Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 356 (1996) (reaffirming inmates’ right of “access to courts,”
though narrowing the right to one of “reasonably adequate opportunity to file nonfrivolous legal claims
challenging their convictions or conditions of confin ement”); Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 824–25,
828 (1977) (finding it “indisputable that indigent inmates must be provided at state expense with paper
and pen to draft legal documents, with notarial services to authenticate them, and with stamps to mail
them,” and holding that “the fundamental constitutional right of access to the courts requires prison
authorities to . . . provid[e] prisoners with adequate law libraries”).
147 See 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a) (1994) (since amended). While a number of district courts, prior to the
PLRA, experimented with assessing in forma pauperis inmates partial filing fees, the required fees were
very low and often ad hoc. See Marie Cordisco, Pre-PLRA Survey Reflects Courts’ Experiences with
Assessing Partial Filing Fees in In Forma Pauperis Cases, FJC DIRECTIONS, June 1996, at 25 (1996).
148 The litigation costs that some inmates might incur if they could — for example, deposition costs
— are simply beyond their means. Note, however, that there is one set of costs that inmates do sometimes incur involuntarily. Like other litigants, inmates who lose their cases may be held liable for their
defendants’ “costs,” used here in a specialized sense that includes transcription fees and not much else.
See infra note 241 and accompanying text. I do not have any information on either the frequency of
orders awarding costs against inmates, or how often defendants actually try to collect. In any event, the
risk of being forced to pay the defendant’s costs does not seem to be well known to inmates, so its incentive effects are minimal.
In addition, some facilities are authorized by state law to charge inmates for the costs of their
own incarceration. Many facilities rarely exercise this authority for inmates who are not on work release or working in relatively high-paying “prison industries” jobs, but it sometimes can give defendants extra anti-litigation leverage: when inmates file suits against them, the defendants can counterclaim for the cost of incarceration. I have heard about this strategy (and even seen evidence of it in

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how low their probability of success was — an understanding made far
less likely by the absence of lawyers to serve as information conduits —
they had little disincentive to file cases in which the expected values were
low 149 because their litigation costs were low or nonexistent. Also, litigating a case might provide a useful relief from prison boredom 150 (might be,
in inmate parlance, a good way to do time). These two factors apply to
cases with low expected damages (“low-stakes cases”), low chances of
success (“low-probability cases”), or both. 151
Whether the point is made in an inmate-friendly way by underscoring a
high legal standard or the presence of skeptical decisonmakers, or less
sympathetically by underscoring the absence of negative incentives or
simply labeling the cases “meritless,” the argument I’ve just presented remains essentially a claim that pre-PLRA inmates filed legally insufficient
cases. And, to some extent, that claim is correct: it is undoubtedly true
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
case dockets), but have no information on how frequently it is used or with what degree of success. On
the prevalence of inmate room-and-board fees in prisons, see Susan Clayton, Inmate Fee-for-Service
Programs, CORRECTIONS COMPENDIUM, Aug. 1998, at 7 (reporting the results of a survey of prisons
in forty-three states; thirteen imposed room-and-board fees on at least some non-work-release inmates);
DALE PARENT, U.S. DEP’ T OF JUSTICE , RECOVERING CORRECTIONAL COSTS T HROUGH
OFFENDER FEES 53 tbl.D-1 (1990) (reporting that various kinds of offender fees were authorized in
1988 for thirty-six state prison systems, and for jails in twenty-six states); id. at 7 tbl.2-3 (reporting that
three of the eighteen prison agencies and four of the seventeen jail agencies that responded to a survey
reported that they imposed fees for the cost of ordinary, non-work-release confinement). For an example of a state statute that expressly authorizes offender fee setoffs in inmate litigation, see ARIZ. REV.
STAT. ANN. § 31-238D (West 2002).
Finally, corrections defense counsel sometimes answer inmate litigation with other counterclaims.
For example, an inmate seeking damages for excessive force in a cell extraction may be met with a
counterclaim for the injury suffered by a correctional officer during the incident. The example is one
given to me by a lawyer who has defended inmate cases for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections for many years. See Unger Interview, supra note 21.
149 A case’s expected value to its plaintiff is the amount of damages expected in the event of victory,
discounted to reflect the probability of failure, less the costs of litigation.
150 Some have speculated that one large motive for inmate filings is prisoners’ desire to take field
trips. See, e.g., Merritt v. Faulkner, 823 F.2d 1150, 1157 (7th Cir. 1987) (Posner, J., concurring) (“Inmates love turning the tables on the prison’s staff by hauling it into court. They like the occasional vacation from prison to testify in court.”). This seems to me quite unlikely. For one thing, evidentiary
hearings are very rare in inmate cases, so it is just not very common for inmates to gain a physical trip
to the courthouse by means of their lawsuit. Also, a trip to the courthouse could be a mixed blessing
even for a very bored prisoner, if his prison required him to “roll-up” to make the journey, putting his
possessions in storage and reassigning his cell. Prison officials explain that while they would prefer to
allow prisoners to return to their previous cell assignments, sometimes the space is needed, especially if
the litigating prisoner is gone for more than a day or two. See, e.g., Telephone Interview by H.L.
Rogers, Harvard Law School student, with Russ Marlin, public information officer, Michigan Depart ment of Corrections (July 3, 2002).
151 The basic insight that plaintiffs will not litigate unless the expected value of the judgment exceeds their costs underlies early work on the economics of litigation. See, e.g., William M. Landes, An
Economic Analysis of the Courts, 14 J.L. & ECON. 61 (1971); John P. Gould, The Economics of Legal
Conflicts, 2 J. LEGAL STUD. 279, 284–88 (1973); Richard A. Posner, An Economic Approach to Legal
Procedure and Judicial Administration, 2 J. LEGAL STUD. 399, 437 (1973); Steven Shavell, Suit, Settlement, and Trial: A Theoretical Analysis Under Alternative Methods for the Allocation of Legal Costs,
11 J. LEGAL STUD. 55, 58–62 (1982).

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that the inmate docket had a high proportion of both low- stakes and lowprobability cases. But there were clearly a number of other things going
on as well. In the next two sections, I look at two important factors: absence of counsel and obstacles to settlement.
3. The Absence of Counsel. — Nearly all the cases in the inmate federal civil rights docket are filed and litigated pro se — far more than in
any non-prisoner part of the docket. Table II.D presents the available data
on pro se rates in the federal civil docket for fiscal year 2000 (unfort unately, data are available only for very recent years152):
TABLE II.D: P RO S E CASES IN F EDERAL DISTRICT COURT ,
CASES T ERMINATED FISCAL YEAR 2000153
Case category 154
Contract
Tort (non-product)
Product liability
Civil rights
Civil right s: employ ment
Inmate Civil Rights
Labor
Statutory actions
U.S. plaintiff
Other
Habeas, quasi-criminal
Total
Total without inmate civil rights/ habeas

Total cases
27,856
26,819
16,772
19,601
22,553
25,176
14,334
39,647
30,659
1216
31,611
256,244
199,457

% pro se
2.8
6.0
1.5
29.8
20.1
95.6
3.9
6.9
11.7
20.9
84.1
27.6
10.1

As Table II.D sets out, inmate civil rights plaintiffs are coded in the
Administrative Office dataset as unrepresented by counsel in over ninetyfive percent of their cases terminated in 2000. The counseled rates in the
inmate docket varied a good deal by district, from zero to twelve per–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
152 The Administrative Office for the U.S. Courts added a variable for the pro se or counseled status
of terminated cases in the codebook fo r 1996 terminations, see Federal Court Cases Database, 1970 –
2000 , supra note 3, pt. 103 (civil terminations, 1996 codebook) at 3, but the computer files themselves
do not consistently include pro se data until 2000 terminations. See Schlanger, Technical Appendix,
supra note 3.
153 These data are derived from Federal Judicial Center, Federal Court Cases Database, 1970 –2000,
supra note 3, pt . 117 (civil terminations 2000). The code is available at Schlanger, Technical Appendix,
supra note 3. I have classified a case as pro se if its plaintiff is coded as pro se, except where the
United States is the plaintiff (to be precise, where the basis of federal court jurisdiction is “U.S. plaintiff”). But I have also included cases in which the jurisdictional basis is “U.S. plaintiff” and the defendant is pro se — mostly forfeiture and other quasi-criminal actions.
154 Case categories are grouped as in Table II.B. See the Data Appendix, infra, for a full list.

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cent.155 Unfortunately, comprehensive data are not available for cases
terminated prior to 2000 , let alone before 1996 , when the PLRA and congressional restric tions on legal services were enacted,156 but it seems more
than likely that the rates were higher — and thus that the number of counseled cases was far higher. 157 Regardless of the precise pro se rate in
1995 , it is clear that inmate civil rights cases were, then as now, vastly
more likely than cases in any other category to be lit igated pro se.
It is also clear that cases with counseled plaintiffs are more succes sful
for those plaintiffs. Among cases terminated in 2000 , counseled cases
were three times as likely as pro se cases to have recorded settlements,
two-thirds more likely to go to trial, and two-and-a-half times as likely to
end in a plaintiff’s victory at trial. 158 One -quarter of settlements and onethird of plaintiff’s trial victories occurred in the four percent of cases with
counsel. 159
Why do plaintiffs with lawyers fare so much better? The two possible
answers are: lawyers add value, or lawyers (or the judges or other court
personnel who sometimes appoint them) are good screeners of cases. Both
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
155 Districts varied pretty evenly from a counseled rate of 0–1% (in the bottom 15 % of districts) to
10–12% (near the top of the range). The top seven districts had purported counseled rates that were
discontinuous with the rest of the distribution, ranging from 17 .5% to 100 %. A partial audit of docket
sheets from these districts indicated that these outlying rates were at least in large part erroneously reported, but because only a few cases are affected, I have left them in the table in the text. Schlanger,
Technical Appendix, supra note 3.
156 For a description of the PLRA and legal services funding provisions discouraging the appearance
of counsel in inmate cases, see infra pp. 1631, 1632.
157 In their study of civil rights cases terminated in sixteen districts in 1992 , Hanson and Daley report rates similar to the ones I found in 2000 — four percent overall. See HANSON & DALEY, REPORT ON SECTION 1983 L ITIGATION, supra note 14 , at 21 . But the districts in Hanson and Daley’s
study currently show a significantly lower rate of representation — just three percent. See Schlanger,
Technical Ap pendix, supra note 3. Sim ilarly, though far more removed in time, Schwab and
Eisenberg’s data from docket reviews of inmate cases filed in the Central District of California, the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and the Northern District of Georgia in fiscal year 1981 demonstrate a
very steep fall-off in the counseled rate. Schwab and Eisenberg reported a counseled rate of 8.2%,
32.4%, and 11 .3%, respectively. Schwab & Eisenberg, Explaining Constitutional Tort Litigation , supra
note 15 , at 773 tbl.XI. The rates in the same districts in cases terminated in 2000 were 1.9%, 1.5%, and
1.7%. Schlanger, Technical Appendix , supra note 3. The scarce data that exist, then, support the hypothesis that counseled rates have declined over time.
158 Of 55,376 inmate civil rights cases that ended in 2000 , 49 ,492 were coded as pro se. Of these,
1411 (2.85 %) were coded as having settled; 491 (0.99 %) were coded as having gone to trial; 52
(10 .59% of trials) were coded as ending in a trial victory for the plaintiff. There were 5797 cases coded
as not pro se; according to their codes, 519 (8.59%) settled; 95 (1.64 %) went to trial; 25 (26 .32% of
t rials) ended in plaintiff s’ trial victories. See Schlanger, Technical Appendix , supra note 3. In Schwab
and Eisenberg’s three-district 1981 study, the success rate of counseled inmates — which included litigated plaintiffs’ judgments, settlements, and voluntary dismissals — was 52%. See Schwab &
Eisenberg, Explaining Constitutional Tort Litigation, supra note 15, at 727 (defining success), 771 tbl.X
(summarizing data). The success rate of the entire group of plaintiffs (counseled and pro se), by contrast, was 18%. EISENBERG, CASES AND MATERIALS, supra note 15, at 538 tbl.II.
159 Not enough information is available to assess whether the amount of damages awarded varies
with the counseled status of the case.

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answers are undoubtedly right, but the first seems to me more important
than the second. It should come as no surprise that lawyers litigate better
than non-lawyers, improving the results for their clients.160 And this point
holds particularly true for inmates. Typical inmates’ legal research skills
are obviously limited — even mere literacy is relatively uncommon. 161
But illiteracy is actually the least of an inmate plaintiff’s problems. Inmates are unable to conduct most kinds of informal investigations; they
cannot interview most witnesses, for example.162 And they cannot conduct
effective discovery either, in part because of lack of legal skills and in part
because prisons and judges are extremely nervous about sharing information with prisoners.163 Even in a very strong case, inmates have no cash
and little access to credit, so they cannot fund litigation expenses (for example, deposition costs or expert fees) on the expectation of an eventual
judgment or settlement. 164 If inmates do get to trial, they are bound to be
particularly bad spokesmen for their causes: on liability, a convicted criminal is not in a good position to be arguing about a guard’s mental culpability, and on damages, inmates — like any other pro se personal injury
plaintiffs — have the nearly impossible task of simultaneously conducting
effective litigation and trying to demonstrate to the court or jury just how
devastating their injury was. In sum, inmate plaintiffs need lawyers to
make their cases “good cases.”
Admittedly, however, the higher success rate of counseled cases is not
entirely attributable to lawyers’ added value. Lawyers who agreed prior to
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
160 Cf. Karl Monsma & Richard Lempert, The Value of Counsel: 20 Years of Representation Before a
Public Housing Eviction Board, 26 L. & SOC’ Y REV. 627, 627–30 (1992) (summarizing studies of the
effects of lawyers); H. LAURENCE ROSS, SETTLED OUT OF COURT: T HE SOCIAL P ROCESS OF
I NSURANCE CLAIMS ADJUSTMENTS 193–98 (1970) (finding that insurance claimants with lawyers
received far higher settlements than those without, even after controlling for “merit” and injury).
161 Only about a third of inmates are sufficiently literate to “make literal or synonymous matches
between the text and information given in the task, or to make . . . low-level inferences.” See NAT’L
CTR. FOR EDUC. STATISTICS, P UB. NO. 1994-102, LITERACY BEHIND P RISON WALLS 19 tbl.2.3
(Oct. 1994), available at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs94/94102.pdf (setting out literacy scores and defining
the assessed levels of competence).
162 The point is one acknowledged even by Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner, hardly a usual
ally of inmate litigants. See Billman v. Ind. Dep’t of Corr., 56 F.3d 785, 790 (7th Cir. 1995) (“[I]t is far
more difficult for a prisoner to write a detailed complaint than for a free person to do so, and again this
is not because the prisoner does not know the law but because he is not able to invest igate before filing
suit.”).
163 For example, the victim of an attack by a cellmate would want to obtain information about the
cellmate’s prior history both in and out of prison. But prisons are always especially loath to allow inmates to see each other’s files because of privacy and security concerns.
164 In counseled litigation, as Marc Galanter explains:
[t]he contingency fee lawyer is not only the client’s advocate but the banker who finances his
case. Since many clients are unable to pay expenses as they go, the lawyer not only provides
his own services on credit, but advances the out -of-pocket expenses of investigators, expert
witnesses, transcripts, and so forth.
Marc Galanter, Anyone Can Fall Down a Manhole: The Contingency Fee and Its Discontents, 47
DEPAUL L. REV. 457, 475 (1998).

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the PLRA to take inmate cases brought under § 1983 sometimes funded
that choice (and occasionally made their entire livelihood) from the “reasonable attorney’s fee[s]”165 available if they prevailed. Given how expe nsive inmate cases are to litigate if their natural lack of jury appeal is to be
overcome, these lawyers had every incentive to screen their cases carefully
to maximize the chanc e of victory (though prior to the PLRA they had far
less incentive to screen for high damages166). Public interest lawyers, too,
did similar screening; they wanted cases in which they could be effective,
whether or not they cared about fees. And courts did some screening as
well — in some districts, courts implemented plans for finding counsel in
those few cases in which a judge deemed representation especially useful. 167 In districts with such methods in operation, appointment of counsel
is probably especia lly common in cases headed for trial, so the judge need
not deal at trial with a pro se inmate.168 In general, however, counsel appointments have been quite rare, which makes sense given that courts can
neither compel counsel to serve nor compensate them for their service.169
Even if lawyers are good screeners of cases, however, they can only
screen cases they hear about. And prison, if not jail, plaintiffs can’t shop
their cases around the personal injury bar, both because prisons are so disproportionately located in nonmetropolitan areas (areas, that is, without
large numbers of lawyers)170 and because incarcerated people can’t just go
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
165
166

42 U.S.C. § 1988 (b) (2000 ).
See City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561 , 565 –67 (1986) (upholding an award of $245 ,456
in attorneys’ fees based on pr evailing lawyers’ hourly rates, in a case in which damages awarded on the
federal claim were only $13 ,300).
167 For some discussion of “pro bono panels,” see DAVID RAUMA & DONNA STIENSTRA, FED.
JUDICIAL CTR., T HE CIVIL JUSTICE REFORM ACT DELAY AND EXPENSE REDUCTION P LANS: A
SOURCEBOOK 241 –52 tbl.10 (1995 ), available
at www.fjc.gov/public/pdf.nsf/lookup/
Sourcebk.pdf/$File/Sourcebk.pdf. This report lists a number of district courts’ local rules that set out
pro bono panel or other § 1915 (e)(1) proc edures.
168 See, e.g., Hughes v. Joliet Corr. Ctr., 931 F.2d 425, 429 (7th Cir. 1991) (noting that “[t]he district
judge denied Hughes’s motion [for appointment of counsel] because her policy is not to appoint counsel
for an indigent prisoner until and unless she decides that an evidentiary hearing is warranted,” and disapproving the denial in the particular instance); THOMAS, P RISONER LITIGATION, supra note 15 , at
170 (quoting a federal judge on why counsel is needed at trial).
169 See 28 U.S.C. § 1915 (e)(1) (2000) (codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1915 (d) prior to 1996 ) (“The court
may request an attorney to represent any person unable to afford counsel.”); Mallard v. U.S. Dist.
Court, 490 U.S. 296 , 301 –06 (1989 ) (holding that a court may appoint counsel for inmates who appear
in forma pauperis, but may not require counsel to serve). Occasionally, an individual judge will go out side ordinary “pro bono panel” procedures and solicit counsel for cases she deems particularly wort hwhile — a solicitation that lawyers feel quite a bit of pressure to accept. But my impression is that this
is more common in districts with relatively few prisoner cases, where the number of such solicitations
can stay low. More generally, while the Administrative Office pro se variable distinguishes only between counseled and uncounseled plaintiffs and does not code whether counsel was appointed or not, it
is interesting to note that the overall rate of represent ation by district in inmate civil rights cases, in
2000 at least, decreased as both the number of total cases terminated and the inmate proportion of those
cases increased. Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3.
170 I once tried to find a trial lawyer for an inmate with a serious injury from an assault by his cellmate. I represented the assault victim on appeal, and the Court of Appeals reversed a grant of summary

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around looking for, or even calling lawyers, even if they can figure out
whom to ask.171 In addition, even before the PLRA further restricted access to counsel, some of the factors discussed below that depress settlement and trial victories for inmate cases applied to counseled as well as
pro se cases, making the cases less attractive to lawyers for reasons that
had nothing to do with legal merit.
In short, without data 172 there is really no way to know which effect
dominates — the depression of success rates because lawyers are not
available, or the absence of lawyers because the cases are not very good
cases.173 What is clear is that both effects operate and, accordingly, that
the absence of lawyers cannot itself substantiate the claim that inmate
cases lack merit. Rather, the absence of lawyers is at least a partial explanation of plaintiffs’ poor success rate.
4. Obstacles to Settlement. — The great majority of plaintiffs’ successes in every area of federal litigation are achieved not by litigated out–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
judgment for the prison, sendin g the case back to district court for trial. I was unable to find anyone
willing to take on the case, not because of its “quality” but because of the prison’s location — far away
from the court where the case would be tried. The prisoner himself was even farther away: he had been
transferred by the Department of Corrections. Even Judge Posner, an advocate for market forces in
provision of counsel, acknowledges the problem:
[I]t would be unrealistic to suppose that many prisoners could, by dangling the lure of a contingent fee or an award of damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1988, entice a lawyer to conduct the
necessary investigation before the filing of a complaint (lawyers are, and with reason, terribly
skeptical about the merits of prisoners’ civil rights suits, most of which are indeed hoked up
and frivolous, and prisons generally are located far from cities having large numbers of lawyers).
Billman v. Ind. Dep’t of Corr., 56 F.3d 785, 790 (7th Cir. 1995).
171 See Jennifer Gerarda Brown, Posner, Prisoners, and Pragmatism , 66 T UL. L. REV. 1117, 1140–
44 (1992) [hereinafter Brown, Posner, Prisoners, and Pragmatism].
172 Schwab and Eisenberg argued in 1988 that their data about inmate cases filed in 1981 in three
district courts strongly supported the “added-value” hypothesis (though they did not put their claim in
quite these terms). Their factual finding was that in two large districts in which the court often appointed counsel to represent inmates, appointed and non-appointed counsel achieved nearly identical
success rates. This of course is consistent with either a screening effect or an added-value effect.
However, they emphasized that appointments were made far more often in one of the districts (the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania) than in the other (the Northern District of Georgia), resulting in a
much higher rate of inmate representation in the former (32%) than in the latter (11%). Yet the success
rates for counseled-inmate cases in these two districts were very similar. It was most plausible, they
argued, to conclude that many “meritorious” cases (by which they seemed to mean cases capable of
achieving success if competently litigated, rather than ones that actually achieve success) were going
forward without lawyers, and losing as a result. Schwab & Eisenberg, Explaining Constitutional Tort
Litigation, supra note 15, at 772–74.
173 This quite specific debate has not shown up in relation to the PLRA. Elsewhere, however, it has
caused significant controversy. For example, in the Seventh Circuit, Judge Posner has repeatedly argued for market testing of inmate cases, until 1992 in dissent or dicta. See McKeever v. Israel, 689
F.2d 1315, 1324–25 (7th Cir. 1982) (Posner, J., dissenting); Merritt v. Faulkner, 697 F.2d 761, 769–71
(7th Cir. 1983) (Posner, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); Merritt v. Faulkner, 823 F.2d 1150,
1157–58 (7th Cir. 1987) (Posner, J., dissenting); Hughes, 931 F.2d at 429–30; Billman, 56 F.3d at 790
(Posner, J.). Jennifer Gerarda Brown presents some of the evidence and arguments against Posner in
Brown, Posner, Prisoners, and Pragmatism, supra note 171, at 1138–54.

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come but by settlement. Tables II.A and II.B demonstrate that this is true
for inmates as for other kinds of plaintiffs: nearly all of plaintiffs’ successes in those tables are by settlement. Inmate civil rights cases are unusual, however, in both the low proportion of the docket that settles and
the correspondingly high proportio n of the post-motion docket that goes to
trial. Indeed, even though eighty-two percent of inmate cases terminated
in 1995 were pretrial victories for the defendants, there were so few settlements of the inmate cases that did manage to survive pretrial litigation
that fifteen percent of all federal civil trials held that year were in inmate
civil rights cases.174 In noninmate litigation categories, among cases that
lasted until a defendant filed an answer to the plaintiff’s complaint, for
every case that went to trial, between four and twelve other cases settled.
But for inmate civil rights cases, there was just one post-answer settlement
for every trial — notwithstanding that inmate cases have an unusually
large amount of pre-answer litigation, which depresses the number of cases
that reach the post-answer stage.175 So to understand why inmates did so
poorly in litigation prior to the PLRA, the priority is to analyze why inmate settlements are so infrequent.
(a) The Impact of the Low Quality of the Docket. — The reason for
low settlement rates offered by inmate litigation’s critics prior to the PLRA
— the low quality of the inmate docket — was not in itself much of an
explanation at a ll, although it contributed to an explanation. It was not
that the premise was wrong: it wasn’t. Prior to the PLRA, as already discussed, it was only to be expected that a high proportion of the cases filed
by inmates lacked merit. And even after the summary judgment screen,
the disconnect between summary judgment standards and trial standards
meant that the low-probability tilt in the docket was far from gone. Cases
that get through pretrial, of course, do so on the assumption that facts are
as stated by the plaintiff, where there is some evidentiary support. 176 But
especially because inmates are unable to run investigations of their cases in
order to get documentary or testimonial support for their claims, oftentimes at trial the best an inmate can do is turn the case into a swearing
contest. And it only makes sense that inmates — especially pro se inmates
— most often lose swearing contests; both judges and juries tend to find
convicted criminals unappealing and unbelievable witnesses.177
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
174
175

See supra note 5.
Although this one-to-one ratio of trials to post-answer settlements is by far the lowest proportion
of settlements in any major case category in the federal district courts, it is still quite a high number —
far higher than one would think from most of the literature about inmate cases, which does not distinguish between pre- and post -summary-judgment settlements. (The exception is THOMAS, P RISONER
LITIGATION, supra note 15, at 176–77.)
176 See, e.g., Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 586 (1986).
177 There is no empirical research actually testing this commonplace observation with respect to civil
trial outcomes. But there are quite a few studies that find that, all else equal, jurors are more likely to
convict a defendant if they know that he has a prior conviction. See Dennis J. Devine, Laura D. Clay-

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But the fact that inmate cases had a low expected value, objectively
speaking, does not fully explain why those cases were unlikely to settle.
In some types of litigation, such cases frequently settle for low, “nuisance
value” amounts. More precisely, all other things being equal, the prevalence in a litigation docket of low-stakes cases, at least, ought to increase
settlement rates. Assuming that the parties can agree that the cases are indeed low-stakes, settlement ought to be readily seen as far cheaper and
more certain for the plaintiffs than the alternative, litigation. 178 And even
a high proportion of low-probability cases is not inconsistent with a high
rate of settlement, albeit probably at a significant discount from the total
stakes.179 So inmate cases’ low settlement rate requires more explanation
than their admittedly low-value tilt.
(b) Asymmetric Information. — In corrections litigation, the defendant, as the repeat player and the “have,”180 has a relatively accurate understanding of the likelihood of plaintiff victory. By contrast, the pro se
plaintiff, the single -shot “have-not,” does not. Indeed, pro se inmates are
woefully ill-informed about the values of their cases. This may sometimes
allow defendants to get off cheap; as one writ-writer put it to me, pro se
inmate plaintiffs “settle big-money cases for peanuts.”181 But big-money
cases (in this rather essentialized vision of what that means) are relatively
uncommon, so more often errors run the other way: inmates are particularly disinclined to settle for small amounts, even where a small sum is
very reasonable in light of the expected outcome at trial. As litigation
theorists have long recognized, information asymmetry decreases the likelihood of a perceived mutually beneficial bargaining range, making settlement far less likely. 182 And when cases are low-probability (rather than
low-stakes), the room for disagreement between the parties is particularly
large. Accordingly, some portion of the large number of inmate plaintiffs
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ton, Benjamin B. Dunford, Rasmy Seying & Jennifer Pryce, Jury Decisionmaking: 45 Years of Empirical Research on Deliberating Groups, 7 P SYCHOL. P UB. P OL’Y & L. 622, 678–79 (2001) [hereinafter
Devine et al., Jury Decisionmaking] (summarizing studies).
178 See Priest & Klein, supra note 116, at 20. For a general treatment modeling settlement dynamics, see ROBERT H. MNOOKIN, SCOTT R. P EPPET & ANDREW S. T ULUMELLO, BEYOND W INNING:
NEGOTIATING T O CREATE VALUE IN DEALS AND DISPUTES 97–126 (2000) [hereinafter MNOOKIN
ET AL., BEYOND W INNING]; on this particular point, see id. at 119–20.
179 As Priest and Klein explain in their classic article on settlement and trial decisions, “in the limit,
litigation probabilities [i.e., the chance of a litigated versus a settled outcome] and [litigation] success
rates will converge to a function given by the error terms and not by the distribution of disputes.”
Priest & Klein, supra note 116, at 19 n.42.
180 See Marc Galanter, Why the “Haves” Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal
Change, 9 L. & SOC’ Y REV. 95–124 (1974) (analyzing many reasons why “haves” most often beat
“have-nots” in litigation).
181 Wright Interview, supra note 21.
182 See Amy Farmer & Paul Pecorino, Issues of Informational Asymmetry in Legal Bargaining, in
DISPUTE RESOLUTION: BRIDGING THE SETTLEMENT GAP 79, 80–81 (David A. Anderson ed., 1996)
[hereinafter Farmer & Pecorino, Informational Asymmetry] (summarizing prior literature).

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with low-probability cases are often unwilling to settle for nuisance value,
insisting on larger awards.
Moreover, I would surmise that, especially for inmates, this effect is
heightened after summary judgment. Inmates encouraged by a denial of
defendants’ summary judgment motions often fail to realize that they will
nonetheless lose at trial unless they prove not only that a wrong has been
committed or a rule violated, but also that they experienced harm. A corrections lawyer in Virginia, for example, explained a number of years ago
that the reason inmate cases do not settle is that “the demands of prisoners
are unrealistic. They think that they are entitled to millions of dollars if
they prove that a wrong had been inflicted upon them, even though they
have suffered no damages.”183 Of course, this kind of “self-serving bias”
is hardly unusual in litigation psychology, 184 but it is likely to be partic ularly acute for inmates without counsel, because pro se litigants cannot be
“debiased” by their attorneys, who have less emotional attachment to the
claim and enough experience to know better.
(c) Low Litigation Costs. — An equally important obstacle to settlement is the low cost of additional (that is, post-filing) litigation, already
discussed as one of the reasons inmates file low-merit cases.185 After all,
whatever filing fee the plaintiff owed, that cost is sunk and therefore logically irrelevant to the subsequent decision whether or not to settle. For
inmates, refusing to settle does not impose any transaction costs to speak
of (once again, I except the possibility of assessed defendants’ costs) at
any point in the litigation.
Moreover, correctional defendants also have extremely low litigation
costs, at least prior to summary judgment, largely because pro se inmate
plaintiffs are unable to make litigation expensive. It is the high cost of responding to discovery, after all, that pushes so many defendants in other
types of cases to settle prior to dispositive motion adjudication. But those
costs are not, generally speaking, incurred in any but the most unusual individual inmate case.186 As for other litigation costs, for defendants who
have full-time legal staff (all prisons, and some jails), the marginal pretrial
litigation cost of a typical case is minuscule. Not only is an in-house legal
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
183 Robert G. Doumar, Prisoners’ Civil Rights Suits: A Pompous Delusion, 11 GEO. MASON L. REV.
1, 17 (1988) (report ing the opinion of “[a]n attorney[] who has handled over the last decade perhaps as
many prisoner cases as anyone in the state of Virginia”).
184 See, e.g., Farmer & Pecorino, Informational Asymmetry, supra note 182, at 79–80 (summarizing
prior discussions of “excessive optimism by one or both parties”); Samuel Issacharoff, Charles Silver &
Kent D. Syverud, Bargaining Impediments and Settlement Behavior, in DISPUTE RESOLUTION:
BRIDGING THE SETTLEMENT GAP, supra note 182, at 51, 55–60 (discussing the role of “self-serving
bias” in blocking settlements).
185 See Lucian Arye Bebchuk, Litigation and Settlement Under Imperfect Information, 15 RAND J.
ECON. 404, 409 (1984) [hereinafter Bebchuk, Imperfect Information].
186 For inmates with experienced counsel, however, the threat of broad discovery into embarrassing
oversight failures can be particularly potent; pre-discovery settlement can buy political as well as litigation peace. Campbell Interview, supra note 21.

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staff less expensive than outside counsel, but experienced corrections defense counsel have a variety of methods for minimizing their time outlay
in low-probability cases, such as form or quasi-form pleadings and affidavits, and established relationships with correctional personnel so that one
phone call can suffice for an investigation. 187 Note, however, that trials
are obviously more expensive and may even involve outside counsel, so
this point loses a good deal of its traction for cases that survive summary
judgment (which may contribute to their higher settlement rate).
In short, the low cost of not settling, for both plaintiffs and defendants,
operates to depress the settlement rate in individual inmate litigation.
(d) Perceived High External Settlement Costs. — The explanation
most often proffered by corrections officials for low settlement rates is not
the low cost of not settling, but the high cost of settling. Corrections administrators and other observers agree that settling with inmate plaintiffs
encourages more filings. After all, inmates talk to one another. 188 Put in
economic terms, inmate litigation’s defendants feel that settlements have
expensive external effects and therefore cost far more than the direct outlay of funds involved. (And of course, high settlement costs are even
more influential when coupled with low litigation costs.189)
The point is not theoretically controversial; numerous commentators
have observed that defendants’ repeat player status can lead them toward
litigation and away from settlement because of settlement’s costly external
effects. A reputation for settling cases (“being a pushover”) can have very
broad impact.190 And settlement is a certain loss, whereas when a defendant goes to trial there is only a risk of an adverse outcome. Nonetheless,
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
187 See BRANHAM, PRO S E INMATE L ITIGATION, supra note 58, at 229–30; Collins Interview, supra note 21; DeLand Interview, supra note 21.
188 See, e.g., T HOMAS, P RISONER L ITIGATION, supra note 15, at 138 (“News of settlements and
monetary awards spreads quickly through a prison, and, hoping for similar success, other prisoners file
similar suits on the theory that ‘if it worked for him, it will work for me.’”); id. at 181 (“We’re more
likely to settle a suit if the prisoner who has brought the suit is not in the inst itution anymore. If he’s,
say, been released, we’re more likely [to] settle it than if he’s back there, because the one thing you
don’t want happening in the prison setting is a guy going back saying, ‘Yeh, they took my toothbrush,’
or whatever the thing might have been, ‘and I sued them, and I got $100, or $200.’” (quoting an
anonymous state official)).
189 As Priest and Klein state, “To take extreme cases, where litigation costs are lower than settlement
costs . . . all or most disputes will be litigated.” Priest & Klein, supra note 116, at 20.
190 See, e.g., MNOOKIN ET AL., BEYOND W INNING, supra note 178, at 225; Robert Cooter, Stephen
Marks & Robert Mnookin, Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: A Testable Model of Strategic Behavior, 11 J. LEGAL STUD. 225, 241 (1982). What I take as a more formal statement of the same point is
presented in Avery Katz, The Effect of Frivolous Lawsuits on the Settlement of Litigation, 10 I NT’L
REV. L. & ECON. 3, 5 (1990), which develops a litigation model in which “the plaintiff’s decision to
bring suit both depends upon and influences the defendant’s settlement strategy,” and is accordingly an
endogenous variable. For additional discussion of the issue, see Rosenberg & Shavell, Nuisance Value,
supra note 116, at 10 n.3. See also Bruce H. Kobayashi, Case Selection, External Effects, and the
Trial/Settlement Decision, in DISPUTE RESOLUTION: BRIDGING THE SETTLEMENT GAP, supra note
182, at 17, 29–30 (surveying literature on asymmetric stakes); Kent D. Syverud, The Duty To Settle, 76
VA. L. REV. 1113, 1160 & n.118 (1990).

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other theorists have reached quite the opposite conclusion: Priest and
Klein, and many subsequent elaborators, argued that when defendants’ litigation stakes are higher than plaintiffs’ — for example, when defendants
are repeat players but plaintiffs are one-shot players — the result is, in
general, to encourage settlement. 191 The idea is that trial is particularly
costly for such defendants because of the risk of preclusion, bad precedent,
and negative reputational effects if they lose. Thus settlements become
relatively cheaper. Because this is a relative, not an absolute point, it
holds, though less strongly, even if the trial risks are low. It seems to me
that the choice between the two effects cannot be made in the abstract; it
rather depends on very specific social facts in a given context.192 In the
context of inmate litigation, it is clear that defendants are very often strategically unwilling to settle. Lawyers with experience as counsel to inmates
agree that in prison litigation, even nominal settlements are rare or nonexistent in low-probability cases. And many corrections department heads
and attorneys general have told interviewers that they have “no-settlement”
policies, even if they have to fight with other state officials to maintain
them. For example, Richard Stalder, head of the Louisiana prison system,
told me:
I argue with risk management people on this [settlement issue]. They say,
“Just give the guy the pair of tennis shoes,” or the $100 or whatever. That’s
the traditional risk management approach. But I say, once you start paying on
a nuisance basis, you’re going to have an exponential increase in the number
of cases filed.193

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
191
192

Priest & Klein, supra note 116, at 25–26.
See, e.g., Samuel R. Gross & Kent D. Syverud, Don’t Try: Civil Jury Verdicts in a System Geared
to Settlement, 44 UCLA L. REV. 1, 52–53 (1996) (giving examples of how strategic incentives of repeat
player defendants might vary, producing different settlement strategies); Samuel R. Gross & Kent D.
Syverud, Getting to No: A Study of Settlement Negotiations and the Selection of Cases for Trial, 90
MICH. L. REV. 319, 322 (1991) (“Pretrial bargaining and the selection of cases for trial cannot be understood in the abstract. To explain the settlement negotiations and the outcomes in these cases, it is
necessary to consider the social and economic context of the lit igation.”). Gross and Syverud make a
point structurally similar to the one in the text, but about medical malpractice claims. They disagree
with prior work hypothesizing that doctor defendants, whose reputational interests give them higher
stakes than their plaintiffs, are therefore more likely to settle. To the contrary, they argue that doctors’
reputational interests make them less likely to settle; rather than “avoiding trials they fear they will
lose,” doctors “seek[] trials when they expect to win.” Id. at 366 (emphasis removed). As Gross and
Syverud point out, “[t]his analysis is consistent with Priest and Klein’s general model for the effect of
asymmetric stakes”; it differs in the way those stakes are analyzed. Id. at 366 n.113 (citing Priest and
Klein, supra note 116, and George L. Priest, Measuring Legal Change, 3 J.L. ECON. & ORG. 193, 208–
09 (1987)).
193 Stalder Interview, supra note 21. I do not mean to say that such policies are universal. For example, Branham reports a quite different outlook on the part of at least one private prison corporation,
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA):
During an interview, CCA’s vice-president of legal affairs stated: “If a prisoner establishes
that due to our negligence, his tennis shoes were lost, we will spend $40 to buy him a new
pair of tennis shoes. And we should because it was our fault. By contrast, an attorney who
represents a Department of Corrections will spend $4000 of the taxpayers’ money to avoid

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Even at the post-summary judgment stage, no-settlement polices are
still common, if not quite as rigid. Lynn Branham summarized the comments of five district court judges who described to her what they felt were
inappropriate state no-settlement polices: “This recalcitrant attitude towards settlement, it was noted, exists even when prisoners raise legitimate
concerns about prison conditions or operations and even when a lawsuit
could be resolved for a relatively small sum of money.”194 My interviews
confirm Branham’s findings. For example, Missouri’s corrections head
explained to me that “[o]ur Attorney General has as his philosophy that he
does not settle cases: we’re always prepared to take cases to trial.”195 Still,
some prison officials who deny ever settling cases for nuisance value do
say that they occasionally settle cases they consider meritorious, presumably most often after summary judgment. 196 Attitudinal objections to settlement are bound to have waning influence as a case gets closer to trial.
And the outcome data presented in section A demonstrate that inmate cases
do, in fact, settle in substantial numbers each year.
(e) Corrections Culture. — Even apart from their intuitions about the
likely result on future filings of known settlements, many corrections officials simply hate to settle cases. The former head of corrections in Utah
(who now travels the country consulting on jail and prison litigation) says
that he encouraged his staff and lawyers “to be warriors” — that is, to
fight all litigation tooth and nail. He is proud, he says, that “in Utah, we
treated litigation like a blood sport — got rid of all the lawyers who were
the least bit afraid and hired warriors.”197 Inmates and their keepers live,
obviously, in a uniquely antagonistic milieu. 198 It makes sense that correctional officers and those who are socialized into the attitudes of correctional officers would think of settling a case as “capitulating to an inmate”
— an outcome that undermines a prison’s symbolic and perhaps actual or–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
paying the prisoner $40.” The CCA attorney added the obduracy of some correctional attorneys working in the public sector towards settlement was upsetting. “We’re all taxpayers,”
she noted. “And it’s our money being wasted.”
BRANHAM, PRO S E I NMATE LITIGATION, supra note 58, at 233. Branham repeats the story in Lynn S.
Branham, The Prison Litigation Reform Act’s Enigmatic Exhaustion Requirement: What It Means and
What Congress, Courts and Correctional Officials Can Learn from It, 86 CORNELL L. REV. 483, 521–
22 (2001) [hereinafter Branham, Enigmatic Exhaustion]. One corrections department head told me that
his agency will occasionally settle nuisance cases “just to get them out of our hair — for $500 or what ever.” Wilkinson Interview, supra note 21.
194 BRANHAM, P RO S E I NMATE L ITIGATION, supra note 58, at 232.
195 Schriro Interview, supra note 21.
196 Louisiana corrections head Richard Stalder told me: “I settle cases in a fair and equitable way on
real claims. But for both small and large claims, either I or my principal deputy have to see every set tlement.” Stalder Interview, supra note 21.
197 DeLand Interview, supra note 21.
198 This is not to deny that accommodating strat egies exist, see, e.g., GRESHAM M. SYKES, T HE
SOCIETY OF CAPTIVES: A STUDY OF A MAXIMUM SECURITY P RISON 48–58 (1958) [hereinafter
SYKES, SOCIETY OF CAPTIVES], but merely to state the obvious background fact.

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der. 199 Some of the lawyers in the offices of attorneys general are somewhat removed from this mindset,200 but not entirely. It is this context that
probably led one federal district judge to tell Lynn Branham that more appropriate litigation decisions would be made in inmate civil rights cases if
some of the state’s lawyers would “take a less adversarial and more administrative posture in the case.”201 And, although I think it’s a lesser influence on the low settlement rate, inmates, too, are participants in the oppositional culture of their prison or jail. If, for example, the goal of a
lawsuit is to harass correctional personnel (as some repeat defendants
claim is common),202 why settle?
Regardless of who is to blame, it is clear that dialogue between pro se
inmate plaintiffs and government officials is both difficult and rare. As
William Bennett Turner, lead plaintiffs’ counsel for the trial in the Ruiz
case in Texas, wrote in 1979, “[r]elatively few prison cases can be settled,
primarily because meaningful negotiations between prisoners acting pro se
and states’ attorneys are practically impossible.”203
For all these reasons, then — asymmetric information, low litigation
costs, the felt incentive effects of settlement, and the antagonism endemic
to correctional culture — what is astounding is that any pro se inmate
cases settle — not that so few do.
5. Trial Win Rates. — In recent years, inmates have won only fifteen
percent or fewer of their federal civil rights trials, a very low rate even by
comparison to the other underdogs of the federal litigation docket, employment discrimination plaintiffs (and, as Table II.B shows, employment
plaintiffs also settle at a much higher rate).
Perhaps the only thing that can be said for certain about plaintiffs’ win
rate of eight to fifteen percent of their trials is that it is entirely consistent
with the bad-case hypothesis (or, to say the same thing differently, the argument that judges and juries have set the doctrinal/persuasive standard for
liability in inmate cases too high). But it is equally consistent with the hypothesis that many cases fail for lack of lawyers. Presumably, both are
somewhat true. As for the impact that obstacles to settlement have on trial
win rates, I will content myself here with pointing out that the various ob–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
199 See Schriro Interview, supra note 21 (attributing this view to some correctional administrators,
though disagreeing with it).
200 On the cultural divide between attorneys general’s office lawyers and those who work in-house in
departments of corrections, see W ILLIAM C. COLLINS, AM. CORRECTIONAL ASS’ N, T HE ROLE OF
HOUSE COUNSEL IN CORRECTIONS: A JOB TASK ANALYSIS 7 (1981).
201 BRANHAM, P RO S E I NMATE L ITIGATION, supra note 58, at 236.
202 Jim Thomas — hardly a critic of inmate litigation — concedes that harassment is a common motivation for the lawsuits. T HOMAS, P RISONER LITIGATION, supra note 15, at 136–38. But what Thomas means by harassment is not quite the same as what the critics mean. Thomas means cases filed
less to win than to put a particular officer on notice that future misbehavior will receive scrutiny —
lawsuits, that is, with particularized deterrence goals. Id.
203 Turner, When Prisoners Sue, supra note 15, at 637.

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stacles I have identified cut in different directions with respect to the pressure they put on trial outcomes. Plaintiffs’ trial success rates ought to be
low because of the combination of the low-probability tilt of even the postsummary judgment docket and the high proportion of cases that go to
trial. 204 But success rates should be high based on the hard bargaining
posture of defendants (correctional officials’ unwillingness to settle even
good cases means some such cases go to trial), and on plaintiffs’
overestimation of case values (if plaintiffs refuse to settle good cases
because they feel settlement offers are too low, one would expect their trial
win rate to be high, although the amount they win might be lower than the
rejected offer).
6. Low Damage Awards. — Table II.C sets out information on the low
amount of damages awarded to inmate plaintiffs in their rare litigated victories. The first question for this section is, why such low damages? The
most obvious hypothesis is that inmate damages are small because the
harm involved is trivial. But I have read too many descriptions of grievous harm suffered by inmates coupled with small verdicts to believe it.
What is far more likely is that the ordinary rules of tort damages are limiting compensation. Because injured inmates who remain incarcerated after
the injury have no (or very low) lost wages and no medical expenses, it is
simply not surprising that damages are low even in cases involving very
serious injury. The oft-repeated rule that general damages (that is, noneconomic damages) typically end up equal to “three times specials” (that is,
three times economic damages) — or even, as some scholars have found is
more typical in noninmate settings, a pattern of general damages approximately equal to specials 205 — would net most inmates virtually nothing 206
in even extremely serious cases. Indeed, the high incidence of punitive
damage awards in cases involving only low compensatory damages illustrated by Figure II.A may evidence jury discontent with entirely normal
damages in cases with proven bad conduct.
It is not only the doctrine of damages that depresses verdict amounts.
In many cases one would expect juries to lowball prisoners’ nonwage damages as an expression of disregard for them — even when liability is clear
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
204 Priest and Klein recognized this, commenting that “where the slope of the distribution at the decision standard is extreme, plaintiff victories in litigation may diverge markedly from 50 percent.”
Priest & Klein, supra note 116, at 22.
205 On the folklore of the “three times specials” rule of thumb and its lack of empirical support, see
Herbert M. Kritzer, Contingent- Fee Lawyers and Their Clients: Settlement Expectations, Settlement
Realities, and Issues of Control in the Lawyer-Client Relationship , 23 L. & SOC. I NQUIRY 795, 817
(1998).
206 One of the few lawyers who actually takes inmate cases on contingency fee credits the large verdicts lawyers in her firm have won to their efforts to get juries to step outside traditional damages: “You
can’t take a traditional approach to presenting damages in these cases, because there just aren’t any.
The plaintiffs have low if any earnings potential; they weren’t supporting anyone. So we look instead
to show the jury how outrageous the defendants’ conduct was.” Koob Interview, supra note 21.

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clear or even egregious. For pro se cases (as I suggest above), an inmate
who is together enough to succeed in persuading a judge or jury on liability faces all the more skepticism about the magnitude of the harm he experienced. 207 Lawyers who handle these inmate cases report that these obstacles to large recovery are not completely insurmountable. For example,
in cases in which the plaintiffs are the bereaved relatives of dead or comatose inmates, a big verdict is poss ible if the lawyer is able to focus the
jury’s attention entirely on the outrageousness of the alleged misconduct,
rather than on the small economic losses.208 But these kinds of cases are
not typical, and it takes a good deal of expertise to try them in a way that
neutralizes the ordinary reactions of jurors.209
The low damages in inmate cases raise an entirely separate question of
transactional efficiency. Table II.C includes the sum of litigated plaintiffs
judgments in 1993 and shows that the entire set of 100 plaintiffs’ litigated
victories led to about $8.3 million changing hands — $1.9 million if one
super-sized verdict is excluded. 210 Of course, there are also settlements.
Because these are far more numerous — in 1993 , there were about 1950
judgments coded as settlements and another 2350 coded as voluntary dismissals — they certainly add up to far more money. While there is no
way to know how much more, it is certainly possible to come up with
some defensible outer limit estimate. If settlements averaged, say, twice as
high as litigated judgments (after taking out the one outlier award of $6.5
million, which otherwise dominates the calculations), settlements in 1993
would have totaled over $75 million. Voluntary dismissals could add to
that figure. All of a sudden, this begins to look like real money. (Of
course, it is more plausible that settlements and especially voluntary dismissals are mostly for far less money. 211)
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
207 In 2000 , the first year with reliable data on the presence of counsel, see supra note 152 , eighty five percent of cases terminated by a trial verdict were litigated pro se. See Schlanger, Technical Appendix , supra note 3.
208 Id.
209 Elizabeth Koob told me about settling a case in which an inmate died from an inappropriate restraint. The defendant, the New York Department of Corrections, offered her client, the decedent’s
mother, several hundred thousand dollars, and the district judge was stunned when Koob refused the
offer. The judge told her that juries typically awarded only a few thousand dollars in such cases. But
Koob was confident that she could do better, and the prospect was apparently scary enough to the defendants that the eventual settlement was a million dollars. Id.
210 The numbers are bound to be at least a little low, because they necessarily exclude information
from the small portion of the docket for which information is unavailable. For a description of the
composition of the sample, see supra note 132.
211 Howard Eisenberg discovered from his file review of inmate cases that “[i]n a number of cases
the prisoner actually obtains substantially the relief he seeks, not through the order of the court, but
simply because some responsive person has seen the complaint after litigation was filed. Often the ‘relief’ is seemingly trivial: a phone call to a family member, retaining a book in the cell, or the right to
wear a small item of jewelry — but that is all the inmate wanted to begin with.” Howard Eisenberg,
Rethinking Prisoner Cases, supra note 15, at 439. Eisenberg suggests that voluntary dismissals are the
formal disposition in some such cases. Id. at 439 n.93.

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But in fact, even though $75 million is real money, it is dwarfed by the
costs of running the litiga tion system. Litigation imposes very substantial
transaction costs on plaintiffs and their lawyers, on courts, and on defendants. I will not treat the first, because the cost of litigation to inmates and
their lawyers is bound to be relatively small, given that nearly all inmate
civil rights cases are filed pro se.212 Besides, some of plaintiffs’ attorneys’
fees are undoubtedly included in state costs, since the state usually pays
such fees when it is the losing party. 213
Costs to courts, by contrast, are substantial. They include the compe nsation and overhead costs of district and appellate judges and their cha mbers staff (law clerks and secretaries), as well as magistrate judges, pro se
law clerks and staff attorneys at both the district and appellate leve l, and
court clerks. The infrastructure of the federal court system, including court
security, the Administrative Office, and the Federal Judicial Center, adds to
these costs. Each year, the Administrative Office develops a formula for
estimating the budgetary impact of new federal initiatives that might increase case filings. Under the Administrative Office’s formula for 1995 ,
the total lifetime cost of 100 new cases with a “case weight” of 1.0 (a
more or less average case, which requires three hours of judge time) was
$454 ,316 ($4543 per case).214 Of course, inmate cases are not average
cases. Their assigned case weight is far lower — 0.28 usually and 0.48 if
the case is coded as having a federal defendant.215 But the formula can
easily be adjusted to acc ount for different case weights by computing the
total “weighted filings” (the number of filings mult iplied by the case
weights) in the inmate civil rights category, and then multiplying these by
the formula’s average per-case cost.216 This produces the estimate that
inmate cases filed in 1995 cost courts about $51 million. 217 Service of
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
212 See infra Table II.D. Prisons and jails do, however, need to pay for the law libraries or other legal assistance that allow inmates to proceed pro se, and I have not included these costs. Note, however,
that they are as much or more attributable to the habeas docket as to the civil rights docket.
213 See 42 U.S.C. § 1988 (2000).
214 The formula is discussed infra at note 217 , and its components are set out infra at Table IV.A.
215 See supra note 96 .
216 It is less simple to figure out whether the resulting figure accurately reflects the cost of inmate
cases. The problem is that the case weights came from a judicial time study, and therefore reflect different amounts of judge time, but not other kinds of differences among case categories. For example,
even adjusting to account for the small amount of judge time per case, inmate cases probably used
more magistrate judge and pro se law clerk time but less appellate time than the formula assumes. Still,
Administrative Office staff (who are clearly in the best position to evaluate the question) believe that
using the general formula is nonetheless a fairly good method for estimating costs — certainly better
than any other available algorithm. Jaffe Interview, supra note 21 .
217 Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3. My estimate is consistent with the one submitted to
Congress by the Administrative Office: nearly $50 million for cases filed in fiscal year 1994. See JUDICIAL I MPACT OFFICE , ADMIN. OFFICE OF THE U.S. COURTS, JUDICIAL I MPACT STATEMENT:
VIOLENT CRIMINAL I NCARCERATION ACT OF 1995, H.R. 667, at 3 (June 21, 1995). The first part of
Table IV.A, infra, sets out the components of the Administrative Office’s formula; the bottom two rows

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process in these cases (which is provided without charge by the United
States Marshals Service) probably costs another several hundred thousand
dollars.218
As for defendants’ costs, the National Association of Attorneys General
(NAAG) estimated in 1995 that they were even higher than court costs.
NAAG surveyed the states and received cost estimates from thirty-five of
them. Extrapolating from those responses, it estimated that the states spent
about $80 million each year on inmate litigation. 219 No precise information on the survey’s method or results is available. But as an estimate of
litigation transaction costs, this seems perfectly plausible.220 Eighty million dollars pays for 1066 employees at $75,000 each (including salaries,
benefits, and overhead). In 1995, that would have worked out to one employee for every 927 state inmates.221 These employees would have included not just legal staff (lawyers, paralegals, secretaries), but also various prison personnel (“litigation officers” and other correctional employees
who work on litigation), as well as other employees who participate in
depositions, review records, or handle other litigation-related tasks. Of
course some, and probably a large portion, of these state costs are actually
incurred in dealing with the large, court order cases, rather than the individual cases that I am discussing here. And much of the rest is probably
spent on cases that have lawyers or go to trial, though these are quite
rare.222
No real data on the federal prisons’ litigation costs are available, but a
ballpark estimate is that such costs were at least several million dollars
more.223 As an even rougher estimate, it seems reasonable to guess that
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
are what I have added. The head of the Administrative Office’s Judicial Impact Office kindly shared
the Administrative Office’s formulas with me. Jaffe Interview, supra note 21.
218 The Marshals Service only started keeping records on numbers of items served in fiscal year
2002. But in every case in which the court does not dismiss the complaint prior to service, at least one,
and usually several, defendants must be served. In 1995, the Marshals Service charged eight dollars per
item served by mail (the ordinary method). See 28 U.S.C. § 1921 (2000); 28 C.F.R. § 0.114(a)(2)
(2002). (Recordkeeping information is from an e-mail to the author from Joe Lazar, Associate General
Counsel, United States Marshals Service (May 8, 2002).)
219 Letter from the National Association of Attorneys General to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole
(Sept. 19, 1995), reprinted in 141 CONG. REC. S14,413, S14,417–18 (daily ed. Sept. 27, 1995).
220 See Hanson, supra note 94, at 225. Hanson estimates at least $100 million dollars in litigation
expenses, but without any discussion of sources or methods.
221 See supra Table I.A. In 1993, for example, California had fifty-two lawyers assigned to defend
the state against lawsuits filed by its 130,000 state prisoners (this works out to be one lawyer for every
2500 inmates).
See Legislative Counsel of California, Bill Analysis of SB 1445 (Aug.
9, 1994), available at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/93-94/bill/sen/sb_1401-1450/sb_1445_cfa_
940809_143023_sen_floor (last visited Mar. 16, 2003).
222 For example, Branham reports that in Illinois, state lawyers working on nonhabeas inmate cases
in 1995 spent forty percent of their time on cases in which prisoners were represented by attorneys.
BRANHAM, PRO S E I NMATE LITIGATION, supra note 58, at 34.
223 If thirty federal lawyers work full time on inmate litigation at $100,000 each, that would cost
around $3 million per year. It is hard to know how many staff hours are spent on litigat ion, because
trial work is handled by assistant U.S. Attorneys, or by lawyers in the Civil Division of the Justice De-

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the nation’s jails probably spent something less than half as much as state
prisons on inmate litigation: jails house half as many inmates as prisons do
on any given day, and while they were sued proportionately less than prisons, they had fewer economies of scale to minimize the cost of responding.
To total these figures, leading up to 1996, inmate litigation had transaction costs of about $175 million per year — with a substantial but unknowable portion (and certainly not all) of that cost dedicated to the kinds
of cases in which I am interested here.
In sum, whatever plausible assumptions are used to estimate either half
of the comparison, annual federal litigation costs prior to the PLRA were
vastly higher than the amount of compensation actually paid out through
the litigation system. 224 If litigation is conceived of simply as a compensation mechanism, it combines poor performance with high costs. If, however, litigation is actually a process that has beneficial noncompensatory
effects, its costs begin to look less outrageous. Even $200 million — a
very high cost estimate for 1995 — works out to just $126 per inmate that
year.225 That is the cost of just a few weeks of meals in prison. 226 Thus,
the overall cost, though large, is not nearly so large as to pretermit inquiry
into whether this was money well spent.
C. Conclusion
At the end of the analysis, the evidence establishes that as of 1995, before the PLRA was enacted, plaintiffs were successful in only a small minority of inmate cases filed, and even the successful cases usually garnered
quite small damages. A good deal of the low success rate was attributable
to inmates’ tendency to file bad cases — bad because of the high (some
would say unduly high, but that normative judgment is not the point here)
legal and persuasive standard of liability, because of the lack of disincentives to file, and because inmates are not very good lawyers. Of less interest to the PLRA’s supporters but of definite import to me, it seems equally
clear that the adjudication (or, as Marc Galanter has put it, the “litigotia–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
partment, who also do many other things, as do the BOP’s own lawyers, who work with the litigation
counsel. Pybas Interview, supra note 21.
224 Charles Silver labels the comparison of expenditures to compensation via litigation the “Compensation Ratio” and criticizes it as a measure of litigation efficiency and effectiv eness. See Charles Silver,
Does Civil Justice Cost Too Much?, 80 T EX. L. REV. 2073, 2078–82 (2002).
225 See Table I.A, supra , for prison and jail population figures.
226 See, e.g., Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, Detention Center, at http://www.esn.net/sheriff/ detention.html (last visited Mar. 16, 2003) (reporting that a food services contractor “provides three meals
each day to all Inmates at a cost [that] . . . ranges from approximately $0.98 to $1.65 per meal”); Missouri Dep’t of Corr., A Monthly Fact Sheet (Apr. 2000), available at http://www.
corrections.state.mo.us/director/Apr00.pdf (“The average cost to serve one inmate breakfast, lunch and
dinner was $2.10 per day.”).

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tion” 227) process was seriously flawed, so that the system led to serious
undercompensation for a very large portion of such victims. The ordinary
processes of lawyer screening, discovery, and settlement were ineffective
when the parties were indigent prisoners and public corrections agencies.
And in the absence of discovery and lawyers, motions and trials were
likely an unreliable method of determining appropriate case outcomes. Yet
litigation was nonetheless quite expensive for defendants. In sum, litigation was both burdensome for defendants and courts and ineffective as far
as achieving individually correct outcomes that compensated victims of
misconduct.
III. SEA CHANGE: THE PLRA (AND OTHER 1996 CHANGES)
The PLRA did not change much of the substantive law underlying inmate litigation — mostly it could not, because inmates’ federal cases are
nearly all premised on constitutional violations over whose definition Congress has no control. But the 1996 statute rewrote both the law of procedure and the law of remedies in individual inmate cases in federal court,
with the following provisions:228
A. Exhaustion
Before the PLRA’s passage, inmate plaintiff “exhaustion” of grievance
procedures was required only if the district court deemed exhaustion “appropriate and in the interests of justice,” and the relevant procedures had
been certified as “plain, speedy, and effective” by the federal Department
of
Justice
(specifically,
by
the
Federal
Bureau
of Prisons) or by a district court,229 a certification process seldom
used. 230 Moreover, a plaintiff’s failure to exhaust under the original stan–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
227 Marc Galanter, Worlds of Deals: Using Negotiation To Teach About Legal Process, 34 J. LEGAL
EDUC. 268, 268 (1984) (arguing that litigation and negotiation are best conceptualized as one “litigotiation process”).
228 The best guide to the PLRA and how courts have interpreted it is by John Boston, Executive Director of Prison Legal Services, part of the Legal Aid Society of New York. Boston’s guide has not
been published in full, but an edited version is available as a book chapter, see John Boston, The Prison
Litigation Reform Act, in A JAILHOUSE LAWYER’ S MANUAL 339 (5th ed. 2000) [hereinafter Boston,
Jailhouse Lawyer’s Chapter], and as a PLI article, see John Boston, The Prison Litigation Reform Act,
in 16 TH ANNUAL SECTION 1983 CIVIL RIGHTS LITIGATION 687 (PLI Litig. & Admin. Practice
Course, Handbook Series No. H0-007S, 2000), available at WL 640 PLI/Lit 687 [hereinafter Boston,
PLI]. Boston’s tract on administrative exhaustion is a separate, unpublished document. See John Boston, Exhaustion of Administrative Remedies Under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (Nov. 12, 2001)
(unpublished manuscript, on file with author) [hereinafter Boston, Exhaustion]. Another good PLRA
treatise is MICHAEL B. MUSHLIN, 3 RIGHTS OF P RISONERS 73 (3d ed. 2003).
229 Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a)(1) (1988) (since amended);
see also Donald P. Lay, Exhaustion of Grievance Procedures for State Prisoners Under Section 1997e
of the Civil Rights Act, 71 I OWA L. REV. 935, 939–42 (1986).
230 JUDICIAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED STATES, REPORT OF THE FEDERAL COURTS STUDY
COMMITTEE 49 (1990) (explaining that “few states have sought and obtained certification under this

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dards resulted only in a stay of a district court proceeding, not its dismissal. 231 But now, under the PLRA, prior to filing any federal-law “action . . . with respect to prison conditions”232 — which means “all inmate
suits about prison [or jail] life”233 — inmates must make their complaints
using whatever administrative grievance procedures exist. Exhaustion is
required if the grievance system is “available”234 to deal with a particular
topic of complaint, even if that system lacks authority to grant the remedy
sought (most frequently, money damages).235 The exhaustion requirement
has teeth because many courts have held that an inmate’s failure to comply
with the grievance system’s rules (time limits, form, and so on) usually
justifies disqualific ation of the inmate’s lawsuit.236
B. Filing Fees
The PLRA requires indigent inmates, unlike other indigent plaintiffs in
federal court, to pay filing fees in nonhabeas civil actions if they have any
money in their prison accounts; inmates still can proceed in forma pauperis, but that status no longer exempts them from the obligation to pay a
$150 filing fee.237 Instead, it allows them to pay the filing fee in installments, at the rate of twenty percent of income to their prison accounts each
month. 238 Indigent inmate litigants remain entitled to free service of process and are excused from some costs on appeal.239
Inmates who have had three prior actions or appeals dismissed as frivolous or malicious, or for failing to state a claim upon which relief may be
granted, now face an even more stringent limit: they may not proceed in
forma pauperis at all unless they face “imminent danger of serious physical
injury.”240

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
statute”); Note, Resolving Prisoners’ Grievances Out of Court: 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, 104 HARV. L. REV.
1309, 1310–11 (1991) (discussing certification procedure and the Federal Courts Study Committee’s
recommendations for revision).
231 See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a)(1) (1988) (since amended).
232 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a) (2000).
233 Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 532 (2002).
234 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a).
235 See Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731, 734, 741 (2001).
236 See infra pp. 1650–54.
237 28 U.S.C. § 1915(b)(1)–(2) (2000) (no filing fee exemption for inmates); id. § 1914(a) (filing fee
is $150).
238 Id. § 1915(b)(1)–(2). The courts of appeals disagree about whether the assessments for multiple
fees (district court and appellate filing fees in the same case, for example) are to be assessed sequentially or simultaneously. Compare Whitfield v. Scully, 241 F.3d 264, 276–77 (2d Cir. 2001) (sequentially), with Newlin v. Helman, 123 F.3d 429, 436 (7th Cir. 1997) (simultaneously), overruled in other
part by Walker v. O’Brien, 216 F.3d 626, 628–29 & n.1 (7th Cir. 2000), and by Lee v. Clinton, 209 F.3d
1025, 1026–27 (7th Cir. 2000).
239 See 28 U.S.C. § 1915(c)–(d) (2000).
240 Id. § 1915(g).

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C. Costs
Even before the PLRA, inmates who lost their cases could be assessed
their defendants’ “costs,” used here in a specialized sense that includes
transcription fees and not much else.241 Such liability, if assessed, is not
insignificant: depositions can cost thousands of dollars to transcribe. But
although costs are “allowed as of course” by the terms of Rule 54(d)(1),
prior to the PLRA, district courts were fully authorized to deny defendants
their costs due to a plaintiff’s indigence, or to assess costs and then give
the plaintiff some kind of equitable relief from their collection. 242 The
PLRA altered these dispensation rules, stating: “If the judgment against a
prisoner includes the payment of costs under this subsection, the prisoner
shall be required to pay the full amount of the costs ordered.”243 Courts
have disagreed as to the precise effect of the new costs standard, but it’s
clear that the new standard is less favorable for plaintiffs than was the
prior regime.244
D. Judicial Screening
The PLRA requires that district courts review all inmate complaints
against government entities or officers “before docketing, if feasible or, in
any event, as soon as practicable after docketing.”245 In practice, this very
often means that courts review complaints prior to service of process.
Courts must dismiss a complaint if it is “frivolous, malicious, or fails to
state a claim upon which relief may be granted; or . . . seeks monetary relief from a defendant who is immune from such relief.”246 Dismissal may
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
241 See FED. R. CIV. P. 54(d)(1) (“[C]osts other than attorneys’ fees shall be allowed as of course to
the prevailing party unless the court otherwise directs . . . .”); Crawford Fitting Co. v. J.T. Gibbons,
Inc., 482 U.S. 437, 440–42 (1987) (holding that Rule 54(d) costs include only those mentioned in 28
U.S.C. § 1920; the major items are stenographic transcripts, printing costs, and witness fees).
242 See, e.g., Weaver v. Toombs, 948 F.2d 1004, 1013–14 (6th Cir. 1991) (reviewing case law suggesting that while plaintiffs’ indigence weighs in favor of denying costs to a prevailing defendant, a
court retains the authority to assess reasonable costs against unsuccessful in forma pauperis plaintiffs,
who may then move for relief from such costs award).
243 28 U.S.C. § 1915(f)(2)(A) (2000). Again, the collection is limited to twenty percent of an inmate’s monthly income. Id. § 1915(b)(2).
244 Courts have differing interpretations of the result of the new statute. See, e.g., Singleton v. Smith,
241 F.3d 534, 541 (6th Cir. 2001) (“We do not appear to have forbidden partial remittance of costs as
part of a district court’s discretion, despite a presumption for taxation of full costs.”); Whitfield v.
Scully, 241 F.3d 264, 273 (2d Cir. 2001) (“[Section] 1915(f)(2)(A) restricts our authority to modify a
district court’s discretionary award of costs against a prisoner proceeding in forma pauperis on the
ground that the prisoner is unable to pay.”).
245 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(a) (2000).
246 Id. § 1915A(b)(1)–(2); see also id. § 1915(e)(2) (requiring the same substantive standard to be
applied “at any time” in all in forma pauperis cases, not just those brought by priso ners); 42 U.S.C.
§ 1997e(c)(1) (2000) (providing that the same substantive standard is applicable on the court’s own
motion or on a motion by a party to any “prison conditions” case brought in federal court by a prisoner).

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be (and often is) without motion, notice to the plaintiff, or opportunity to
respond. 247
E. No Obligation To Respond
Defendants may now choose not to file a response to filed inmate
complaints without the failure to answer being deemed an admission to the
allegations in the complaint. Courts may order response only if “the plaintiff has a reasonable opportunity to prevail on the merits.”248
F. Telephonic Hearings
Where courts need or allow inmate participation in pretrial hearings or
other proceedings, the PLRA requires judges to obtain such participation
without removing the inmate from jail or prison by using a “telephone,
video conference, or other telecommunications technology.”249
G. Limitation on Damages
Under the PLRA, inmates may not receive court-awarded damages for
“mental or emotional injury suffered while in custody without a prior
showing of physical injury.”250 Read most broadly, this provision could
rule out damages for anything — say, violation of religious freedom —
that does not cause “physical injury.” So far, courts seem to be reading the
provision somewhat more narrowly: while they have disallowed damage
claims based on threats or poor conditions unless actual physical injury occurred, they have allowed cases charging constitutional violations of free
speech, freedom of religion, and race discrimination to proceed. 251
H. Diversion of Damages
When an inmate does win a damage award, the PLRA requires that it
be “paid directly to satisfy any outstanding restitution orders pending
against the [inmate].” 252 The inmate gets only the remainder.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
247 See, e.g., Plunk v. Givens, 234 F.3d 1128, 1129 (10th Cir. 2000); Carr v. Dvorin, 171 F.3d 115,
116 (2d Cir. 1999) (per curiam). However, the plaintiff may get an opportunity to amend the complaint
to cure certain defects. See, e.g., Lopez v. Smith, 203 F.3d 1122, 1127–31 (9th Cir. 2000) (en banc).
248 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(g)(2) (2000).
249 Id. § 1997e(f)(1).
250 Id. § 1997e(e); 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b)(2) (2000).
251 See Boston, Jailhouse Lawyer’s Chapter, supra note 228, at 361–63 (summarizing cases). Boston is less sanguine in John Boston, The Prison Litigation Reform Act: The New Face of Court Stripping, 67 BROOK. L. REV. 429, 434–37 (2001) [hereinafter Boston, Court Stripping].
252 Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Pub. L. No. 104-134, § 807, 110 Stat. 1321-75 to -76, reprinted in 18 U.S.C. § 3626 (note) (2000).

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I. Limitation on Attorneys’ Fees
When an inmate has a lawyer and wins a case, he, like any other civil
rights plaintiff, is usually authorized to recover a “reasonable attorney’s
fee,”253 at least in cases involving nonfederal defendants. In areas of litigation not covered by the PLRA, such fees are, generally speaking, calculated by multiplying the number of hours reasonably expended on the case
by a reasonable hourly rate.254 But the PLRA strictly limits fees in money
damages cases to 150 percent of the total judgment. 255 In addition, the
PLRA limits attorneys’ hourly pay, otherwise based on market rates, to 150
percent of the rates authorized for court-appointed criminal counsel (currently, a maximum of $169.50 per hour).256
J. Coverage
Except where otherwise stated, the PLRA provisions set out above each
apply only to civil, nonhabeas257 cases “brought” by “prisoners.”258 Former inmates are not covered; nor are dead inmates or inmates’ families.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
253 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) (2000) authorizes fees in actions brought under § 1983. Fees are apparently
unavailable for Bivens actions brought by federal inmates, see Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents
of the Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 397 (1971), because the Equal Access to Justice Act
allows fees to be awarded against the federal government only when some other substantive statute authorizes them, see 42 U.S.C. § 2412(b), or when a case is against the United States directly or an officer
in his or her official capacity. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 2412(d)(1)(A), (d)(2)(C) (2000). What little case law I
have found on this subject suggests that neither condition holds for Bivens actions for damages, which
are brought directly under the Constitution against officers in their individual capacities. See, e.g.,
Kreines v. United States, 33 F.3d 1105, 1108–09 (9th Cir. 1994).
254 City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 572–73 (1986).
255 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(2) (2000).
256 See id. § 1997e(d)(3) (referencing the rate established under the Criminal Justice Act, 18 U.S.C.
§ 3006A (2000)). The Criminal Justice Act set rates of $60 per hour for in-court time and $40 per hour
for out -of-court time, but authorized the Judicial Conference of the United States to raise the maximum
rates. 18 U.S.C. § 3006A(d)(1). The Judicial Conference did so most recently in September 2000,
when it authorized a rate of $113 per hour (150% of which is $169.50), JUDICIAL CONFERENCE OF
THE UNITED STATES, REPORT OF THE P ROCEEDINGS OF THE JUDICIAL CONFERENCE OF THE
UNITED STATES 50 (2000), although Congress’s appropriations for federal criminal defendants’ counsel
currently permit only $90 per hour. See Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary,
and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-77, 115 Stat. 748, 781 (2001) (allocat ing funding for federally funded defense counsel in fiscal year 2002); H.R. Rep. No. 107-139, at 99
(2001) (accompanying H.R. 2500, Pub. L. No. 107-77) (stating that the committee “[p]rovide[d] sufficient funding to increase panel attorney rates to $90 per hour”); H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 107-278, at 142,
reprinted in 2002 U.S.C.C.A.N. 793, 855 (“The conference agreement adopts, by reference, the House
report language.”). There is some disagreement in the federal courts of appeals about which rate is
relevant for PLRA purposes. Compare Webb v. Ada County, 285 F.3d 829, 838–39 (9th Cir. 2002)
(holding that the PLRA fee-cap must be set with reference to the rate approved by the Judicial Conference rather than the lower implemented rate), with Hernandez v. Kalinowski, 146 F.3d 196, 201 (3d Cir.
1998) (reaching the opposite conclusion).
257 So far, all the courts of appeals seem to agree that the PLRA does not apply to properly filed actions under 28 U.S.C. §§ 2241, 2254, or 2255. See, e.g., Walker v. O’Brien, 216 F.3d 626, 633–37 (7th
Cir. 2000) (citing and discussing uniform case law).
258 See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), (d)(1), (e); 28 U.S.C. § 1915(h) (2000).

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There has been a fair amount of litigation around the margins of the definitions.259
K. Other Legal Changes Concurrent with the PLRA
In the same 1996 appropriations bill that included the PLRA, Congress
also imposed new constraints on the recipients of federal legal services
funding. Among other limits, those offices were required to cease representing inmates.260 Even though legal services offices used to handle
vastly more inmate litigation than in more recent years, the new restrictio n
was by no means merely symbolic. In 1995, recipient offices recorded
more than 10,000 inmate matters — around a tenth of which involved representation that ended with a settlement or an agency or court decision. 261
(The other nine-tenths involved less time-consuming representation — advice, referrals, and the like.)
In addition, just two days before enacting the PLRA, Congress enacted
the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA),262 which has
severely limited the availability of habeas relief for both state and federal
prisoners, essentially requiring prisoners to file any petition for habeas review in the first year following their conviction and limiting prisoners to
one round of federal habeas review.263 Finally, two months after the
PLRA was enacted, the Supreme Court added its own limitations on inmate litigation in Lewis v. Casey.264 Most relevant here, Lewis cut back
the scope of inmates’ right of access to law libraries. Emphasizing that the
Constitution does not create “an abstract, freestanding right to a law library
or legal assistance,”265 the Court insisted that federal courts are authorized
to interfere in prison officials’ decisions about law library services only
when the lack of such services caused “actual injury” to the plaintiff —
that is, when it demonstrably “hindered his efforts to pursue a legal
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
259
260

See Boston, PLI, supra note 228, at 695–700.
See Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions and Appropriations Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-134,
§ 504(a)(15), 110 Stat. 1321, 1321-55.
261 See L EGAL SERVS. CORP., P RISONERS RIGHTS CASES, 1990–2001 (May 3, 2002) (spreadsheet
on file with author). Data in the spreadsheet are from the Legal Services Corporation Office of Information Management Case Service Reports (annual reports, 1990–2000). While legal services funding
recipients handled a great many cases prior to mid-1996, their role since 1978 has been far smaller than
in the early 1970s. See Jacobs, Prisoners’ Rights Movement, supra note 2, at 39–40 (emphasizing the
role of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) Legal Services providers, but explaining that
“[f]ederal funding for prisoner legal services has lately become more difficult to obtain, in part because
of the displacement of OEO Legal Services by the Legal Services Corporation”). On the role of federally funded legal services providers in inmate litigation, both under the Legal Services Corporation and
prior to its formation, see Margo Schlanger, Beyond the Hero Judge: Institutional Reform Litigation as
Litigation, 97 MICH. L. REV. 1994, 2019 (1999) (book review).
262 Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (1996) (amending 28 U.S.C. §§ 2244, 2253–2255 and adding new sections, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2261–2266).
263 See 28 U.S.C. § 2244 (2000).
264 518 U.S. 343 (1996).
265 Id. at 351.

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claim.”266 Moreover, said the Court, a systematic remedy can be justified
only by demonstration of widespread, systematic injury of this kind. 267
The result has been a marked contraction in the availability of law libraries
and other legal services to prison inmates.268
IV. LITIGATION EFFECTS OF THE PLRA
“Beyond doubt,” the Supreme Court recently explained, “Congress enacted [the PLRA] to reduce the quantity and improve the quality of prisoner suits.”269 The statute’s primary goal, as far as individual cases are
concerned, was to reduce litigation, but with the avowed constraint that
meritorious cases should remain viable. As Senator Hatch phrased it in
one version of this point made repeatedly in floor speeches in support of
the various PLRA versions, “I do not want to prevent inmates from raising
legitimate claims. This legislation will not prevent those claims from being raised. The legislation will, however, go far in preventing inmates
from abusing the Federal judicial system.”270
The constraint may have been entirely rhetorical. But even taken at
face value, it was clearly secondary; claims of litigation abuse by inmates
were dominant. Still, it seems appropr iate to evaluate the PLRA in the
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
266
267
268

Id.
Id. at 349, 359–60.
See, e.g., Associated Press, Iowa Prisons’ Law Libraries Are Targ eted, OMAHA W ORLDHERALD, Feb. 16, 1999, at 9, available at 1999 WL 4488527 (describing the planned phase-out of
Iowa prison law libraries); Keith Bagwell, State Prisons’ Paralegal Faces Charges of Fraud, ARIZ.
DAILY STAR, Aug. 13, 1998, at 1A, available at 1998 WL 6205126 (describing the implementation of
Arizona’s decision to shut thirty-four of thirty-five prison law libraries and replace them with paralegal
screening of inmates’ legal complaints); Angela Galloway, Locke Signs State Budget, SEATTLE P OSTI NTELLIGENCER, June 27, 2001, at A1, available at 2001 WL 3561869 (reporting on a Washington
state budget cut of $1.2 million achieved by “reducing inmate access to legal services and by closing
prison law libraries”); Legal Clinic at Graterford Prison To Close, PA. L. W KLY., June 10, 2002, at 12,
available at WL 25 PLW 644 (announcing shutdown of an inmate-run law clinic at a Pennsylvania
prison); Betsy Z. Russell, State To Try To Sell Prisons’ Old Law Libraries, SPOKESMAN REV. (Sp okane, Wash.), Apr. 26, 2002, at B1, available at 2002 WL 6439793 (reporting on Idaho’s decision to
close its prison law libraries and put the books up for sale on eBay); Telephone Interview with Teresa
Jones, Idaho Department of Correction, Public Information Officer (Nov. 6, 2002) (confirming the eBay
sale of several prison libraries to a private person for about $100 plus shipping costs). Utah shut down
its prison law library prior to the Lewis decision. See Carper v. DeLand, 54 F.3d 613, 615 (10th Cir.
1995).
269 Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 525 (2002). The Court was describing the exhaustion provision
of the PLRA, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e (2000), rather than the whole Act. But the description accurately captures the entire presentation of the PLRA’s supporters on the topic of individual inmate litigation.
270 141 CONG. REC. S14,627 (daily ed. Sept. 29, 1995) (statement of Sen. Hatch); see also 141
CONG. REC. S18,136 (daily ed. Dec. 7, 1995) (statement of Sen. Hatch); 141 CONG. REC. H1480 (daily
ed. Feb. 9, 1995) (statement of Rep. Canady) (“These reasonable requirements will not impede meritorious claims by inmates but will greatly discourage claims that are without merit.”); 141 CONG. REC.
S7526 (daily ed. May 25, 1995) (statement of Sen. Kyl) (“The filing fee is small enough not to deter a
prisoner with a meritorious claim, yet large enough to deter frivolous claims and multiple filings. . . .
[P]risoners with meritorious claims will not be shut out from court for lack of sufficient money to pay
even the partial fee.”).

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terms its supporters used. So is the PLRA realizing the paired goal and
constraint of stemming the tide of bad inmate cases while allowing recovery for good ones? Yes to the first; probably no to the second.
A. The Shrinking Inmate Docket
The most dramatic effect of the PLRA on individual inmate cases has
been the decrease in district court filings coded by the Administrative Office as inmate civil rights cases. As Table I.A shows, the decrease between
1995 and 1997 was thirty-three percent, and it occurred notwithstanding a
ten percent increase in the incarcerated population. This would seem to be
unambiguous evidence that the PLRA has accomplished its litigationreduction purpose. A little more analysis is needed to be sure, however:
while the large decline in inmate filings illustrated in Table I.A demonstrates a significant reduction in inmate litigation in the relevant Administrative Office category, Table I.A and the data on which it is based cannot
rule out simultaneous increases in simila r but differently labeled litigation.
In this section, I explore the possibility that the PLRA has led to differently labeled rather than fewer inmate filings. I conclude that there has
clearly been a migration of cases from the federal district court inmate
civil rights docket to federal habeas and state court dockets. That shift is
likely quite small, however, compared to the tremendous demonstrable decline in inmate civil rights filings. Thus the PLRA seems to have achieved
its major goal of shrinking the number of civil rights filings by inmates.
1. State Court. — Are inmate cases that used to be filed in federal
court migrating to state court instead? Information on state court filings is
extremely hard to come by, but at least two things are clear. First, state attorneys general and departments of corrections expected to see some
movement from federal to state court. Indeed, the National Association of
Attorneys General pushed hard for state PLRAs, both before and after
Congress passed the federal statute.271 Largely as a result of this push, all
but a few states now have some kind of system that specially regulates inmate access to state court.272 Second, notwithstanding state legislative ef–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
271 See National Association of Attorneys General, Resolution: Proposed Model State Legislation
Providing Disincentives to Filing of Frivolous Lawsuits by Prisoners (adopted Mar. 20–22, 1994) (on
file with author). NAAG’s members were not the only state-level players. Louisiana’s corrections department head, for example, told me: “Four years ago, the editor of the Correctional Law Reporter, Bill
Collins, said that the impact of the PLRA would be to shift cases into state court. So I thought, ‘Aha,
we have to nip this in the bud.’ So I got a state PLRA passed, and we’ve seen reductions in filings in
both courts.” Stalder Interview, supra note 21.
272 The relevant state statutes are:
Alabama
[none]
Alaska
ALASKA STAT. §§ 09.19.010–.200 (Michie 2000)
Arizona
ARIZ. REV. STAT. ANN. §§ 41-1604.07(I), 41-1604.10(E), 12-302(E), 31-238
(West 2002)

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–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Arkansas
California

Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
District of
Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois

Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New
Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North
Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio

Oklahoma
Oregon

ARK. CODE ANN. §§ 12-29-601 to -602 (Lexis 1999); id. §§ 16-63-220,
16-106-201 to -204, 16-106-301 to -302, 16-68-601 to -607 (Michie Supp. 2001)
CAL. P ENAL CODE §§ 2085.5, 2932.5 (West 2000); CAL. GOV’ T CODE
§ 68511.3(e) (West 1997); see also CAL. CIV. P ROC. §§ 391 to 391.7 (West 1973
& Supp. 2003) (vexatious litigants)
COLO. REV. STAT. §§ 13-17.5-101 to -108, 17-20-114.5, 17-26-110.5 (2002)
[none]
DEL. CODE ANN. tit. 10, §§ 8804, 8805 (Michie 1999)
[none]
FLA. STAT. ANN. § 57.085 (West Supp. 2002), 944.279, 944.28 (West 2001); see
also FLA. STAT. chs. 68.093 (2002) (vexatious lit igants)
GA. CODE ANN. § 9-10-14 (Supp. 2001); GA. CODE ANN. §§ 42-12-1 to -9 (Michie 1997 & Supp. 2001)
HAW. REV. STAT. § 353-22.5 (Supp. 1999); see also HAW. REV. STAT. § 634J-1 to
-7 (1993) (vexatious litigants)
I DAHO CODE §§ 19-4201 to -4226, 20-209E (Michie 1997 & Supp. 2002)
705 ILL. COMP. STAT. ANN. §§ 105/27.9, 505/21 (West 1999); 730 I LL. COMP.
STAT. ANN. §§ 5/3-6-3(d), 5/3-7-6 (West 1997), 735 I LL. COMP. STAT. ANN.
§ 5/22-105 (West Supp. 2002)
I ND. CODE § 33-19-3-2.5 (1998)
I OWA CODE ANN. §§ 610A.1–.4, 903A.3, 904.702 (West Supp. 2002)
KAN. CIV. P ROC. CODE ANN. § 60-2001(b) (West Supp. 2002), KAN. STAT. ANN.
§ 75-52,138 (1997)
KY. REV. STAT. ANN. §§ 454.400 to 454.415 (Banks-Baldwin 1999 & Supp. 2002)
LA. REV. STAT. ANN. §§ 15:1172–:1179, 15:1181–:1189 (West Supp. 2002)
ME. REV. STAT. ANN. tit. 4, § 1058 (West Supp. 2001)
MD. CODE. ANN., CTS. & JUD. P ROC. §§ 5-1001 to -1007 (1998 & Supp. 2001)
MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. ch. 231, § 6F (West 2000)
MICH. COMP. LAWS ANN. §§ 600.2963, 600.5501–.5531 (West 2001)
MINN. STAT. ANN. §§ 243.23, subd. 3(8), 243.241, 244.035, 563.02 (2000 & West
Supp. 2002)
MISS. CODE ANN. §§ 47-5-138(3), 47-5-76 (2000)
MO. ANN. STAT. §§ 217.262 (1996); 510.125; id. §§ 506.360–.390 (West Supp.
2002)
MONT. CODE ANN. §§ 25-10-109, 25-10-404, 46-18-237 (2001)
[none]
NEV. REV. STAT. 41.0322 (2002); id. 176.278, 209.3825, 209.451(1)(d) (2001)
N.H. REV. STAT. ANN. §§ 623-B:1 to 623-B:3 (Supp. 2002)
N.J. STAT. ANN. §§ 30:4-16.2–.5 (West 1997 & Supp. 2002)
N.M. STAT. ANN. §§ 33-2-11 (Michie 1978 & Supp. 1998); 41-4-16.1 (Michie
1978 & Supp. 1996)
N.Y. C.P.L.R. 1101(f) (McKinney Supp. 2002); N.Y. COMP. CODES R. & REGS.
tit. 22, §§ 140.1–.6 (2000)
N.C. GEN. STAT. §§ 1-110(b), 148-118.1–.8 (2002)
[none]
OHIO REV. CODE ANN. §§ 2323.51, 2969.21–.27 (West Supp. 2002); see also
OHIO REV. CODE ANN. § 2323.52 (West 1994 & Supp. 2002) (vexatious litigators)
OKLA. STAT. tit. 12, § 2003.1, tit. 57, §§ 564–566.4 (2001)
OR. REV. STAT. §§ 30.642 to 30.650 (2001)

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forts, inmate filings have increased substantially in some, though clearly
not all, state courts.273
2. Habeas. — And has the PLRA induced inmates to file some federal
court cases as habeas petitions rather than nonhabeas civil actions? There
is no way to answer this question precisely, even though, as always, there
is far more information about federal than state cases. Federal prison officials do report that they have been monitoring filings to assess this question, and have seen a marked movement into the habeas docket of federal
inmate cases that would once have been filed as Bivens actions.274 One
state corrections official identified a similar tendency in response to a freeform question in my survey about effects of the PLRA. Clearly, some degree of migration pressure exists for both federal and state inmates. After
all, the filing fee due for habeas petitions is just five dollars (if due at all;
the PLRA has not eliminated prisoners’ eligibility for waiver of this small
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South
Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas

Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

18 PA. CONS. STAT. ANN. § 1108 (West 1998)
[none]
S.C. CODE ANN. §§ 24-27-100 to 24-27-150, 24-27-200 to -220, 24-27-300, 2427-400 (Law. Co-op 1989 & West Supp. 2002)
S.D. CODIFIED LAWS § 24-2-29.1 (Michie 1998)
TENN. CODE. ANN. §§ 42-21-801 to -818 (Supp. 2001)
TEX. CIV. P RAC. & REM. CODE ANN. §§ 14.001–.014 (Vernon Supp. 2002); TEX.
GOV’ T CODE ANN. §§ 498.0045, 501.008, 501.019 (Vernon Supp. 2002); see also
TEX. CIV. P RAC. & REM. CODE ANN. §§ 11.001–.104 (Vernon Supp. 2002)
(vexatious litigants)
UTAH CODE ANN. §§ 78-7-36, 78-7-38, 78-7-39, 78-7-42 (Lexis Supp. 2002)
[none]
VA. CODE ANN. §§ 8.01-66.9:1, 8.01-195.3 item 7 (Lexis Supp. 2002)
WASH. REV. CODE § 72.09.111 (Supp. 2002)
W.VA. CODE §§ 25-1A-1 to 25-1A-8 (2001)
W IS. STAT. §§ 301.328, 801.02(7), 804.015, 806.025, 807.15, 809.103, 813.02(c),
813.40, 814.25, 814.29, 893.82 (1999–2000 & Supp. 2001)
[none]

273 Seven respondents to my survey (five of the twenty-seven prison responses and two of the seventy-five jail responses) actually volunteered this information when asked to describe the effects of the
PLRA. Another survey as well as interviews confirm the trend. See Christopher E. Smith & Christopher E. Nelson, Perceptions of the Consequences of the Prison Litigation Reform Act: A Comparison of
State Attorneys General and Federal District Judges, 23 JUST. SYS. J. 295, 309 (2002) (stating that
nineteen of twenty-nine state attorneys general office respondents reported an increase in state court
prisoner litigation as a result of the federal PLRA). See, e.g., Interview by Elizabeth Mellen Harrison,
Harvard
Law
School
student,
with
Christine
Lasky,
New
York

Attorney General’s Office (2000) (reporting that New York’s inmate filings in state court went up from
997 in 1995–1996 to 1983 in 1999–2000). But see Office of the Attorney General, State of Texas, New
Inmate Lawsuits in Texas Courts (Sept. 2000) (unpublished memorandum, on file with author) (report ing the decline of state filings by inmates from their peak in 1995). Texas enacted its version of the
PLRA in 1995. See T EX. CIV. P RAC. & REM. CODE ANN. §§ 14.001–.014 (Vernon 2002); TEX.
GOV’ T CODE ANN. § 498.0045 (Vernon Supp. 2002); id. § 501.008, 501.019 (Vernon 1998 & Supp.
2002).
274 Pybas Interview, supra note 21.

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filing fee) rather than the $150 all other civil actions cost. An inmate unable to understand this area of law, which confuses even experienced lawyers, might simply file his action where it is cheapest. (This includes the
substantial number of inmates who, prior to the PLRA, filed ordinary civil
actions that might more appropriately have been denominated habeas petitions.275) Even for more sophisticated litigants, filing under habeas is far
from crazy in many cases. Although it’s clear that a prisoner may not seek
to alter the fact or duration of his confinement in a nonhabeas suit,276 the
reverse — whether habeas actions may challenge the conditions of confinement as well as its fact or duration — is less settled. 277 And even if
the case law were completely uniform in disallowing habeas actions relating to conditions of confinement, there are obviously cases that are hard to
classify — for example, a suit seeking some change in the conditions of
confinement that might lessen the term of confinement (say, access to drug
rehabilitation for inmates in protective custody).278
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
275
276

See supra note 49.
See Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 500 (1973) (“[W]hen a state prisoner is challenging the
very fact or duration of his physical imprisonment, and the relief he seeks is a determination that he is
entitled to immediate release or a speedier release from that imprisonment, his sole federal remedy is a
writ of habeas corpus.”); see also Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 487 (1994) (“[W]hen a state prisoner seeks damages in a § 1983 suit, the district court must consider whether a judgment in favor of the
plaintiff would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence; if it would, the complaint
must be dismissed unless the plaintiff can demonstrate that the conviction or sentence has already been
invalidated.”). The complications of this doctrinal approach are explored in RICHARD H. FALLON , JR.,
DANIEL J. MELTZER & DAVID L. SHAPIRO, HART AND W ECHSLER’ S THE FEDERAL COURTS AND
THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 1442–52 (5th ed. 2003).
277 The Supreme Court has expressly reserved this question. See Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 527
n.6 (1979) (“Thus, we leave to another day the question of the propriety of using a writ of habeas corpus to obtain review of the conditions of confinement, as distinct from the fact or length of the confinement itself.”); Preiser, 411 U.S. at 499 (“This is not to say that habeas corpus may not also be
available to challenge such prison conditions. . . . When a prisoner is put under additional and unconst itutional restraints during his lawful custody, it is arguable that habeas corpus will lie to remove the restraints making the custody illegal.”) (citing Developments in the Law—Habeas Corpus, 83 HARV. L.
REV. 1038, 1084 (1970)). Moreover, the issue is very much confused by the shift over time in the consequences of typing an allegation of illegality as a habeas petition. Prior to the PLRA, habeas was generally less attractive to inmate plaintiffs than § 1983 or Bivens for two reasons. First, habeas law required exhaustion of state remedies, but the law governing § 1983 and Bivens actions did not. Second,
for inmates represented by counsel, victory in a § 1983 case led to attorneys’ fee awards, but victory in
a habeas case did not. Inmates accordingly were typically quite happy to characterize their suits as
arising not under habeas but rather under § 1983 or a Bivens cause of action, and the case law on the
appropriate scope of habeas review remained extremely underdeveloped. Now that the PLRA has reversed the prior valences, creating major advantages to bringing a lawsuit under habeas rather than
§ 1983 or Bivens, it seems plausible that courts will solidify the borders around the habeas remedy. If
this happens, I would expect courts to be more hospitable to the habeas characterization for cases with
some relationship to the duration of custody.
278 See, e.g., Bostic v. Carlson, 884 F.2d 1267, 1269 (9th Cir. 1989) (holding that habeas review is
available in suits seeking “release not from prison but just from a more to a less confining form of incarceration” as well as in suits seeking relief likely “to accelerate . . . release from prison”); Del Raine
v. Carlson, 826 F.2d 698, 702 (7th Cir. 1987) (same); Brennan v. Cunnin gham, 813 F.2d 1, 4–5 (1st Cir.
1987) (same); Boudin v. Thomas, 732 F.2d 1107, 1111–12 (2d Cir. 1984) (holding an action seeking

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So, how large is the migration into the federal habeas docket of cases
that would once have been filed as civil rights cases? The quantitative
data are not clear. It’s certainly true that, for both state and federal prisoners, federal habeas actions have increased enormously from mid- 1996 on.
The number of habeas petitions filed in federal district court by state inmates has grown by fifty percent (from about 12,800 in 1995 to 19 ,100 in
2001), even though the state prison population has increased by only
twenty percent over the same time period. Federal inmates’ habeas filings
under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 have more than doubled. 279 The difficulty lies in
assessing how much of the enormous increase in habe as filings consists of
“migrated” cases (those that prior to the PLRA would have been filed as
ordinary civil actions and classified as inmate civil rights cases), and how
much stems from other causes. The most important confounding issue is
that the Antiterror ism and Effective Death Penalty Act,280 passed just two
days before the PLRA, effected its own sea change of habeas trends.281 In
addition, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act
also greatly increased the number of habeas filin gs by criminal offenders

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
transfer from a more to a less restrictive prison environment properly cognizable under habeas, not
Bivens).
279 Prior to 2001 , however, federal inmates’ motions to vacate sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 did
not increase in number except for a ver y large filings spike in April 1997, discussed infra note 281 . See
Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3.
280 Pub. L. No. 104 -132 , 110 Stat. 1214 (1996 ) (amending 28 U.S.C. §§ 2244 , 2253–2255; and adding new sections, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2261–2266).
281 For example, it stands to reason that the “use it or lose it” rule in the Antiterrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), under which § 2254 habeas petitions by state inmates, and their federalinmate analogues, § 2255 motions to vacate sentence, must be filed within one year of conviction, see
28 U.S.C. §§ 2244 (d)( 1), 2255 (Supp. V 2000), would encourage filings that under the prior regime
would never have been made. Inmates who find themselves facing a deadline may simply be unwilling
to forgo forever their one chance for collateral review. Indeed, this effect seems likely to be some part
of the cause of a transitional spike observed in habeas filings by state inmates and motions to vacate
sentence by federal inmates, after courts “grandfathered” in the AEDPA deadline by setting it at one
year after the statute’s effective date for cases concluded prior to passage — that is, in April 1997 . See,
e.g. , United States v. Cicero, 214 F.3d 199 , 202 (D.C. Cir. 2000 ) (citing unanimous precedent on this
point). That month saw over 3700 habeas filings by state inmates, about triple the typical monthly filing rate. The effect was even more marked in federal motions to vacate sentence — well over 4000
were filed, about seven times the typical monthly filing rate. Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note
3. Confidence in the existence of a “use-it-or-lose-it” effect is undercut, however, by the fact that an
increase in AEDPA-regulated filings has materialized only on the state side — although habeas pet itions by state inmates skyrocketed, motions by federal inmates to vacate sentence did not. Id.
Moreover, quite a contrary effect is equally logical. Some (and perhaps a very large portion) of
the observed filings spike in 1997 necessarily consists not of petitions that never would have been filed
without AEDPA, but of petitions that would indeed have been filed, though months or years later, if not
for AEDPA’s deadline pressure. So AEDPA’s provisions could logically cause a decrease in filings for
several years following the spike. With the impact of AEDPA so complex, there is simply no way to
know how much of the observed increase in § 2254 cases is attributable to “migrated” cases that once
would have been filed as part of the inmate civil rights docket.

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facing deportation. 282 The existence of these two statutes does not diminish the likelihood that some of the increase in habeas numbers is caused by
the restyling of cases that have been filed under § 1983 or Bivens under the
prior legal regime. But the simultaneity of the three legal-regime changes
means that there is no way to know the magnitude of this effect.
Given the impossibility of quantitative precision as to both the state
court and habeas migration effects, anecdote (more precisely, the relative
absence of anecdote) actually provides more solid insight. The state authorities who succeeded in getting the PLRA passed continue to be just as
organized and influential, if not more so. They have done some writing
about the successes of the PLRA. For example, Todd Marti, of the Ohio
Attorney General’s office, recently wrote: “Has PLRA worked? The
[overall] number of prisoner cases [is] way down . . . . [T]he courts, correctional defendants, and their counsel have been spared the wasteful burden of responding to thousands of meritless lawsuits. The answer is decidedly YES!”283
Members of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG), in
particular, have not been shy about coming back to Congress to get
amendments to the PLRA where it serves their purposes.284 And as state
defendants’ counsel, members of NAAG are bound to know about nearly
all of the prison portion of the inmate docket, wherever and under
whatever label the cases are filed. 285 Their public silence about remain ing
loopholes is powerful evidence that any loopholes are small indeed. I conclude that the decrease in civil rights filings since the PLRA is a true shift
in the frequency of inmate litigation.
Moreover, so far, the filing decrease looks more significant than even a
large one-time shift downward in the litigation rate. Although early observers expected the PLRA-driven decrease in litigation numbers to be followed by gradual filings growth commensurate with the continuing in–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
282 This statute eliminated aliens’ right to appeal a deportation order to a federal court of appeals.
Instead, they may obtain limited federal judicial review by way of a habeas petition (under § 2241) in
district court. INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 314 (2001). In 2001, even before the recent increase in
federal use of immigrant detention, the pace of these immigration-related habeas pet itions was about
100 per month. See Hussey Interview, supra note 21. Many, but by no means all, of these detained
aliens are housed in federal facilities (and accordingly are suing federal wardens). So a good deal of
the observed increase in § 2241 habeas petitions by federal inmates, and perhaps some of the increase
in § 2254 petitions by nonfederal inmates, is caused by the new regime for criminal offenders who face
deportation. Note, however, that this St. Cyr effect is quite recent. The detainee habeas numbers were
certainly lower in prior years, though I have no specific information from before 2001.
283 Todd R. Marti, From the Government’s Perspective: Has PLRA Worked?
Yes!, 13
CORRECTIONAL L. REP. 69, 78 (2002).
284 See, e.g., Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 1998, Pub. L. No. 105-119, § 123, 111 Stat. 2440, 2470–71 (amending 18 U.S.C.
§ 3626(a), (b), (e) (1994)).
285 Even cases dismissed prior to service, see supra pp. 1629–30, are made known to departments of
corrections so that the plaintiffs’ prison accounts can be debited for the filing fee.

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creases in incarcerated population,286 that is not what has happened.
Rather, the number of filings categorized by the Administrative Office as
inmate civil rights cases continued to decline between 1997 and 2001,
even as the incarcerated population continued to grow. 287 As Table I.A
demonstrates, nearly one-quarter of the forty-three percent decrease in filings since 1995 occurred after 1997; the filing rate has decreased by
nearly twenty-five percent since 1997. It’s impossible to say without additional research whether the continuing decline in litigation rates is related
to the PLRA. On the one hand, perhaps direct and indirect experience
with post-PLRA litigation (and particularly its filing-fee garnishment system) is persuading inmates not to file. On the other hand, Table I.A also
shows that inmate litigation rates were declining slightly just before the
PLRA’s passage (after peaking in 1994) for reasons that are currently unclear. So perhaps the pre-PLRA slight decline in filing rates has simply
continued, augmented but not really altered by the PLRA-fostered dramatic
shift downward between 1995 and 1997.
3. Jail and Prison Filings. — With the notable exception of the provision allowing sua sponte dismissal of in forma pauperis filings,288 the
PLRA’s provisions generally apply only to nonhabeas civil actions
“brought” by “prisoners”289 — that is, not by former inmates or by inmates’ families or estates. I have not seen any commentary on what would
seem to be the biggest impact of this coverage: that jail lawsuits should be
far less affected than prison lawsuits by the individual case provisions of
the PLRA. The vast majority of jail inmates are released without going to
prison, 290 usually quickly enough that the statute of limitations on their
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
286 See, e.g., Cheesman et al., Prisoner Litigation, supra note 87, at 4 (“However, even if the PLRA
has long-term success in preventing a segment of potential lawsuits from entering the federal courts, we
expect that the decline in Section 1983 lawsuits has already ‘bottomed-out.’ Assuming that the proportion of prisoners able to meet the new filing requirements remains relatively constant over time, the
number of Section 1983 lawsuits will once again increase simply because the population of state prisoners continues to rise. . . . Unless the U.S. Congress (or the federal courts) can break the fundamental
connection between the expanding pool of potential litigators and the rate at which they actually lit igate, any procedural changes will induce only short -lived decreases in the number of habeas petitions
and Section 1983 lawsuits.”); see also Cheesman, et al., Tale of Two Laws, supra note 87, at 99–100
(expressing, though with somewhat less certainty, the view that “the future course of these filings is still
driven by state prisoner population”).
287 For descriptions of the current slow growth in incarcerated population, see BUREAU OF JUSTICE
STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , BULLETIN: P RISON AND JAIL I NMATES AT MIDYEAR 2001
(Apr. 2002), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/pjim01.pdf; BUREAU OF JUSTICE
STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , BULLE TIN: P RISONS IN 2001 (July 2002), available at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/p01.pdf.
288 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2) (2000).
289 See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), (d)(1), (e); 28 U.S.C. § 1915(h) (2000).
290 See O’Toole, Jails and Prisons, supra note 76 (reporting that up to eighty-five percent of the inmates admitted to a jail are released within four or five days); BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S.
DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , SPECIAL REPORT: P ROFILE OF JAIL INMATES 1996, at 2, 7 (1998) (noting that in
1996, 35% of jail inmates were pretrial, 43% had received jail sentences, 12% had received prison sen-

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cases has not come close to running. 291 It is certainly possible that jail
cases are disproportio nately litigated by the subset of former jail inmates
who end up in prison and are therefore still covered by the PLRA. But
even if this were the case, a significant portion of jail cases would remain
uncovered. So the PLRA’s various incentives discouraging individual litigation do not apply in many jail cases; no filing fees for indigents, no exhaustion required, and no limitations on attorneys’ fees. Thus, one would
expect the filings decrease to be relatively smaller for jail cases and, correspondingly, the proportion of the individual inmate case docket that concerns jail conditions ought to increase. Determining whether this change
has actually occurred, and if not, why not, is a worthwhile project for future research. Unquestionably, with respect to the counseled portion of the
inmate docket, the PLRA’s coverage rules are having a real impact on
lawyers’ decisions about which cases to take. A number of prominent
prisoners’ advocates report that the PLRA has caused them and lawyers
they know to look for cases involving persons no longer incarcerated or
the families of dead inmates. These cases have two advantages for lawyers: they can take them without needing to litigate endlessly about exhaustion and can continue to earn market-rate fees if they win.292
4. The Impact on Courts of Filing Declines. — In any event, the
amount of inmate litigation overall is down. So has this lessened pressure
on the federal courts? Has it, that is, changed whatever feeling of deluge
existed? Of course, that’s a harder question. It is clear that courts are losers as well as winners, because while the PLRA reduced filings, it concurrently imposed significant new burdens on courts. Some perspective on
the impact of the filing decline arises from application of the Administrative Office’s formula for costs, discussed in Part II. Table IV.A shows the
various components of court costs, as figured by the Administrative Office.
TABLE IV.A: FO R M U L A A N D RE S U L T I N G ESTIMATE OF FE D E R A L DISTRICT
COURT CO S T S OF IN M A T E CIVIL RI G H T S CA S E S

Cost category

Formula for 100 cases, each weighted 1.0
Fiscal year 1995
Fiscal year 2000
Full-time
Estimated
Full-time
Estimated
employees
costs
employees
costs

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
tences, and 10% were not yet sentenced; the median sentence of those with jail sentences was under six
months).
291 Section 1983 suits borrow their limitations period from the personal injury law of the state in
which the cause of action arose. See Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 276 (1985).
292 See Campbell Interview, supra note 21; Wright Interview, supra note 21; Alphonse A. Gerhardstein, PLRA Can Affect Private Practitioner’s Ability To Represent Inmates, 13 CORRECTIONAL L.
REP. 68, 80 n.5 (2002) [hereinafter Gerhardstein, PLRA and Private Practitioners]. One jail official
respondent to my survey reported that the PLRA is causing inmates to delay filing their lawsuits until
after their release. No other respondent mentioned this effect.

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Judges
Support
Juror fees
AO
Security
A. Total
B. Weighted inmat e
civil rights filings
Total lifetime federal
court costs of new inmate filings (A x B/100)

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2.82
1.56
0.16
0.06

$304,954
$82,347
$12,907
$12,897
$41,211
$454,316
11,194
$50,854,524

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2.44
1.47
0.12
0.04

$289,289
$90,601
$6294
$12,851
$56,337
$455,372
6844
$31,166,178

The formula yields only a rough estimate, but its result — nearly $20
million less spent by the federal court system on inmate civil rights filings
since 1995 — is very striking. Moreover, trials have declined even more
than filings, perhaps because of the exhaustion requirement. Filings are
down about forty percent — but trials are down fifty percent, from about
1000 per year in 1994 , 1995, and 1996 to fewer than 500 in 2001. 293
At the same time, however, the PLRA’s cumbersome fee colle ction
process, which applies to nearly every case filed by an inmate, is an important, new, and time -consuming administrative chore for the courts.
Prior to the PLRA, district cour ts could simply dismiss a case and be done
with it; now they have to collect, say, a few dollars per month from a
plaintiff’s prison account for years on end. 294 As a result it takes a fair
amount more time and effort to close up the cases that used to be the easiest for courts. Moreover, the PLRA has imposed large and long- lasting, if
transitional, burdens on judges; it has required a good deal of extra la wmaking as they figure out how to deal with its complications. 295
Data on disposition time clarify how these two competing forces are
playing out. Since the PLRA, federal district courts have simultaneously
slowed their processing of inmate cases that last only a relatively short
time and accelerated their processing of the longer-term cases. For exa mple, whereas it took the district courts just five days to close ten percent of
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
293
294

See Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3.
Fees are collected monthly at a rate of twenty percent of income. 28 U.S.C. § 1915(b)(2) (2000).
For an example of the resulting accounting issues, see Losee v. Maschner, 113 F. Supp. 2d 1343 (S.D.
Iowa 1998).
295 For judicial reaction to the PLRA’s reduction of judicial burdens, see, for example, Hyche v.
Christensen, 170 F.3d 769, 771 (7th Cir. 1999) (Evans, J., concurring) (“[W]hen an experienced district
judge . . . is reversed three times in the same case on a little point like this, something is rotten in Denmark. I always thought the PLRA was supposed to make the handling of prisoner litigation more efficient. If that’s its goal, and this sort of thing is its result, Congress should go back to the drawing
board.”).

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the inmate nonhabeas cases filed in 1995 and 1996 , about double that time
elapsed before courts resolved the same proportion of cases filed each year
since, even though filings were down each year. The slow-down continues
through the first third of the inmate civil rights docket. At the complex
end of the docket, though, the PLRA imposes few new duties on courts.
Indeed, whether or not as a result of the PLRA, courts are now proce ssing
the reduced caseload somewhat more quickly than before. For example,
whereas it took 153 days for federal district courts to dispose of fifty percent of the inmate civil rights cases filed in 1995 , they reached the same
disposition level of 1999 cases in thirty-four fewer days.296
And has the filing reduction solved the babies-and-bathwater problem?
That is hard to say, but, I would suggest, it is implausible. There is little
reason to think that a reduction in inmate filings is inducing judges and judicial personnel — who have longstanding proc edures and practices for
processing inmate cases297 — to increase the care with which they do that
job. The point may be path- dependent, really — that is, if inmate filings
had always been fewer in number, perhaps judges would not have gotten in
the habit of hurrying through them. But that habit is long esta blished.
B. Plaintiffs’ Declining Success
Part A demonstrates that the PLRA has kept its supporters’ first promise — reduced filings. But what about the asserted constraint? The sta tute’s goal was, after all, not supposed to be simply litigation reduction but
litigation improvement. The meritorious cases, the sta tute’s sponsors said,
would still be filed and would still succeed, because the PLRA’s disincentives would be targeted, disproportionately inducing inmates to refrain
from filing the worst of the cases. I argue in this section that the statute
has not lived up to these promises. Its incentive scheme has most likely
dissuaded potential litigants in relatively blunderbuss fashion, with only a
weak relation to the merits of their cases. Moreover, the PLRA, combined
with the changes in legal services funding requirements, has significantly
undermined the already sharply limited ability of inmates to obtain counsel
and so has increased the extent to which unsuccessful outcomes are the result of plaintiffs’ litigation disabilities rather than any weakness of their
cases. Furthermore, the PLRA’s new decision standards have imposed new
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
296 Schlanger, Technical Appendix , supra note 3. It is not clear that the speed-up in the more complex half of the docket stems from the PLRA, for two reasons. First, the trend seems to have started in
the early 1990s, though it clearly has continued in recent years. Second, since 1997, the noninmate
docket, too, has shown some limited acceleration in resolution of the more complex half of the docket.
It is easier to be certain that the slow-down in resolution of the less complex half of the docket is indeed PLRA-related because it peaked in 1997, the first year in which all filed inmate cases were affected, and because no analogous trend is apparent in either the habeas or the noninmate docket.
297 See generally ALDISERT REPORT, supra note 14; FJC, PLRA RESOURCE GUIDE, supra note 14.

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and very high hurdles so that even constitutionally meritorious cases are
often thrown out of court.
Barring some systematic independent qualitative assessment,298 the
only way to gain insight into changes in case quality over time is to examine outcomes; that is, even if the relationship between docket quality and
success rate is obscure, all other things being equal, changes in success
rate ought to correlate with changes in docket quality. But now two new
problems arise. First, assessing changes in case outcomes over time is difficult technically. The source of this problem is recency: the filed casecohorts since the PLRA still have a good many cases yet to be resolved.
Because dismissals tend to be quite speedy, the as-yet-unresolved cases are
disproportionately those that go to trial and/or settle. Therefore, one cannot appropriately draw conclusions about the important minority of cases
yet to be finished based on the majority. The source of the second, more
conceptual problem is simultaneity: the PLRA’s changes in filing incentives were accompanied by its adjustment to decision standards, to plaintiffs’ litigating ability, and perhaps by attitudinal shifts as well. Therefore,
it is difficult to use outcomes to infer even the valence of the impacts of
those simultaneous changes, let alone their relative weight. The technical
problem renders it difficult to use the available data to understand how the
cases are coming out; the conceptual problem renders it difficult to understand why. So instead of starting with quantitative data, in this section I
start with theory and anecdote; the data are good only for a falsific ation
check.
1. The Statute and Its Expected Effects. — In general, changes in a
docket’s overall outcome rates might be caused by (most importantly)
changes in the composition of the docket, changes in litigating ability of
the parties, or changes in decision standards. Five PLRA provisions in
particular seem logically to have a major impact on these three items: the
requirement that all prisoners pay filing fees for all actions, the requirement that inmate “frequent filers” pay their full filing fees in advance, the
exhaustion rules, the limitations on attorneys’ fees recoverable from defendants, and the coverage provisions. Some observations about the likely effects of these changes follow:
(a) Imposition of a Filing Fee, Payable over Time, for All Civil Actions by Inmates. — Economic theory says that a filing fee, like any other
litigation cost, should serve as a targeted incentive. Plaintiffs, that is,
should cease filing cases with an expected value lower than the fee, but
continue to file cases with an expected value higher than the fee, where
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
298 Such assessments have, for example, been very useful in understanding medical malpractice.
See, e.g., Frederick W. Cheney, Karen Posner, Robert A. Caplan & Richard J. Ward, Standard of Care
and Anesthesia Liability, 261 JAMA 1599 (1989) (reporting the results of an independent medical review of the validity of malpractice claims); Henry S. Farber & Michelle J. White, Medical Malpractice:
An Empirical Examination of the Litigation Process, 22 RAND J. ECON. 199 (1990) (same).

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expected value is the product of a case’s chance of success and the expected damages if successful. 299 So it might seem that the PLRA’s filing
fee provision, which requires even indigent inmates to pay a filing fee,
over time 300 would tend to improve the quality of the docket by discouraging the filing of low-expected-value cases while leaving in place higherexpected-value cases. This account, however, does not sufficiently appreciate the particularities of inmate litigation, in particular the effects of the
prevalence of low-stakes cases. In light of those particularities, I argue
here that the impact of the filing fee requirement on plaintiffs’ probability
of recovery in cases that are nonetheless filed is indeterminate.
Among inmates who act as rational cost-minimizers, the PLRA’s filing
fee provision should sharply discourage the filing of lawsuits. A hundred
and fifty dollars is a lot of money in prison — months or more of wages
for those whose money comes from prison employment.301 While inmates
may have less need for income than noninmates (room and board are, after
all, free), many reasons remain to want money — extra food, hygiene supplies, postage and writing supplies, and many other licit and illicit wants.
The filing fee is therefore far from nominal.
Yet many of the cases are worth far more in expected value than $150.
In fact, prior to the PLRA, the average value of the lawsuits — even taking into account the low success rate — was probably well over $150. 302
Moreover, the observation that money is especially valuable works both
ways; the prospect of even a small money judgment is worth more in
prison than on the outside. So if the economics theory applied in the
prison or ja il setting, one would expect to see two effects from the PLRA’s
filing fee provision. First, inmates would simply stop filing “low-stakes”
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
299 More recently, a number of theorists have complicated the model, elaborating a variety of situations in which plaintiffs may succeed in extracting settlement offers from defendants even though the
expected payoff of the suit is negative — when, for example, the defendant does not know that the expected value is negative, see Lucian Arye Bebchuk, Suing Solely To Extract a Settlement Offer, 17 J.
LEGAL STUD. 437, 437–39 (1988); Katz, supra note 190, at 5, or when the defendant’s cost of responding to the plaintiff is substantial and is incurred before plaintiff’s own substantial cost s, see
Rosenberg & Shavell, Nuisance Value, supra note 116, at 5, or when the plaintiff’s lawyer values a
reputation for bull-headedness, see Amy Farmer & Paul Pecorino, A Reputation for Being a Nuisance:
Frivolous Lawsuits and Fee Shifting in a Repeated Play Game, 18 I NT’ L REV. L. & ECON. 147 (1998).
I do not think any of these factors has major applicability in the correctional setting.
300 See 28 U.S.C. § 1915(b)(1)–(2) (2000).
301 For example, the 2000 Corrections Yearbook reports that daily inmate wages vary from lows of
under a dollar to highs of a few dollars per day worked. CAMILLE GRAHAM CAMP & GEORGE M.
CAMP, CRIMINAL JUSTICE I NST., T HE CORRECTIONS YEARBOOK 2000: ADULT CORRECTIONS 111
(2000).
302 As reported above, see supra Table II.C & pp. 1600–03, in 1993 the average value of the ninetynine cases that resulted in a litigated damage award for plaintiff was $18,800 (after excluding one very
large award). In addition, some 1950 settled and another 2350 were voluntarily dismissed. Even if the
voluntary dismissals were worth nothing and settlements averaged only one-tenth the value of the cases
litigated to victory, a very low estimate, the entire docket would have an average value of $178. Because more than half of the cases were dismissed, see supra Table II.A, the median value was zero.

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cases (those whose expected damages are low), regardless of the probability of success. A case complaining about a destroyed radio is probably not
worth $150 even if the claim is obviously meritorious — say, if a correctional officer intentionally broke the radio to punish an inmate for writing
a letter to a newspaper. Closing off a federal forum for low-stakes cases
may be good in and of itself. Inmate litigation’s critics have argued for
many years that it is not an efficient use of society’s resources to open an
expensive federal courthouse for litigation over tiny amounts of money, regardless of the merits of the claim. Some scholars of litigation have
agreed with this basic point,303 and I don’t disagree. But in terms of the
main issue here — the quality of the remaining docket — the impact of
purging low-stakes cases from the inmate civil rights docket is indeterminate because it depends on an unknown factor: whether the average chance
of success of the squeezed-out low-stakes cases would have been higher or
lower than that of the remaining pool of cases. (Note that low-stakes cases
are cheap to settle and may, therefore, settle relatively often.)
Second, economic theory predicts that as a result of the filing fees, inmates will file many fewer “low-probability” cases (those with a low
chance of success). A low-probability case should be filed only if it has
the potential for exceptionally high damages. But this prediction assumes
that inmates are more or less like the litigants whose behavior is the meat
and potatoes of economic litigation theory — litigants who, either themselves or through their lawyers, have at least some ability to understand the
expected value of their lawsuits.304 For pro se inmates, however, “informational asymmetry” or “imperfect information” is hugely significant.
Like other plaintiffs prior to discovery, an inmate plaintiff may know less
than his defendants do about the factual setting of his case — for example,
whether there were any prior episodes similar to the one that harmed him.
But in addition, unlike other plaintiffs who mostly find lawyers or forego
bringing suit, inmates also know very little else; they hardly ever have the
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
303 The legal theorist who has devoted the most attention to the issue of socially optimal filing rates
is Steven Shavell. See Steven Shavell, The Social Versus the Private Incentive To Bring Suit in a Costly
Legal System, 11 J. LEGAL STUD. 333 (1982); Steven Shavell, The Fundamental Divergence Between
the Private and the Social Motive To Use the Legal System , 26 J. LEGAL STUD. 575 (1997); Steven
Shavell, The Level of Litigation: Private Versus Social Optimality of Suit and of Settlement, 19 I NT’L
REV. L. & ECON. 99, 102–03 (1999); see also Louis Kaplow, Private Versus Social Costs in Bringing
Suit, 15 J. LEGAL STUD. 371 (1986). These pieces emphasize the public costs and benefits of litigation; Shavell proposes regulatory use of fees and subsidies to line up private litigation incentives with
“social optimality,” somewhat in the way the PLRA takes advantage of what is usually the nominal filing fee. (I do not mean to imply that Shavell actually addresses the PLRA — he does not.)
304 The first generation of economic analysis of litigation largely assumed perfect, or at least symmetric, information by defendants and plaintiffs. Subsequent waves of analysis have relaxed that assumptio n but have continued to assume that all litigants have some nonrandom information and exercise operative rationality — an assumption that depends on at least a minimal ability to evaluate
expected value. See, e.g., Bebchuk, Imperfect Information, supra note 185, at 406 (implicitly assuming
these conditions).

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skills to evaluate either the strength of their legal theories or, except in inescapably low-stakes cases, the compensable amount of damages they incurred. And whereas the market for settlement is often thought to transmit
at least some information about case strength to the relatively uninformed
party, 305 this is highly unlikely in a pro se inmate case, because the settlement market is dominated by the anti-settlement influences discussed
above.306
So the expectations for the effect of the PLRA’s fee provisions on the
average merit of the inmate docket need to be adjusted. The PLRA should
indeed work to cut back the number of low-stakes cases filed, but with indeterminate effect on the outcome probabilities of the remaining docket.
In higher-stakes cases, I would expect the PLRA filing fee provisions to
decrease the number of these cases with at best a slight correlation between merit and filing. As far as the observable impact on outcome trends
in the post-PLRA docket, no prediction is possible.
(b) The Frequent Filer Provisions. — The PLRA’s special hurdle for
frequent filers — that they almost always must pay the entire filing fee in
advance, regardless of their indigence307 — was one step of the plan to put
an end to the social practice of inmate “writ-writing.”308 And it does seem
plausible that frequent filing, if not inmate legal assistance to other inmates, may become a thing of the past. What is unclear is how that might
affect the average probability of success in the remaining docket. It may
well be that the most frequent filers file not only a very large number of
cases, but an especially high proportion of meritless cases — though there
are no good data to confirm this impression. 309 At the same time, how–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
305 See Farmer & Pecorino, Informational Asymmetry, supra note 182, at 90–93 (surveying theoret ical literature on “signaling models of litigation”).
306 See section II.B.4, supra pp. 1614–21.
307 See 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g) (2000). There is a special exception for situations in which a would-be
plaintiff faces “imminent danger of serious physical injury.” Id.
308 Senator Dole in particular emphasized in his speeches about the PLRA that “prisons should be
just that — prisons, not law firms.” 141 CONG. REC. S14,413 (daily ed. Sept. 27, 1995) (stat ement of
Sen. Dole). Writ -writers, said others among the PLRA’s supporters in Congress, have both too much
fun and too much power — “[t]hey have tied up the courts with their jailhouse lawyer antics for too
long[,] . . . making a mockery of our criminal justice system.” Id. at S14,628 (daily ed. Sept. 29, 1995)
(statement of Sen. Thurmond); see also id. at S14,626 (daily ed. Sept. 29, 1995) (statement of Sen.
Dole) (“This amendment [an early version of the PLRA] will help put an end to the inmate litigation
fun-and-games.”).
309 Jim Thomas’s study of inmate civil rights filings in the Nort hern District of Illinois from 1977 to
1986 found that 1% of inmate filers had filed 17% of the total lawsuits. THOMAS, P RISONER
LITIGATION, supra note 15, at 122. In Hawaii, “76% of the claims contesting conditions of confin ement filed in federal or state courts in 1994 were brought by nine prisoners.” BRANHAM, PRO SE
I NMATE LITIGATION, supra note 58, at 28 (citing MICHAEL L. CARTER, P RISONER LITIGATION IN
HAWAII: A REPORT TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF HAWAII 3–4 (1994). For catalogues of the most
famous frequent filers and some of their cases, see Blaze, supra note 94, at 937 n.12, 938 n.13; Gail L.
Bakaitis DeWolf, Protecting the Courts from the Barrage of Frivolous Prisoner Litigation: A Look at
Judicial Remedies and Ohio’s Proposed Legislative Remedy, 57 OHIO ST. L.J. 257, 257–58 (1996);

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ever, at least some of the very frequent filers are actually skilled litigators
whose filings are particularly likely to have merit. (It’s possible, of course,
that some such skilled writ-writers will not be affected by the “threestrikes” provision, because cases will not count as strikes if they lose on
summary judgment or at trial — only if they fail to state a claim or are declared frivolous. 310 But surely most truly frequent filers have lost at least
a couple of cases on the pleadings.) In any event, this PLRA provision is
by no means limited to truly frequent filers. Just two cases dismissed by
district courts for failure to state a claim and one dismissal by an appellate
court suffice to foreclose forever the ability to file a suit without prepayment of the filing fee. So the three-strikes provision is highly likely to
eliminate nearly all litigation by repeat players — and this seems highly
likely in turn to decrease at least the absolute number of meritorious cases
filed. In sum, the frequent filer provisions will lower the absolute number
of both bad and good cases, but in what proportion is, once again, indeterminate. Again, no prediction about observable outcome trends is possible.
(c) Exhaustion. — The PLRA’s exhaustion requirement has emerged as
the highest hurdle the statute presents to individual inmate plaintiffs. The
statute reads: “No action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions
under section 1983 of this title, or any other Federal law, by a prisoner
confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.”311 Though it does not
look like a classic “jurisdiction stripping” provision312 — it does not men–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Eugene J. Kuzinski, Note, The End of the Prison Law Firm?: Frivolous Inmate Litigation, Judicial
Oversight, and the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, 29 RUTGERS L. REV. 361, 365–66 (1998).
310 Paul Wright, Editor of Prison Legal News, is one such writ -writer. He told me that he has filed a
dozen or fifteen § 1983 cases. When he has lost, he said, it has been on summary judgment, not on a
motion to dismiss. Wright Interview, supra note 21.
311 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a) (2000).
312 On jurisdiction stripping in general, see Lawrence Gene Sager, The Supreme Court, 1980 Term —
Foreword: Constitutional Limitations on Congress’ Authority To Regulate the Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts, 95 HARV. L. REV. 17 (1981). The trio of Contract with America statutes passed in 1996 —
the PLRA, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat.
1214 (amending 28 U.S.C. §§ 2244, 2253–2255 and adding new sections, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2261–2266
(2000)), and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Pub. L. No.
104-208, div. C, 110 Stat. 3009-546 (codified in scattered sections of 8, 18, and 28 U.S.C.) — have
managed at long last to shift the academic conversation about jurisdiction stripping “away from the
questions of ‘when and where’ to the question of ‘how’” federal courts will exercise their jurisdiction.
Evan Caminker, Allocating the Judicial Power in a “Unified Judiciary”, 78 TEX. L. REV. 1513, 1514
(2000). As Vicki Jackson commented, “[t]his spate of congressional jurisdiction-stripping imposes
what may be the most significant limitations on federal jurisdiction since those enacted in connection
with World War II price controls and draft legislation.” Vicki C. Jackson, Introduction: Congressional
Control of Jurisdiction and the Future of the Federal Courts — Opposition, Agreement, and Hierarchy,
86 GEO. L.J. 2445, 2446 (1998). But the PLRA provisions that have excited the most concern on this
front have been the provision requiring immediate termination of many long-standing injunctive orders,
18 U.S.C. § 3626(b) (2000), and especially the automatic stay provision, under which such orders are
“stayed” pending resolution of a request for termination, 18 U.S.C. § 3626(e). See Miller v. French,

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tion the jurisdiction of district courts at all — the exhaustion section functions to deprive federal courts of the ability to correct unconstitutional
conduct whenever plaintiffs have failed to follow to their end administrative avenues for correction or other remediation. 313
An exhaustion requirement sounds pretty minor, and the PLRA’s exhaustion provisions did not attract much attention at first, even from prisoners’ advocates.314 But seven years of experience with the statute have
led those advocates to identify the PLRA’s exhaustion rule as the statute’s
most damaging component.315 The problem for inmates is twofold. First,
unlike the exhaustion rule in effect until 1996 — which authorized federal
district judges to require § 1983 inmate plaintiffs to exhaust administrative
remedies only after a prison or jail grievance process was certified “plain,
speedy, and effective”316 — the PLRA imposes no constraints on the structure or rules of any grievance processing regime. The administrative review scheme can, for example, have as short a deadline for inmates and as
many layers of review (to each of which the inmate must apply) as the incarcerating authority chooses.317 Essentially, then, the sky’s the limit for
the procedural complexity or difficulty of the exhaustion regime. All that
the statute requires is that administrative remedies be “available”; under
the recent Supreme Court decision in Booth v. Churner, a correctional
grievance process meets that requirement “regardless of the fit between a
prisoner’s prayer for relief and the administrative remedies possible.”318
The potential complexity or even unfairness of a given administrative
grievance process would not matter at all if the rule were a comity-serving
ripeness rule — that is, if it concerned the timing rather than the availability of judicial review. The PLRA’s language, taken alone, is entirely con–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
530 U.S. 327, 350 (2000) (upholding an automatic stay provisio n against a separation of powers challenge). The exhaustion provision had not, until very recently, received any scholarly attention at all.
313 John Boston similarly describes the PLRA (although not specifically its exhaustion provision) as
“the new face of court stripping.” See Boston, Court Stripping, supra note 251, at 429.
314 Most of what has been written about the exhaustion provision is focused on the issue — resolved
against inmate plaintiffs in Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731, 741 (2001) — whether exhaustion is required when a plaintiff seeks money damages. See, e.g., Branham, Enigmatic Exhaustion, supra note
193, at 498–520.
315 See Alexander Interview, supra note 21; Fathi Interview, supra note 21. Similarly, law review
articles about the provision’s negative effects are beginning to appear. See Amy Petré Hill, Death
Through Administrative Indifference: The Prison Litigation Reform Act Allows Women To Die in California’s Substandard Prison Health Care System, 13 HASTINGS W OMEN’ S L.J. 223, 237–42 (2002)
(arguing that the PLRA exhaustion requirement effectively forecloses judicial review of failure to treat
emergency medical needs, because the California grievance system has no time limit on grievance
processing by correctional officials); James E. Robertson, The PLRA and the New Right-Remedy Gap in
Institutional Reform Litigation, 38 CRIM. L. BULL. 427 (2002).
316 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a)(1) (1994) (since amended).
317 For a description of state inmate grievance systems with short deadlines and many layers of appeal, see Brief of Amici Curiae American Civil Liberties Union et al. at 12–16, Booth v. Churner, 532
U.S. 731 (2001) (No. 99-1964).
318 Booth , 532 U.S. at 739.

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sistent with such an interpretation, which would merely delay the commencement of federal suit until after no further administrative avenue exists. Under this approach, an inmate’s procedural error — say, sending an
appeal form to the wrong person and therefore missing the deadline for
getting it to the right person — would not foreclose federal court review.
So long as no further administrative process existed, the federal lawsuit
could proceed.319
But the statutory language is also consistent with a more stringent, administrative-law-influenced interpretation of the requirement, under which
failure to comply with administrative procedural rules would typically result in the dismissal of a subsequent federal court case.320 This approach
does indeed make sense, given that the PLRA’s is in fact an administrative
exhaustion requirement, and that it is implausible that Congress would
have bothered to require exhaustion if an inmate could simply bypass administrative remedies by waiting out the clock, and then go directly to federal court.321
In administrative law, exhaustion doctrine frequently penalizes litigants
who fail to pursue administrative remedies. But this result is by no means
uniformly applied. In administrative law, whether exhaustion requirements
apply at all is influenced not only by the statutory scheme in question but
by judicial recourse to such factors as
(1) the extent of injury to petitioner from requiring exhaustion of administrative remedies, (2) the degree of difficulty of merits issue the court is asked to
resolve, (3) the extent to which judicial resolution of merits issue will be aided
by agency factfinding or application of expertise, and (4) the extent to which
the agency has already completed its factfinding or applied its expertise.322

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
319 This approach finds support in habeas doctrine. To the extent the habeas doctrine of exhaustion
can be separated from its Siamese twin, procedural default, it requires only that federal courts refrain
from deciding habeas petitions of state prisoners if there still, at the time of the pet ition’s filing, remains
an available avenue of state court review. See Engle v. Isaac, 456 U.S. 107, 125 n.28 (1982). Note,
however, that any slack available to prisoners under this loose exhaustion doctrine is entirely taken
away by habeas procedural default rules, which hold that prisoners waive their right to federal review
by any failure to comply with state court procedural requirements. See, e.g., O’Sullivan v. Boerckel,
526 U.S. 838, 848 (1999) (discussing the distinctions between the two doctrines); Andrew Hammel,
Diabolical Federalism: A Functional Critique and Proposed Reconstruction of Death Penalty Federal
Habeas, 39 AM. CRIM. L. REV. 1, 3–35 (2002).
320 See, e.g., Heckler v. Ringer, 466 U.S. 602, 614, 617, 622 (1984); Yakus v. United States, 321 U.S.
414, 434 (1944).
321 See Wright v. Morris, 111 F.3d 414, 417 n.3 (6th Cir. 1997); STAFF OF HOUSE COMM. ON THE
JUDICIARY, 104 TH CONG., REPORT ON THE VIOLENT CRIMINAL I NCARCERATION ACT 32 (Comm.
Print 1995) (“Section 701 of this bill strengthens the administrative exhaustion rule in this context —
and brings it more into [line] with administrative exhaustion rules that apply in other contexts — by
generally prohibiting prisoners section 1983 lawsuits until administrative remedies are exhausted.”).
Note that the version of H.R. 667 discussed in this committee report was less stringent than the PLRA,
requiring inmate administrative exhaustion only when administrative remedies were “plain, speedy, and
effective.” Id. at 50 (setting out the statutory text as it would have been amended by H.R. 667).
322 2 RICHARD J. P IERCE , JR., ADMINISTRATIVE L AW T REATISE § 15.2, at 976–77 (4th ed. 2002).

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The Supreme Court has emphasized that “application of the [administrative
law] exhaustion doctrine is ‘intensely practical.’”323 Moreover, administrative law’s exhaustion doctrine is full of more definite exceptions, most particularly the “futility” doctrine. 324
Yet although courts have read the PLRA to call for administrative-lawstyle exhaustion, they have not imported the corresponding exceptions.
Courts implementing the PLRA seem instead to be looking to the extraordinarily harsh doctrinal framework of habeas “procedural default,” 325
which gives federal courts almost no discretion to excuse even the most
technical of procedural errors.326 Thus, an inmate’s failure to comply with
any applicable grievance rules — time limits, form, appropriate recipients,
and other requirements — may well disqualify an eventual federal lawsuit
no matter how constitutionally meritorious.327
One would expect the exhaustion requirement as so interpreted to have
two analytically distinct kinds of impacts on outcomes: a conflictresolution effect and a decision-standard effect. With respect to conflict
resolution, the exhaustion requirement should decrease filings because at
least some inmates will actually get some part of what they want in an
administrative process and decide they no longer want to file a lawsuit. 328
As a secondary consequence, the success rate of the cases that do get filed
should go down, as a disproportionate number of the meritorious cases get
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
323 Bowen v. City of New York, 476 U.S. 467, 484 (1986) (quoting Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S.
319, 331 n.11 (1976)); see also McKart v. United States, 395 U.S. 185, 197–99 (1969) (explaining the
purposes of exhaustion doctrine at length, but refusing to require exhaustion in a case about military
draft exemption in which “resolution . . . does not require any particular expertise on the part of the
appeal board”).
324 See, e.g., Communications Workers of Am. v. AT&T, 40 F.3d 426, 432 (D.C. Cir. 1994).
325 See supra note 319.
326 See, e.g., Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722 (1991) (holding that a death-sentenced inmate’s
right to federal review of his constitutional claims had been procedurally defaulted when his lawyer
missed a state appellate deadline by three days).
327 As is often the case, the Seventh Circuit has been both the strictest and most explicit on this
point. See Pozo v. McCaughtry, 286 F.3d 1022, 1024 (7th Cir. 2002) (Easterbrook, J.) (“[A] prisoner
who does not properly take each step within the administrative process has failed to exhaust state remedies, and thus is foreclosed by § 1997e(a) from litigating. Failure to do what the state requires bars,
and does not just postpone, suit under § 1983.”). Some other courts have been a little more forgiving.
See, e.g., Camp v. Brennan, 219 F.3d 279, 281 (3d Cir. 2000) (refusing to dismiss a suit for failure to
exhaust administrative remedies under a prison grievance system when the prisoner had instead sent a
complaint to the state Office of Professional Responsibility that nonetheless led to a Department of
Corrections investigation); Graham v. Perez, 121 F. Supp. 2d 317, 322 (S.D.N.Y. 2000) (holding that
the court must decide whether mitigating circumst ances excuse non-exhaustion, even if the grievance
body decided they did not).
328 Inmates do sometimes succeed in their grievances, although it is entirely unclear what relief they
typically get as a result. See, e.g., Letter from Cheryl Jorgensen-Martinez, Chief Inspector, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, to Betty D. Montgomery, Ohio Attorney General (Jan. 10,
2001), reproduced in Brief of Amici Curiae 50 States and Territories at A2, Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S.
731 (2001) (No. 99-1964) (stating that 24.1% of inmate grievances in Ohio in 2000 were resolved in
the inmate’s favor).

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filtered out because they succeed in the grievance process. These results,
however, are both apt to be extremely small. People with experience in
inmate grievance systems emphasize that only a well-designed system can
satisfy its users well enough to substitute for litigation, 329 and there is little
reason to think that the PLRA is encouraging jail and prison administrators
to implement effective grievance systems. (In particular, the typical unavailability of monetary compensation under most correctional grievance
systems is a significant barrier to extra-litigation conflict resolution.)
Decision-standard effects of the new exhaustion requirement are likely
much larger. The exhaustion rule is most evidently a new and substantial
obstacle to success on the merits. Not only are the various grievance systems complicated and difficult for inmates to navigate, but exhaustion law
itself is a highly technical growth area — and one in which most courts
seem to be finding ways for inmates to lose.330 Inmates who filed only the
first level of grievance,331 or who failed to comply with a stringent time
limit (sometimes even because they were hospitalized for the injury motivating the lawsuit),332 or who simply wrote a letter to prison authorities
rather than filling out the requisite form,333 are seeing their constitutional
cases dismissed for failure to exhaust. Exceptions are few and far between.334 I would expect, then, that many cases that would have succeeded in federal court prior to the PLRA will now lose because of failures
to exhaust. There is, however, one small, final ripple. Some inmates may
conclude that the existence of stringent exhaustion rules means that their
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
329 See Schriro Interview, supra note 21 (describing how the Missouri grievance system reduced inmate filings but arguing that the PLRA is not likely to promote similarly effective systems).
330 John Boston, Director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project of the Legal Aid Society of New York, is
the leading plaintiff-side authority on the PLRA. His summary of the exhaustion case law, written in
November 2001, runs to fifty-two pages and cites well over 200 judicial decisions addressing various
exhaustion issues. See Boston, Exhaustion, supra note 228. So far, there have been two Supreme
Court cases about exhaustion; in both, the inmate’s complaint was dismissed for failure to exhaust. See
Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 520 (2002); Booth, 532 U.S. at 731.
331 See, e.g., Jones v. Thor, 2001 WL 678388, at *1 (N.D. Cal. June 8, 2001).
332 See, e.g., Steele v. N.Y. State Dep’t of Corr. Servs., 2000 WL 777931, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. June 19,
2000) (dismissing the case of a prisoner who was hospitalized during the entire grievance filing period
although he could not file prior to the deadline, and characterizing his failure to file later as a “deliberate bypass” because prison regulations stated that the deadline was discretionary in “extreme circumstances”); Coronado v. Goord, 2000 WL 52488, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 24, 2000) (dismissing a case for
failure to exhaust, notwithstanding that the grievance would miss the applicable deadlines, though suggesting that the prison should grant a deadline extension).
333 See, e.g., Laureano v. Pataki, 2000 WL 1458807, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 29, 2000).
334 In one rare example, the plaintiff missed a fourteen-day deadline for filing a grievance because he
had been rendered unconscious and hospitalized as a result of allegedly deficient medical care. When
he filed a federal lawsuit, the district court attempted to take advantage of state regulations allowing
court referrals to the prison’s internal grievance program, but the prison system refused to consider the
grievance because it was time-barred. Only then did the court excuse the plaintiff’s failure to exhaust,
holding administrative remedies not “available” for that plaintiff. Cruz v. Jordan, 80 F. Supp. 2d 109,
111–12 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), overruled on other grounds by Neal v. Goord, 267 F.3d 116, 117–18, 126–27
(2d Cir. 2001).

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federal cases are losers and therefore decide not to file. Given inmates’
general inability to assess their litigation chances, this effect is bound to be
quite inconsequential compared to the first-order decision-standard impact
of the change.335
For exhaustion, then, it is quite possible to make a prediction about observable outcome trends. The proportion of successful cases will likely
decrease as courts dismiss cases for failure to exhaust.
(d) Limitations on Attorneys’ Fees. — The restrictions the PLRA
places on attorneys’ fees in inmate cases are quite severe. The statute limits attorneys’ fees assessed against losing defendants in inmate cases to the
lesser of 150% of any money judgment or 150% of the amount “established” for payment of appointed criminal defense lawyers (an hourly
amount known as the “CJA rate” because it is paid under the Criminal Justice Act).336 The provision has only the most generic legislative history, 337
but one self-evident purpose was to discourage attorney representation of
inmates, and it is undoubtedly having that effect. Some portion of the
cases that once would have been counseled are now either not being filed
at all or, more likely, are litigated pro se.338 To the extent the former is
happening, it is likely decreasing the average merits of cases on the
docket, because the cases not filed for this reason probably were higher
probability, on average, than other cases. The latter decreases not the
cases’ merits in some kind of objective sense, but their ability to succeed
in the litigation system. Interviews confirm this view. For example, as
one jail supervisor sums up the PLRA’s effect:
The PLRA hasn’t had much of a chilling effect on the inmates, because they’re
mostly pro se, though it has decreased the numbers a little. The bigger impact
is that the PLRA has shifted cases that would have had attorneys to the pro se
docket, which has helped us with the potential damages and made them easier
to defend.339

I argued above that, for a variety of reasons, inmates prior to the PLRA
found it quite difficult to obtain legal counsel. 340 The PLRA greatly exac–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
335 Former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh highlighted one more potential effect in a letter to
Congressman Frank LoBiondo, in which he said that “an exhaustion requirement would aid in deterring
frivolous claims: by raising the cost, in time/money terms, of pursuing a Bivens action, only those
claims with a greater probability/magnitude of success would, presumably, proceed.” 141 CONG. REC.
H14,105 (daily ed. Dec. 6, 1995) (written statement of Rep. LoBiondo, quoting letter). But this seems
implausible, because exhaustion does not cost money, and time is cheap in prison.
336 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d) (2000) (referencing 18 U.S.C. § 3006A (2000)).
337 See 141 CONG. REC. S14,317 (daily ed. Sept. 26, 1995) (stat ement of Sen. Abraham).
338 Because the Administrative Office did not include a “pro se” variable in its dataset until 1996,
and clerks did not consistently fill it in for terminated cases until 2000, it is still too early to use the
Administrative Office dataset to confirm or disprove this observation. It is not yet possible even to estimate the pro se rate among cases filed in 1999, let alone 2000, because reliable counsel information is
not available for the still-large number of pending cases. See supra note 152.
339 Horgan Interview, supra note 21.
340 See section II.B.3, supra pp. 1609–14.

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erbates this effect: under the PLRA, given the low damages usually expected in inmate cases (described in Table II.C), the expected value to a
lawyer of even a very high-probability damages action is rarely enough to
fund the litigation. The PLRA’s fee limit thus leaves lawyers unable to afford to take almost any inmate case except as a more-or-less pro bono activity.
This is a strong statement and its accuracy may appear to be undermined by the very origin of the PLRA’s rate ceiling. After all, there are
lawyers who take CJA cases, notwithstanding the low rates. Doesn’t this
prove that there is a market of lawyers willing to work for CJA wages, let
alone for 150% of those wages? The answer is no, for two reasons: First,
unlike publicly funded criminal defense lawyers, who receive their CJA
pay without risk, inmates’ counsel receive their attorneys’ fees only if they
win — indeed, only if they win a significant damage award, since they
can’t be paid more than 150% of the award. Second, CJA lawyers use
their fees to fund only their own time; investigators and experts, if any, are
separately funded. 341 Inmate case litigators cannot win their cases without
experts, who do not come cheap. And unlike in criminal cases, experts
were, prior to the PLRA, effectively paid from attorneys’ fees awards.342
Yet, why can’t inmate litigation be funded by contingency fee, like
other plaintiffs’ litigation? 343 After all, even expert-intensive personal injury litigation is frequently financed under contingency-fee agreements.
But ordinary contingency-fee economics do not work very well for inmates, at least for prison inmates. First, inmates typically receive low
damages even for serious injuries, for the reasons already discussed. (This
is likely to be less true for jail inmates, who can have lost wages, actual
medical costs, and higher status in the community.) In addition, contingency-fee lawyers usually count on a good portion of their cases settling; 344 if every case went to trial, plaintiffs’ lawyers would require far
higher fees, at least for low-damages cases.345 As already discussed, set–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
341
342

18 U.S.C. § 3006A(e) (2000).
Al Gerhardstein, a leading inmate civil rights litigator, recently estimated his costs at about $80
per hour. At the time he wrote, 150% of the CJA rate in his district was $96. Like many other lawyers
who used to do injunctive prison cases, Gerhardstein explains that he can no longer afford to take them
on. Now, he takes cases on behalf of inmates who have been released from prison. Gerhardstein,
PLRA and Private Practitioners, supra note 292.
343 The most prominent proponent of contingency funding for prisoner litigation has been Seventh
Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner. See sources cited supra note 173.
344 See, e.g., Herbert M. Kritzer, Contingent- Fee Lawyers and Their Clients: Settlement Expectations, Settlement Realities, and Issues of Control in the Lawyer-Client Relationship, 23 L. & SOC.
I NQUIRY 795, 801 (1998) (“While it is useful for a lawyer to have a reputation as willing to try cases
(and for winning those he or she does try), the economics of the contingency fee means that it is most
advantageous for the lawyer to avoid trial in most cases.”).
345 Zittrain Interview, supra note 21; see also Herbert M. Kritzer, Seven Dogged Myths Concerning
Contingency Fees, 80 WASH. U. L.Q. 739, 759 (2002) (noting that many contingency-fee lawyers structure their fees to increase in the event of a trial); id. at 781 (observing that lawyers’ effective returns

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tlement rates are very much depressed for prison if not for jail cases. Although this effect is mitigated slightly in counseled versus pro se cases,
lawyers report that settlements remain rare in counseled cases, too. So
lawyers calculating the expected value of an inmate case taken on contingency need to assume that it has a high chance of going to trial and therefore will likely be very costly for them. Herbert Kritzer, a leading observer of contingency-fee practice, notes that the risks of nonrecovery are
less important for contingent-fee lawyers than “are the uncertainties over
the amount of the recovery and amount of investment by the lawyer that
will be necessary to obtain the recovery.”346 Lawyers considering inmate
cases can be nearly certain that their required investment will be high.
The end result is that the PLRA discourages the counseled filing of
even high-merit cases unless they are also extremely high-value.347 As far
as one can predict outcome trends, the impact should be to produce
proportionately fewer successes for inmate plaintiffs.
(e) Coverage. — In section V.B.3, I canvass the reasons to think that
jail cases tend to be more successful than prison cases for their plaintiffs.
If this is so, and if I am correct that the PLRA dampens jail filings less
than prison filings, promoting a relative shift in the docket toward jail
cases,348 the impact of the change might also have an effect on observed
inmate plaintiffs’ success rates, driving them up somewhat.
(f) Summary of Expected Outcome Effects. — To summarize, close
scrutiny of the PLRA’s provisions supports the following predictions about
the statute’s effect on the individual inmate civil rights docket: After the
PLRA, there should be many fewer cases, with the decline disproportio nately occurring among low-stakes cases (regardless of their probability of
success), those brought by frequent filers, and those brought by prison
rather than jail inmates. Because of the PLRA’s exhaustion provision,
some cases will be filtered out by successful conflict-resolution in the ad–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
“tend to be lowest for cases that go to trial”). A plaintiffs’ lawyer whose motives are economic is
unlikely to take on a case that has no chance of settling unless the case doesn’t require much outlay and
the lawyer doesn’t have many other clients, or the case has a very high expected value. See generally
JEROME E. CARLIN, LAWYERS ON THEIR OWN: A STUDY OF I NDIVIDUAL P RACTITIONERS IN
CHICAGO (1962); see also Kritzer, supra, at 762 (“[I]n situations where a lawyer has otherwise unused
time, the lawyer may be willing to accept cases where the lawyer expects the compensation to be less
than what the lawyer would like to believe is the value of the time involved.”).
346 Herbert M. Kritzer, The Wages of Risk: The Returns of Contingency Fee Legal Practice, 47
DEPAUL L. REV. 267, 271 (1998).
347 It is possible, however, that there is a very minor countervailing effect. Lawyers who used to
handle a few large injunctive cases and who cannot fund that litigation on fees of 150% of the CJA rate
may shift their efforts to damage actions not covered by the PLRA — cases in which the inmate has
been released from prison or has died. Although it is certain that this effect is real, see Alexander Interview, supra note 21; Gerhardstein, PLRA and Private Practitioners, supra note 292, it is implausible
that the impact is very large. There just were not that many injunctive lawyers to start with, and many
of them are still taking on primarily injunctive cases.
348 See supra p. 1641.

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ministrative grievance process, and some by their would-be plaintiffs’ realization that failure to exhaust dooms cases to failure. There should also
be fewer counseled cases, and many of the suits that once would have had
lawyers will be filed pro se instead. And, among counseled cases in particular, more should involve former inmates or the families of dead inmates. It is very difficult to predict how observable outcomes — and particularly success rates — will change. But there is very little reason to
expect outcomes in the shrunken inmate civil rights docket to shift in
plaintiffs’ favor, and much reason to think that plaintiffs will succeed in
relatively fewer cases than they did prior to the statutory change. That effect is not because of some incentivized alteration in the intrinsic constit utional merit of the filed cases, but because the exhaustion requirement
means that plaintiffs will lose cases they would previously have won (or
settled) and because the counsel restrictions mean that cases will be pro se
that would previously have had counsel.
2. Observed Trends. — I have said that it is technically difficult to
evaluate litigation outcomes for recent case-cohorts. While it is completely clear that filings have decreased considerably, what is happening to
the cases that have continued to be filed is murkier. The problem is that
outcome data are available only through fiscal year 2001. So for each year
of case filings from 1998 on, some significant portion of the total inmate
docket remains to be resolved. And, because dismissals in particular occur
quickly, the unresolved cases are more likely than those with recorded outcomes to be plaintiffs’ victories or settlements. Estimates about trends,
then, must be based on some method of comparing resolved cases, by filing year, to earlier case-cohorts. The method I have chosen is to look at
trends by leaving out late-resolved cases from earlier filing years in order
to match similar cases’ unavoidable omission from later years.349 The key
assumption underlying my method is reasonable — but because it is certainly arguable, I want to lay it out explicitly: my analysis depends on the
assumption that among cases that terminate in a later fiscal year than the
one in which they were filed, the relative disposition time for cases resulting in either plaintiff trial victories or settlements, compared to other cases,
has not changed very much over the last few years. I’ve tested this
assumption by looking at cases up to 1999, and it holds true for them.
That is, the relationship between the earlier- and later-resolved cases in
years
prior to 2000 is a predictable one: plaintiffs win and settle more as
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
349 The analysis that follows compares filed cohorts by percentage of the docket . For example, 2.9%
of cases filed in 1998 have yet to be resolved. So to examine the trend up to 1998, I compared the
97.1% of cases filed in 1998 that have been resolved to the first 97.1% of cases resolved from earlier
years’ filings. I have also done the same analysis looking at dates rather than the percentage of the
docket. For example, I compared the three years’ worth of available resolutions for cases filed in 1998
with the first three years’ worth of resolutions of earlier-filed cohorts. My results were practically identical using either method. Notice, however, the slight oddity that cases filed early in a given year have
longer to be resolved, under either method, than cases filed later the same year. I cannot think of any
reason this would matter, but if I’m wrong about that, the method may be flawed.

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prior to 2000 is a predictable one: plaintiffs win and settle more as time
passes, but the longitudinal trends hold.
With this assumption in place, my assessment of the preliminary evidence is that since the PLRA, inmate civil rights plaintiffs have continued
to fare proportionately worse even as filings have declined. The rate of
pretrial defendants’ judgments has continued the increase that has characterized outcomes for cases filed beginning in 1992. And indications are
that the increase in dismissal rates is continuing at a similar rate for subsequent cohorts of filings. Figure IV.A presents full data. Like the other
graphs that follow, its purpose is to illustrate emerging, rather than completely certain, trends. It is a little complicated to read, but not conceptually difficult. It examines case outcomes by filing cohort, grouping cases
by the fiscal year in which they were commenced. Each graph shows a
specified outcome — in Figure IV.A, the cases that plaintiffs do not lose
pretrial as a percentage of the entire set of resolved cases. Each line on
the graph represents a different sub-portion of the cohort of cases filed in
the years on the x-axis. The top line (labeled “All”) is the entire set of
cases (those cases plaintiffs do not lose pretrial), but it ends in 1997 because filing cohorts after that have significant numbers of cases not yet resolved (or resolved later than the available data, in any event). If the “All”
line continued, it would misrepresent outcomes, because it would conflate
changes over time in resolution and the disproportionately low success rate
of relatively early-resolved cases. The lines below the “All” line cover
only a part of the filed docket, but they can extend further in time. Thus
for each filing cohort since 1987, the next line, labeled “1998: 2.90%,”
shows the non-dismissal rate of the first 97.1% of cases — the fraction of
cases filed in 1998 that have so far been resolved. For the years prior to
1998, this line simply echoes the “All” line, though lower (because the
later resolved cases, which are excluded, tend to do better for plaintiffs
than the earlier ones). The point of this line is what it shows about outcomes in 1998: inmates are doing worse than in analogous segments of
earlier case cohorts. And the succeeding lines show that the trend of declining plaintiffs’ success appears to be continuing. The final point in the
bottom line, labeled “2001: 46.38%,” illustrates resolutions, in 2001, of
cases filed that same year. It, too, is trending down: inmates with cases in
the first half of the 2001 filed case-cohort are doing quite a bit worse, pretrial, than inmates in the first half of prior case-cohorts did. Less than half
of the cases filed in 2001 have available outcome data, so whether the remainder of the docket will follow the same trend is somewhat speculative,
of course. But tracing the line back to prior years demonstrates that what
happens in the first half of the docket is highly consonant with what happens overall.

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Figure IV.A: Pretrial Outcomes by Filing Year,
Cases That S URVIVE Pretrial Dismissal
(Trend Lines To Match Non-Pending Cases by Filing Year)

Cases that survive pretrial dismissal, as % of all judgments

25%

ALL
20%
1998: 2.90%
1999: 7.90%
15%

2000: 16.46%
2001: 46.38%

10%

5%

0%
1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

Fiscal year of filing

With fewer cases surviving pretrial adjudication in defendants’ favor, it
is unsurprising that the portion of the docket that settles has continued to
decline. Of the cases filed in 1998, for example, just 4.5% have settled so
far, whereas 5.8% of the analogous 1995 cohort and 6.9% of the 1990 cohort settled. Again, indications are that this steady decrease is continuing.
Figure IV.B sets out the data.

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Figure IV.B: Settlements by Filing Year
(Trend Lines To Match Non-Pending Cases, by Filing Year)

10%
9%
ALL

Settlement, as % of all judgments

8%

1998: 2.90%

7%
1999: 7.90%

6%

2000: 16.46%

5%

2001: 46.38%

4%
3%
2%
1%
0%
1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

Fiscal year of filing

Moreover, because each outcome proportion is on a base of far fewer
cases since the passage of the PLRA, the reduction in the absolute number
of plaintiffs’ successes has fallen very far indeed. Looking, for example, at
cohorts to match the portion of cases filed in 2000 that have so far been
resolved, by the time 84% of the cases filed in 1995 had been resolved,
5.5% (1750) had settled. Of that same portion of the 2000 docket, 2.4%
(463) have settled. In sum, vastly fewer cases are leading to negotiated
outcomes.
But are settlements simply going down because there are fewer cases
left to settle, given that dismissals are going up? Or does the trend run
deeper, with settlements declining even among the most settlement-prone
part of the docket, those cases that survive pretrial motions practice? Figure IV.C answers this question, combining the information in Figures IV.A
and IV.B to show settlements as a percentage of the cases that do not get
resolved pretrial in defendants’ favor (roughly speaking, those that survive
summary judgment). It shows that even though fewer cases are surviving
pretrial adjudication, settlements are falling faster still.

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Settlements, as % of non-dismissed cases

Figure IV.C: Settlements, as a Percentage of Cases
That Survive Pretrial Dismissal
(Trend Lines To Match Non-Pending Cases, by Filing Year)

60%
55%

ALL

50%

1998: 2.90%

45%
40%

1999: 7.90%

35%

2000: 16.46%

30%

2001: 46.38%
25%
20%
15%
10%
1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

1995 1996

1997 1998

1999 2000

2001

Fiscal year of filing

As Figure IV.D demonstrates, the proportion of cases going to trial is
also continuing the decline that has been going on since 1991. This time,
looking at cohorts to match the cases filed in 1998, the trial rate in 1990
was 3.0%; by 1995, it was down a quarter, to 2.2%. By 1997, it was down
to 1.9%.
Figure IV.D: Trials by Filing Year
(Trend Lines To Match Non-Pending Cases, by Filing Year)

4.0%

Trials, as % of cases with judgments

3.5%
ALL

3.0%
1997: 1.38%

2.5%

1998: 2.90%
1999: 7.90%

2.0%
2000: 16.46%

1.5%

2001: 46.38%

1.0%

0.5%

0.0%
1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

Fiscal year of filing

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The final question — who wins at trial — is the only one without an
unambiguously anti-plaintiff answer. As Figure IV.E shows, plaintiffs
seem to be winning as large a portion of trials, or maybe even a little larger, since the PLRA’s enactment. (The numbers are extremely small, and
therefore should not be given too much weight.) Of trials in the first
97.1% of the docket, inmate plaintiffs who filed in 1998 have won about
10%, compared to 7–8% in corresponding portions of the 1994 and 1995
filed cohorts. And the improvement in plaintiffs’ trial results seems to be
holding, although there are still too many unresolved cases to be sure.
Note, however, that the reduction in number of trials is greatly outweig hing the increase in victories: plaintiffs may be winning slightly more often,
proportionately, but they are winning less often absolutely.
Figure IV.E: Plaintiffs’ Trial Victories by Filing Year
(Trend Lines To Match Non-Pending Cases, by Filing Year)

16%

Plaintiffs verdicts in tried cases

14%

12%
ALL

10%

8%

1998: 2.90%

6%

1999: 7.90%

4%

2000: 16.46%

2%

0%
1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

Fiscal year of filing

In the end, comparing cases filed in 1997 and later with those filed
prior to the PLRA’s passage, the trend seems to be that plaintiffs are filing
vastly fewer cases, at a lower rate per incarcerated person. Defendants are
winning, pretrial, in more of that shrunken docket. Of the (already
smaller) portion of the docket in which defendants do not win pretrial,
plaintiffs are settling fewer cases. Once at trial, they seem to be winning
slightly more often — but not nearly enough to make up for the reduction
in settlements.

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In short, the average likelihood of plaintiffs’ success is lower, not
higher, on the post-PLRA docket. There is no definitive proof that the
PLRA actually caused these changes. Indeed, the visually evident fact that
some of the trends started prior to the PLRA’s passage makes causation
more questionable. Yet it can be said that this set of longitudinal changes
is entirely consistent with careful predictions of the impact of the PLRA,
so those predictions stand unfalsified. Thus, although the PLRA has
achieved its major goal regarding individual inmate lawsuits, sharply reducing the quantity of inmate litigation, it remains the most plausible conclusion, based on careful reading of the statute in light of the particularities
of inmate litigation, that Congress breached the constraint that the Act’s
proponents purported to follow. Rather than improving the quality of the
inmate docket, the PLRA has both placed affirmative roadblocks (the filing
fee and the lawyers’ limits) in the way of high-quality cases and added a
very high exhaustion hurdle for successful litigation of any constit utionally
meritorious cases that are nonetheless filed.
V. BROADENING THE FIELD OF VIEW
So far, this Article has proceeded on the premise that litigation is about
compensation for injured parties. I’ve deemed cases seeking damages
“successful” for plaintiffs only — and whenever — they lead to money
changing hands. But of course compensation is not the only, or even the
primary, function of a litigation system. For inmate litigation, case outcomes (even taken en masse) have been less important than the administrative, psychological, symbolic, and political effects of the litigation system.
As Jim Jacobs wrote twenty-five years ago about the effect of lawsuits on
Illinois’s Stateville prison:
While the impact of the federal courts on the prison has been profound, the
means by which this impact has been made are subtle and indirect. It has been
the threat of lawsuits, the dislike for court appearances, the fear of personal liability, and the requirement of rational rules rather than revolutionary judicial
decisions that have led to the greatest change in the Stateville organization.
While the precise holdings of the court decisions have often been quite modest
and even conservative, the indirect ramifications of judicial intervention into
the prison have been far-reaching.350

In this Part, I examine some of the ways in which the litigation system
prior to the PLRA’s enactment affected jail and prison officials’ decisions
and decisionmaking process.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
350 JACOBS, STATEVILLE, supra note 80, at 106–07; see also Jacobs, Prisoners’ Rights Movement,
supra note 2, at 33. See generally Richard A.L. Gambitta, Litigation, Judicial Deference, and Policy
Change, in GOVERNING T HROUGH COURTS 259–82 (Richard A.L. Gambitta et al. eds., 1981) (arguing that the impact of cases can be evaluated only after comprehensive and nuanced analysis).

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I begin with the observation, informed by the data presented above,
that the most pressing feature of individual inmate litigation for jail and
prison administrators is not the risk of large payouts. Even small payouts
are quite infrequent, and large payouts are rare indeed. What is more salient for correctional officials is that the court filings require response. This
leads me to an analytic distinction between litigation responses intended to
make dealing with the litigation process more efficient and less stressful
for the agencies that get sued and those meant to reduce liability exposure.
In this Part, I evaluate both categories of response separately (although in
practice they may blur somewhat), building on sociolegal scholarship that
explores the complex ways in which liability rules get translated into organizational behavior. In section A, I suggest that, like other public and
private organizations, corrections agencies confronted with a sufficient
volume of court filings tend to create a compliance infrastructure with both
personnel and policy components. But in the correctional setting, the
compliance infrastructure is geared as much or more toward litigation efficiency as liability reduction. That is, litigation has most notably spurred
administrators to bring into their facilities the employees, policies, and protocols needed for routinization of response. And policies intended to
routinize response to litigation have had a far broader bureaucratizing impact, as staff assigned to litigation tasks have functioned not only as litigation point persons, but as law transmitters and filters, educating their colleagues as to what the law requires. What is new in my account is not the
connection between corrections litigation and bureaucratization, but the account of the mechanism by which that connection is drawn.
Of course, corrections agencies also take some operational steps to try
to reduce liability exposure. The idea is familiar — a major purpose of
litigation is supposed to be to “deter” tortious conduct.351 In organizational settings, however, deterrence is far from simple. A variety of scholars looking at government organizations in particular have argued that lawsuit-promoted deterrence of government misconduct is often dangerously
imprecise, causing undue “chilling” of official activity, and perhaps even
encouraging tortious misconduct. But I contend in section B that these arguments are, at the very least, inapposite to correctional litigation. In large
part because of all the obstacles to their success analyzed above, inmate
cases certainly have not functioned as full deterrents. But it is implausible
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
351 The det errence function is an essential premise of a good deal of law and economics scholarship.
See, e.g., Louis Kaplow, Private Versus Social Costs in Bringing Suit, 15 J. LEGAL STUD. 371 & n.2
(1986) (“Private benefits [from bringing suit] are simply the damage award, whereas social benefits
consist of the reduction in accident costs resulting from the deterrence effect of private suits.”). For
discussions of deterrence by civil rights litigation against government agencies, see generally Daryl J.
Levinson, Making Government Pay: Markets, Politics, and the Allocation of Constitutional Costs, 67
U. CHI. L. REV. 345 (2000) [hereinafter Levinson, Making Government Pay], and sources cited in id. at
351 n.14.

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that inmates’ damage actions have either “overdeterred,” or functioned,
perversely, to increase the amount of official misconduct. (The one exception is for some very small minority of elected sheriffs who occasionally
take advantage of litigation’s attendant publicity to solidify their reputation
for toughness — it may be that for inmates subject to the control of these
few actors, litigation has indeed played some kind of perverse role.)
Mostly, I suggest, individual inmate litigation prior to the PLRA had a real,
though undeniably partial, tendency to pressure jail and prison authorities
to comply with the (quite minimal) constitutional law of corrections.
However, the method by which the deterrent effect worked was very different for prison and jail agencies. For prisons, professional and constit utional norms developed concurrently and symbiotically. For jails, the traditional story of how monetary incentives work was more accurate.
Although only a quite limited amount of scholarship has assessed rigorously how liability pressure actually affects actors in organizational contexts, that work consistently counsels great care and attention to detail and
context, which is what I aim at in this Part. For example, I emphasize the
crucial distinction between jails and prisons. I should make clear, however, that I am making no attempt to deal comprehensively with litigation’s
impact on corrections. Several omissions deserve explicit mention. First,
I am not discussing the ways in which litigation affects inmates’ own
choices and resulting life experiences, although inmate litigators are an interesting topic of study in themselves and much more could be written
about them. 352 Second, I am not attempting here to present a normative
case for inmate litigation, although I do believe that it can serve a valuable
dignitary function, opposing the denaturalization and infantilization 353 currently inherent in American corrections, by creating a limited space in
which inmates may act as citizens and adults entitled, at least, to explanations. (I would argue that quite apart from whether inmate plaintiffs win
or lose in court, and whether they are able to trade on any victories in the
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
352 Among the limited set of sources available, the most comprehensive is Jim Thomas’s book,
P RISONER LITIGATION: T HE PARADOX OF THE JAILHOUSE LAWYER, supra note 15. Other treat ments include LLOYD C. ANDERSON, VOICES FROM A SOUTHERN P RISON (2000); MARTIN &
EKLAND-OLSON, TEXAS P RISONS, supra note 16, at 50–58; Dragan Milovanovic, Jailhouse Lawyers
and Jailhouse Lawyering, 16 I NT’ L J. SOC. L. 455, 462 (1988).
353 As Sykes argued over fifty years ago: “[T]he frustration of the prisoner’s ability to make choices
and the frequent refusals to provide an explanation for the regulations and commands descending from
the bureaucratic staff involve a profound threat to the prisoner’s self image because they reduce the
prisoner to the weak, helpless, dependent status of childhood.” SYKES, SOCIETY OF CAPTIVES, supra
note 198, at 75. Although it was not Sykes’s major interest, he equated this infantilization with something more political — prisoners’ forfeiture of “the status of a full-fledged, trusted member of society
. . . similar to what Marshall has called the status of citizenship.” Id. at 66–67 (referencing T.H.
MARSHALL, CITIZENSHIP AND SOCIAL CLASS (1950) (available in CONTEMPORARY P OLITICAL
P HILOSOPHY: AN ANTHOLOGY 291 (Robert E. Goodin & Philip Pettit eds., 1997))); see also DAVID
GARLAND, T HE CULTURE OF CONTROL: CRIME AND SOCIAL ORDER IN CONTEMPORARY
SOCIETY 178, 181 (2001).

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political arena,354 they achieve a significant victory just by appearing in
the position of claimant rather than mendicant, comm unity member rather
than outcast.) Third, especially in this Part, it is crucial to remember that
this Article is limited to individual inmate litigation rather than court order
litigation. For a large number of prison and jail systems, the basic dete rrent impact of litigation has been the specific deterrence of a court order,
reached by litigation or negotiation, and enforceable by contempt or other
judicial action if need be.355 Such orders also cast a marked general dete rrent shadow on systems hoping to avoid them. And they have a mimetic
impact, as other systems imitate them not out of fear but rather out of a
more positive interest.356 I am not talking here about any of these phenomena, but am tracing only the general deterrent effect from individual
damages actions.
Finally, even in this partial account of litigation dete rrence, I need to
make clear one additional limit. The law governing jails and prisons is
quite restricted in its substantive reach. The boundary between those areas
of incarcerated life that are governed by constitutional standards and those
that are not is by no means a divide between the important and unimportant. Rather, the case law purports to divide the judicially enforceable
“minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities”357 and the unlawful inte ntional infliction of extrajudicial punishment from the permissible constraints on prisoners that are motivated by legitimate security or other penologica l concerns. So most of what goes on in prisons and jails — or,
more to the point, what doesn’t go on — is not something for which anyone could answer in damages. The presence or absence of education, employment, and rehabilitative programming; general decisions about custody
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
354 For discussions of how litigation and litigation victories can be converted into useful polit ical
currency, see MICHAEL MCCANN, RIGHTS AT W ORK: PAY EQUITY REFORM AND THE P OLITICS OF
LEGAL MOBILIZATION (1994 ); STUART A. SCHEINGOLD, THE P OLITICS OF RIGHTS (1974 ); Neal
Milner, The Dilemmas of Legal Mobilization: Ideologies and Strategies of Mental Patient Liberation
Groups, 8 L. & P OL’Y 105 (1986); and Michael Paris, Legal Mobilization and the Politics of Reform:
Lessons from School Finance Litigation in Kentucky, 1984–1995, 26 L. & SOC. I NQUIRY 631 (2001).
355 At last count, the Bureau of Justice Statistics censuses report that such orders govern 23 % of the
nation’s state prisons (housing 39 % of state inmates) and 13% of the nation’s local jails (housing 31%
of jail inmates). These figures are derived from BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T OF
JUSTICE , CENSUS OF STATE AND FEDERAL ADULT CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES, 2000 (forthcoming;
data kindly provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics) [hereinafter BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS,
2000 P RISON CENSUS]; BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, 1999 JAIL CENSUS, supra note 82. For
the code yielding the figures presented, see Schlanger, Techn ical Appendix, supra note 3.
356 Cf. Paul J. DiMaggio & Walter W. Powell, The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism
and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields, in THE NEW I NSTITUTIONALISM IN
ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS 63, 69–70 (Walter W. Powell & Paul J. DiMaggio eds., 1991) (originally published at 48 AM. SOC. REV. 147, 151 (1983)) [hereinafter DiMaggio & Powell, Iron Cage Revisited] (distinguishing several kinds of institutional imitation, including a “mimetic” or “modeling”
process that occurs “when organizational technologies are poorly understood, when goals are ambiguous, or when the environment creates symbolic uncertainty”).
357 Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 347 (1981).

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level or security restrictions; the decision about where an inmate should be
housed — all are beyond the narrow concerns of current constitutional law
(and, at least mostly, of other law as well). Due process requirements, too,
currently reach only a limited set of prison and jail actions. As commonly
held views of criminal offenders shift, so that they are viewed as more and
more wild and threatening, the recharacterization of harsh measures as “security” rather than summary punishment has moved much of penal administration beyond the scope of constitutional oversight. Sandin v. Connor,358
in which the Supreme Court in large part undid much of the penal due
process revolution of the 1970s, was merely the most dramatic confirmation of this ongoing change.359 The narrow scopes of substantive and procedural constitutional law both come into play, for example, in the most
important new issue in large-scale inmate litigation: whether the Constit ution has anything special to say about conditions in (or prerequisites for
classification to) “supermax” facilities.360 Examination of the current constitutional doctrine governing jails and prisons is not my point here. But
the limited discussion above establishes, I think, that even if individual
inmate actions do, as I argue, have a deterrent effect, that effect’s reach is
limited — perhaps not precisely to the reach of the substantive law, but in
a correlated fashion.
A. Minimizing Litigation’s Burden
The data presented in Part I on filings and in Part II on outcomes demonstrate that the litigation environment jail and prison administrators face
is one of regular (and, in some institutions, many) court filings accompanied by only a possibility of occasional small and rare large payouts. The
administrators’ responses are best understood once divided into two categories. Though in practice the categories may blur somewhat, some litigation responses are aimed at litigation efficiency; others are intended to
minimize liability exposure. In this section, I evaluate the former.
Nearly regardless of its merits, and wholly apart from any deterrent effect it may have, litigation requires response. Faced with large numbers of
lawsuits that made it through pre-service screening,361 prison and, to a
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
358
359

515 U.S. 472 (1995).
Sandin held that a prison need not provide any procedural protections against disciplinary consequences if those consequences are not “atypical” for prisoners. In the many systems in which “disciplinary segregation” has custodial conditions similar to “administrative segregation” (for example, protective custody or segregation pending internal investigation of an incident), Sandin means that prisons
can impose the disciplinary version more or less at will. See id. at 486–87.
360 See, e.g., Austin v. Wilkinson, 204 F. Supp. 2d 1024, 1026 (N.D. Ohio 2002) (finding a due process violation in the method by which the state assigned inmates to supermax custody).
361 Such screening has long been the practice in many districts, see FJC, PLRA Resource Guide ,
supra note 14, at 25 & n.73 (citing case law), and the PLRA encourages it, though it does not quite create an actual requirement. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915A (2000) (requiring courts to screen cases “before
docketing if feasible or, in any event, as soon as practicable after docketing”).

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more limit ed extent, jail systems developed a set of institutional strategies
for facilitating processing and response. The most obvious instit utional
move was to dedicate staff to the problem. States vary in their precise allocation of staff for this function, but all have both low - and high- level
personnel who spend significant portions of their time dealing with inmate
litigation. There are lawyers and paralegals in corrections departments and
in offices of attorneys general; there are litigation officers, comp liance officers, risk assessment personnel, and others.362 Jails, however, present a
different picture. Most jails are far smaller than most prisons, let alone
prison systems, and small jails in particular are far less likely to employ
readily available la wyers with expertise in inmate litigation. 363 But jails,
too, often institutionalize some lower-priced staffing arrangement to deal
with inmate cases. For example, in many jails, an officer will be assigned
to be the “litigation officer” (in addition to other tasks) in charge of coordinating responses to filed cases.
The consequences of having dedicated staff are manifold. Hired to respond to litigation, the assigned staff also act as law transmitters.364 This
is by no means simply a techn ical assignment. Rather, it involves a kind
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
362 Lawyers for prison systems either work fo r their department or for the state attorney ge neral’s
office. Nearly all, and perhaps all, the states employ lawyers who sp ecialize in prison-related litigation.
Such lawyers even have their own professional networks; for example, the National Association of At torneys
General
hosts
an
annual
“corrections
seminar”
for
lawyers
who defend prisons. See NAAG NEWS, Spring 2002, at 5, available at http://www.naag.org/
publications/pdf /newsletter_spr2002.pdf.
363 Of the approximately 3000 jail jurisdictions in 1999 (which, combined, housed over 600,000 inmates on an average day), more than two -thirds had an average daily population of fewer than 100 inmates. If it takes about 1000 inmates to justify employment of one lawyer in a correctional system, see
supra p. 1625 , it is telling that more than half of jail inmates in 1999 were housed in a jail system that
typically held fewer. About half as many state prisons held about twice as man y people, and their
population distribution was much more even. So fewer than one-third of prison inmates in 2000 were
housed in prisons holding fewer than 1000 inmates. Moreover, all the prisons are part of systems big
enough to justify full-time-employ ee lawyers and other compliance personnel. See BUREAU OF
JUSTICE STATISTICS, 2000 P RISON CENSUS, supra note 355 ; BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, 1999
JAIL CENSUS, supra note 82 . For code, see Schlanger, Technical Appendix , supra note 3.
I don’t mean to overstate this difference between jails and prisons, however. Even though only
very large jails are big enough to justify employment of attorneys dedicated in whole or in part to inmate litigation, such jails are so large that they house about half of jail inmates. Indeed, the very largest jail systems — Los Angeles County (1999 average daily population = 20,683); New York City
(1999 average daily population = 17,562); Cook County (Ill.) (1999 average daily population = 9430)
— each house more inmates than many medium-size state prison systems and have a full complement
of litigation-processing staff. See BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE,
BULLETIN: P RISON AND JAIL I NMATES AT MIDYEAR 2000 at 8 tbl.10, 3 tbl.2 (Mar. 2001), available
at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/pjim00.pdf.
364 See, e.g., Lauren B. Edelman, Stephen E. Abraham & Howard S. Erlanger, Professional Construction of Law: The Inflated Threat of Wrongful Discharge, 26 L. & SOC’ Y REV. 47, 48–49 (1992)
[hereinafter Edelman et al., Professional Construction] (arguing that because legal systems have no
systematic method of disseminating information about law, professionals within organizations assigned
to deal with issues of legal compliance typically take on the task of transmitting the law into that
organization).

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of filtering process; given the nearly omnipresent ambiguity of legal requirements, staff inevitably must partially construct the law in order to
create a coherent account of its regulatory demands.365 The content of that
account is as much about organizational and interorganizational politics as
it is about what courts or legislatures say. I lean here on the work of Lauren Edelman with various coauthors: in the realm of corporate employment
practices, she has emphasized that compliance officers gain power in their
organizations by claiming expertise about compliance requirements, but
that “[h]ow professionals use that power depends in part on their professional interests and expectations.”366 While I have not matched Edelman’s
intense field inquiry, it appears to me that many of her points apply equally
well in the corrections setting. Some correctional compliance personnel
may exaggerate the “magnitude of the threat posed by law and the litigiousness of the legal environment” in order to underscore their own vital
role within the organization and enhance their professional standing. 367
Indeed, sometimes this inflation effect (combined with the predictable fact
that jobs attract people who think the job is important) means that officials
assigned to ensure compliance with legal norms may “tend to become internal advocates for the values that the practices symbolize.”368
Where prisons and jails seem to me to depart from Edelman’s partic ular account (though not from her theoretical one) is that in the deeply oppositional world of corrections, “compliance” personnel may become jaded
to the constitutional values they are designated to implement, instead developing a finely honed derision for inmate complaints — in part to ensure
that they are not too deeply identified with the inmates by their colleagues.
It was, for example, prison compliance personnel who, at the behest of the
National Association of Attorneys General, put together the lists of “Top
Ten Frivolous Prisoner Lawsuits” that circulated in support of the
PLRA.369 It may be, moreover, that compliance personnel consciously or
unconsciously try to discourage complaints rather than address their
causes. So I am not arguing that prison and jail professionalization and/or
specializatio n of compliance functions are inevitably good for inmates.
But my general impression (more precise information will have to await
further research) is that jail and prison compliance personnel are on balance apt to have a pro-inmate influence in their organizations.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
365 See id.; Lauren B. Edelman, Stephen Petterson, Elizabeth Chambliss & Howard S. Erlanger, Legal Ambiguity and the Politics of Compliance: Affirmative Action Officers’ Dilemma, 13 L. & P OL’ Y 73
(1991) [hereinafter Edelman et al., Legal Ambiguity] (arguing that affirmative action officers’ interpret ations of the law have important implications on the degree of organizational compliance with the law).
366 Edelman et al., Legal Ambiguity, supra note 365, at 77.
367 Edelman et al., Professional Construction, supra note 364, at 49.
368 Lauren B. Edelman & Mark C. Suchman, When the “Haves” Hold Court: Speculations on the
Organizational Internalization of Law, 33 L. & SOC’ Y REV. 941, 963 (1999).
369 See supra pp. 1568–69 & nn. 36–37.

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The need to respond to litigation does not impact only staffing. Just as
important, systems that know they will be sued dozens or even hundreds of
times each year develop practices that make responding to those lawsuits
easier and more routine. In correctional facilities, they write incident reports, videotape cell extractions, keep easily copied shift logs and the like.
And they develop written policies and procedures easier to present in
pleadings and testimony. As Jacobs observed, they bureaucratize.370 And,
as Jacobs and many others have argued, the impact of the resulting bureaucratization is by no means limited to litigation. It can entirely transform the agency in question. 371 (Again, size is a crucial variable here. For
small facilities, including most jails but also many prisons, the reminder
from lawsuits to maintain the bureaucratic ability to respond can be quite
infrequent.)
Bureaucratization is hardly an unqualified good. Jerry Frug has emphasized that in many contexts, bureaucracy crowds out a more participatory form of democratic self-governance.372 This critique has not, however, had much application in corrections, where pre-bureaucratic regimes
rather, to quote John DiIulio, “bounced between the poles of anarchy and
tyranny; between the Hobbesian state of inmate predators and the autocratic, arbitrary regime of iron-fisted wardens.”373 Still, even putting aside
participatory democracy in a prison or jail as either an unachievable pipedream or simply an inappropriate goal, it is easy to imagine nonbureaucratic prisons and jails that are more humane, more responsive places than
bureaucratic ones. And such places certainly exist. More generally, however, it seems that prison and jail inmates are better off when their incarcerating facilities have, for example, written policies, stated rules of conduct for their staff, and the variety of practices and procedures that allow
supervisors to monitor line officers.374 My point here is the by now familiar one that inmate litigation has encouraged use of these minimal bureaucratic features. What is new in my account is the observation that the need
to respond to litigation, rather than anything substantive about the litigation, has served as the impetus for these changes.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
370
371
372

Jacobs, Prisoners’ Rights Movement, supra note 2, at 54–55.
Id.; see also Feeley & Hanson, Judicial Impact on Prisons, supra note 16, at 25–28.
Gerald E. Frug, The Ideology of Bureaucracy in American Law, 97 HARV. L. REV. 1276, 1295–
96 (1984).
373 JOHN J. DII ULIO, JR., GOVERNING P RISONS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CORRECTIONAL
MANAGEMENT 236 (1987).
374 The most prominent and unambivalent supporter of correctional bureaucratization is John
DiIulio. See id. at 236–41.

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B. Reducing Liability Exposure: Overdeterrence, Antideterrence,
Underdeterrence
According to the usual accounts of civil rights litigation, one major
purpose of the damage-awarding system is supposed to be to “deter government, to some socially optimal extent, from violating constitutional
rights by forcing government agencies to internalize the costs of their constitutionally problematic conduct.”375 In this section, I analyze how deterrence works in a correctional setting for both line officers and the agencies
themselves. I argue first that claims that overdeterrence is a pervasive
possibility are inapposite to jail and prison litigation. Second, antideterrence claims — arguments that litigation can actually backfire and cause
more unlawful conduct — are equally implaus ible in large part. Rather,
the traditional account is, in this setting, correct: the litigation system has a
beneficial, if limited, tendency to encourage jail and prison agencies to
comply with constitutional norms.
1. Overdeterrence. — When jail and prison officials feel the deterrent
spur, they, like all government agencies or agents, can reduce their exposure to adverse court judgments and court-influenced settlements, and the
attendant negative publicity, in three theoretically distinct ways (although
in many situations the three merge somewhat). The first method of liability minimization is to try to comply with court-announced norms in carrying out chosen activities — for example, to follow procedural constraints
on the imposition of disciplinary sanctions. This is deterrence.376 The
second method of liability minimization is to avoid conflict altogether —
for example, to discipline inmates less often. This is what commentators
have called overdeterrence.377 The third method is to do more than is constitutionally required — for example, to provide inmates with lawyers for
disciplinary hearings.378 Where agents or agencies choose this response
out of fear of liability, rather than because of an affirmative commitment to
the policy choice, it too might be considered “overdeterrence.”379
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
375
376

Levinson, Making Government Pay, supra note 351, at 345.
Sometimes government agencies will prefer to pay awards instead of forgoing conduct that reaps
political benefits. This is underdeterrence, of course, and while it is important, it is not very interesting
if the damage remedy still pushes the agency in the right direction.
377 See P ETER H. SCHUCK, SUING GOVERNMENT: C ITIZEN REMEDIES FOR OFFICIAL W RONGS
68–77 (1983) [hereinafter SCHUCK, SUING GOVERNMENT]; John Jeffries, Jr., In Praise of the Eleventh Amendment and Section 1983, 84 VA. L. REV. 47, 73–75 (1998) [hereinafter Jeffries, Eleventh
Amendment and Section 1983]; Jerry L. Mashaw, Civil Liability of Government Officers: Property
Rights and Official Accountability, 42 L. & CONTEMP. P ROBS. 8, 26–29 (1978) [hereinafter Mashaw,
Civil Liability of Government Officers]; Richard Posner, Excessive Sanctions for Government Misconduct in Crim inal Cases, 57 WASH. L. REV. 635, 640 (1982).
378 See Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 569–70 (1974) (holding that the state need not allow inmates to be represented by counsel in disciplinary hearings).
379 If this last is even a problem, it is not the issue on which courts and scholars have focused in
their use of the term “ overdeterrence” in the constitutional tort context. It is, however, roughly analogous to what economically minded private tort scholars mean by overdeterrence, except that the hypo-

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The fear of overdeterrence, and in particular of the conflict-avoidance
kind of overdeterrence, is the major challenge offered by scholars to the
“deterrence” defense of civil rights litigation. The underlying premise of
the argument is the imbalance that results from the existence of disincentives for action and no such disincentives for inaction. Perhaps its bestknown scholarly exposition is in the work of Peter Schuck; he describes
“society’s interest in encouraging officials to act promptly, decisively, and
without excessive self-regard or calculation,” and elaborates the conflict
between this kind of “[v]igorous decisionmaking and deterrence, official
enterprise and official transgression.”380 Scholars are not the only ones to
have expressed overdeterrence concerns; it was the worry about “unwarranted timidity” by government officials that motivated the Supreme Court
to invent and enforce the “qualified immunity” of individual officials from
money damages when their conduct (while unlawful) was not objectively
unreasonable.381
In corrections, for a time, an oft-repeated observation about inmate litigation was that it fostered more dangerous prisons.382 Not only were inmates emboldened by the possibility of litigation, so the story went,383 but
line officers were “chilled” — deterred from acting to enforce order where
the result would be a due process hearing and possibly a lawsuit. The
supposed consequence of this was widespread officer demoralization and
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
thetically too-high level of care chosen is too high because it exceeds the constitutional floor, rather
than because it is inefficient. (Measures that go beyond what is constitutionally compelled may or may
not be efficient, which means, in this usage, costing the government less than the benefit to the inmates.)
380 SCHUCK, SUING GOVERNMENT, supra note 377, at 21, 22.
381 See, e.g., Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635 (1987); Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800
(1982); see also Richardson v. McKnight, 521 U.S. 399, 408 (1997) (canvassing case law on “unwarranted timidity,” though rejecting qualified immunity for private prison staff).
382 The argument was most influentially elaborated in a 1984 article, Kathleen Engel & Stanley
Rothman, The Paradox of Prison Reform: Rehabilitation, Prisoners’ Rights, and Violence, 7 HARV. J.L.
& P UB. P OL’ Y 413 (1984) [hereinafter Engel & Rothman, Paradox of Prison Reform].
383 For example, Justice White, dissenting from the Court’s opinion in Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S.
483 (1969) (in which the Court insisted that prisons either allow inmates to assist each other with litigation or “provide[] some reasonable alternative,” id. at 490), wrote of problems caused when a “jailhouse
lawyer . . . succeeds in establishing his own power structure, quite apart from the formal syst em of wardens, guards, and trusties which the prison seeks to maintain.” Id. at 500 (White, J., dissenting). Even
in the years immediately following Johnson, opinions were by no means uniform on this point,
however. See Anthony Champagne & Kenneth C. Hass, The Impact of Johnson v. Avery on Prison
Administration, 43 TENN. L. REV. 275, 284 (1976) (reporting the results of a survey asking wardens if
they agreed with the statement “Johnson has made discipline more difficult to maintain”; 43% agreed
“strongly” or “somewhat,” 47% disagreed strongly or somewhat). Nonetheless, after thirty years under
Johnson, some prison and jail officials continue to argue that writ-writers in particular undermine order
and discipline. Lynn Branham reports a typical expression of this complaint, by two correctional officers who told her that “jailhouse lawyers give inmates ‘so much power’ that they become more bold in
confronting staff.” BRANHAM, PRO SE I NMATE LITIGATION, supra note 58, at 106. Of course, if this
effect exists, whether it weighs in favor or against inmate litigation is nearly entirely an ideological
question.

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withdrawal, producing a dangerous power vacuum promptly filled by misbehaving inmates.384
Nonetheless, I think that overdeterrence is simply not much of a risk in
the corrections setting. The reasons for this conclusion are somewhat different for agencies than for line officers. Taking agencies first, the idea
that correctional agencies try to reduce their liability exposure through
conflict avoidance is implausible. The reason is that conflict avoidance
(even if successful, which is somewhat unlikely in a prison or jail) just
wouldn’t reduce liability exposure very much. Police or welfare agencies
may be able to avoid constitutional liability by doing less, because their
constitutional duties are negative. That is, doing nothing may be bad policing or may provide bad child protection, but it’s not unconstitutional. 385
But that is not the case in corrections. Rather, many of the expensive
kinds of constitutional tort liability in corrections stem from failure to act
(to provide appropriate medical care or protection from harm, say386). The
point is not that the “deliberate indifference” liability standard is easy for
inmates to meet. But in the correctional setting, making out a constit utional case is no harder for omissions than for acts. Other reasons compound the improbability of the overdeterrence claim as applied to corrections agencies. In particular, the security orientation of modern corrections
prioritizes control and order as the primary goals of correctional practice.387 It would be almost bizarre if fear of liability got in the way of efforts to achieve these goals, given the rarity of serious judgments against
corrections agencies or officers.
The idea that jail and prison line officers frequently react to litigation
incentives by passivity and withdrawal is equally unbelie vable. I do not
question that jail and prison officers are often demoralized. But I doubt
that litigation as a practice has much to do with it. (Here I mean to distinguish between litigation itself and the substance of the rights enforced by
litigation. Enough contemporary observers noted correctional officers’ discomfort with the due process rights enunciated by courts in inmate law–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
384 Engel & Rothman, Paradox of Prison Reform , supra note 382, at 431–33. Another argument
about violence arising from litigation has far more force, but much narrower reach (and is not really
relevant to my argument here). In Texas and states like it that depended on (often armed) inmates
deputized as “trusties” to keep other inmates in order, when court -order litigation compelled the end of
the system, it took the resistant authorities quite some time before they reinstituted order. This story is
about the difficulty of transitions; it does not expose any inherent difficulties with the use of litigation
as a mode of regulation.
385 See DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 191 (1989) (refusing to
hold government liable under the Due Process Clause for failure to intervene to save an abused child
from his abusers); cf. Mashaw, Civil Liability of Government Officers, supra note 377, at 26–29.
386 See Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 837 (1994) (holding that failure to protect from foreseen
harm by other inmates may rise to the level of cruel and unusual punishment); Estelle v. Gamble, 429
U.S. 97, 104–05 (1976) (same, for failure to provide medical care).
387 See Malcolm Feeley & Jonathan Simon, The New Penology: Notes on the Emerging Strategy of
Corrections and Its Implications, 30 CRIMINOLOGY 449 (1992).

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suits in the 1970s that I’m not tempted to disagree.388) My point is not
that being sued doesn’t cause anxiety; by all reports, officers don’t like
it. 389 But for individual officers, litigation is mostly a minor inconvenience because, although lawsuits name them as defendants, officers do not
have to pay for either their defense or any resulting settlement or judgment.390 Instead, in nearly all inmate litigation, it is the correctional
agency that pays both litigation costs and any judgments or settlements,
even though individual officers are the nominal defendants.391 So the
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
388 For example, the head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, James Bennett, reported in 1974 that
recently imposed due process requirements “have not only watered down measurably the authority of
the wardens but have imposed burdens almost impossible to implement within present appropriations
and available legal talent. . . . The erosion of official authority and need for speedy trial and action
could have unforeseeable consequences if efforts to achieve full due process are pressed too far[,] but
be prepared.” James V. Bennett, Who Wants To Be a Warden?, 1 NEW ENG. J. P RISON L. 69, 72
(1974); see also James B. Jacobs & Norma Crotty, The Guard’s World, in JAMES JACOBS, NEW
P ERSPECTIVES ON P RISONS AND I MPRISONMENT 133, 140 (1983) (reprinted with modifications from
JAMES B. JACOBS & NORMA MEACHAM CROTTY , GUARD UNIONS AND THE FUTURE OF THE
P RISONS (1978)) (reporting that correctional officer unio nism was in part encouraged by guards’ unhappiness about “the increasing intervention of the federal courts on behalf of priso ners’ rights”).
389 For correctional officers, probably the most significant consequence of being sued is the need to
give explanations to would-be creditors. See John W. Palmer, Inmate Litigation Trends and Constitutional Issues, in T HE U.S. SENTENCING GUIDELINES: I MPLICATIONS FOR CRIMINAL JUSTICE 206
(Dean Champion ed., 1989) (“Banks view unfavorably the prospect of making loans to those with potential civil tort liabilities climbing into six figures.”). When the Federal Bureau of Prisons settles a
case brought under Bivens, the BOP’s lawyers typically obtain agreement for the claim (which runs
against individual officers) to be withdrawn and the case to be reclassified as a Federal Tort Claims Act
case against the United States, if this is possible — so that the officer does not ever need to go through
indemnification review or report the judgment on financial disclosure forms. Pybas Interview, supra
note 21. It is clear, then, that officers do face adverse consequences from being sued, though those
consequences are far less than the full cost of defense and liability exposure.
390 Doctors are an important exception. Medical care is consistently one of the most prominent topics in inmate litigation. And litigation is said to be a major obstacle to recruitment of correctional physicians. Doctors’ particular sensitivity makes sense, because a record of lawsuits can make it difficult
for them to get malpractice insurance. Bysse Interview, supra note 21; see also Legislative Counsel of
California,
Bill Analysis
of
AB 1177
(June
27,
1995),
http://www.leginfo.
ca.gov/pub/95-96/bill/asm/ab_1151-1200/ab_1177_cfa_950619_121924_sen_comm.html (last visited
Mar. 16, 2003) (bill subsequently enacted as 1995 Cal. Stat . 749) (explaining that the proposal for
stat utory indemnification of prison health care workers addresses assertions by some “providers . . . that
if they treat any inmates pursuant to a contract with the [California Department of Correction], they are
unable to find medical malpractice insurers who will provide any coverage for them at all”).
391 In the federal system, the United States is actually the formal defendant in claims brought under
the Federal Tort Claims Act. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b), 2672 (2000); see also Westfall Act, 28 U.S.C.
§ 2679(d) (2000) (requiring substitution of the United States as the party defendant in any case brought
under the Federal Tort Claims Act against a federal employee acting in the scope of his or her employment). In § 1983 or Bivens suits, however, inmates are required to sue individual officers; there is no
vicarious liability, and the states (though not counties and cities) have been held to be inappropriate
defendants. See FDIC v. Meyer, 510 U.S. 471, 486 (1994) (refusing to extend the Bivens cause of action to agencies or the federal government as a whole); Will v. Mich. Dep’t of State Police, 491 U.S.
58, 65–66 (1989) (holding that states are not “persons” subject to liability under § 1983). Nonetheless,
the typical arrangement, usually by statute, is that the correctional agency indemnifies its officers unless
the act on which a lawsuit is predicated was outside the “scope of employment” or was intentional or
malicious. See SCHUCK, SUING GOVERNMENT, supra note 377, at 85–88. For a recent listing of in-

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agency (although it obviously acts through various actual people) is the entity that “feels” any deterrent prod from liability exposure. Moreover, the
same doctrinal details that apply to agency incentives undermine the concern about overdeterrence for line officers as well. In prisons and jails, an
officer interested in liability reduction would be well advised to take more
action, not less. For example, an officer who uses force may be at less
risk of liability than an officer who refrains from using force.392 Thus,
when officers are reluctant to take contentious action (obviously, many are
far from reluctant), the culprits are far more likely some combination of
physical danger, ethical scruple, and ordinary inertia 393 than fear of lawsuits.
In short, litigation-created overdeterrence, notwithstanding its scholarly
pedigree, is unlikely to be a major problem in prisons or jails, either for
line officers or for agencies. This conclusion is buttressed by my interviews and conversations with jail and prison administrators; even those
who complain about litigation do not report that it forces them to cede
control to inmates. It’s not that the tropes of overdete rrence are unavailable to local governments; actually, they are commonplace (for example,
when school officials complain that fear of liability is forcing them to
eliminate athletic teams). But in what seems to be a major change from
the 1970s, correctional officials no longer talk the talk of overdeterrence.
2. Antideterrence. — A quite different quarrel with constit utional tort
litigation for damages, made by Daryl Levinson in a much-remarked recent article, is that it is perverse, actually encouraging the conduct it is intended to deter. Levinson argues that damages may sometimes “buy[] off
the subgroups” that suffer the consequences of misconduct, undercutting
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
demnification statutes, see Myriam E. Gilles, Breaking the Code of Silence: Rediscovering “Custom” in
Section 1983 Municipal Liability, 80 B.U. L. REV. 17, 30 n.52 (2000). Although, as Schuck emphasizes, indemnification arrangements vary in formal coverage, SCHUCK, SUING GOVERNMENT, supra
note 377, at 85–86, the best evidence available suggests that the law in action is quite different from the
law on the books. Agency-provided defense and near-universal indemnification are the rule in practice.
See Eisenberg & Schwab, Constitutional Tort Litigation, supra note 15, at 686 (reporting the results of
their examination of constitutional tort case files in the Central District of California in which a money
judgment was granted, and concluding that “no case . . . showed that an individual official had borne
the cost of an adverse constitutional tort judgment”); Jeffries, Eleventh Amendment and Section 1983,
supra note 377, at 49–50 (stating that, “[s]o far as can be assessed,” governments both defend their employees in constitutional tort cases and indemnify them for adverse judgments).
392 Compare Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 6–7 (1992) (“[W]henever prison officials stand accused of using excessive physical force . . . the core judicial inquiry is . . . whether force was applied in
a good-faith effort to maintain or restore discipline, or maliciously and sadistically to cause harm.”),
with Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 847 (1994) (holding that prison officials are liable in damages if
they “know[] that inmates face a substantial risk of serious harm and disregard[] that risk by failing to
take reasonable measures to abate it”).
393 For a recent account of the characteristic mixture of boredom and conflict inherent in line corrections jobs, see T ED CONOVER, NEWJACK: GUARDING SING SING (2000) [hereinafter CONOVER,
NEWJACK ].

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the incentive for political (and more effective) mobilization. 394 This is essentially a rephrasing, in the language of public -choice theory, of the challenge to litigation posed most influentia lly by Stuart Scheingold in The
Politics of Rights. Scheingold, a political scientist, warned lawyers and
activists that rights “won” in court had also to be won in politics, although
he acknowledged rights as powerful political currency. 395 But as rephrased
by Levinson, the critique loses its ring of truth; I think it’s structurally
clever but silly. I certainly agree (with Scheingold and his successors396)
that rights discourse may be limiting and the lawyer-centric realm of litigation potentially debilitating for reform movements. But this effect is not at
all the same as the victims being “bought off” by damages. Whatever the
effect litigation strategy has in other arenas, it seems to me that in the actual political realms of constitutional tort litigation (primarily police and
prison cases, but other civil rights cases, too397) receiving damages almost
invariably strengthens rather than weakens victims’ cases before the larger
community. Furthermore, litigation payouts and attorneys’ fees are used
by some groups to fund their political actions and gain greater publicity.
Still, unintended consequences are always interesting to look for, and I
agree with Levinson that they do occasionally occur. Where I would point,
however, is to defendants’ desire for publicity rather than to plaintiffs’ desire for money. Publicity about bad conditions or bad acts in a jail or
prison can be very useful to politicians and other officials. Publicized failings can create a useful backdrop for a would-be reformer — as, for example, in Arkansas in the 1970s, when corrections head Tom Murton (later
portrayed by Robert Redford in the movie Brubaker) welcomed the nation’s first comprehensive prison court-order lawsuit. 398 “The key thing in
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
394
395
396

Levinson, Making Government Pay, supra note 351, at 379.
SCHEINGOLD, THE P OLITICS OF RIGHTS, supra note 354, at 131–48.
See, e.g., sources cited supra note 354. Some versions of the Critical Legal Studies critique of
rights sound themes similar to Scheingold’s, arguing that the conversion of grievances into claims about
“rights” is much more often than not sterilizing rather than empowering. See, e.g., DUNCAN
KENNEDY, A CRITIQUE OF ADJUDICATION (FIN DE SIÈCLE) 300–04, 315–37 (1997) (setting out an
intellectual history of the critique of rights); Alan Freeman, Racism, Rights and the Quest for Equality
of Opportunity: A Critical Legal Essay, 23 HARV. C.R.-C.L. L. REV. 295, 296 (1988) (describing the
rights discourse employed in the development of antidiscrimination law as “a process of containing and
stabilizing the aspirations of the oppressed”).
397 On the various substantive components of the federal civil rights docket, see, for example, Mat thew D. Adler, Judicial Restraint in the Administrative Sta te: Beyond the Countermajoritarian Difficulty, 145 U. PA. L. REV. 759, 808–09 n.132 (1997). See generally Seth F. Kreimer, Exploring the
Dark Matter of Judicial Review: A Constitutional Census of the 1990s, 5 W M. & MARY BILL RTS. J.
427 (1997) [hereinafter Kreimer, Dark Matter].
398 See FEELEY & RUBIN, JUDICIAL P OLICY M AKING, supra note 16, at 58–59, 68. The publicity
value of litigation has long been recognized: “The process of litigation is an important source of publicity and pressure, regardless of the final outcome. Newspapers, radio, and T V describe the conditions
and treatment which a lawsuit challenges. Prison authorities are interviewed and asked to explain their
actions.” ERIK OLIN W RIGHT, T HE POLITICS OF P UNISHMENT: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF P RISONS
IN AMERICA 308 (1973).

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jail litigation,” one jail official said to me recently, “is to pick your plaintiff well.”399 Litigation, that is, may be not a headache but an opportunity
— one for which it is worth paying out money damages.
While the publicity and other collateral effects of lit igation might well
cause jail and prison officials to encourage la wsuits, it seems less likely
that they would have the more serious antideterrent effect of encouraging
the primary (mis)conduct that is the subject of suits. Yet in certain situations litigation may actually do just that. The pu blicity surrounding court
complaints can become a badge of honor, a signal to the electorate that
promised toughness on crime and criminals is real as well as rhetorical.
Such an effect is far more likely when publicity is about jails rather than
prisons. The reason is political. Prison systems are headed by high- level
state officials. The precise organization varies: state corrections departments are sometimes freestanding and sometimes just one division of a
broader department (usually a depa rtment of public safety). Either way, a
member of the governor’s cabinet leads the enterprise. And (in part because of the prisoners’ rights movement 400) the highest correctional official
in the state has usually made his or her career in corrections.401 Thus, a lthough the bulk of these officials’ jobs are political,402 their claims on office are premised on specialized expertise in the profession of corrections
rather than on campaign promises. By contrast, it is elected sheriffs who
typically top county jail organization charts.403 Sometimes, sheriffs are
more or less career politicians; when this is not the case, their backgrounds
tend to be in law enforcement rather than corrections. Either way, their
route to office is more often tough- on-crime rhetoric and promises of pub–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
399
400
401

Interview with Massachusetts jail official (2001).
See Jacobs, Prisoners’ Rights Movement, supra note 2, at 131.
The state depart ments of corrections all have websites, and nearly all include biographies of their
department heads.
For an index of these websites, see http ://www.corrections.com/links/
state.html (last visited Mar. 16, 2003 ). For a discussion of the professionalization of high-level corre ctions officials, see Kevin N. Wright, The Evolution of Decisionmaking Among Prison Executives, 1975 –
2000 , in 3 CRIMINAL JUSTICE 2000 : P OLICIES, P ROCESSES, AND DECISIONS OF THE CRIMINAL
JUSTICE SYSTEM 177, 186 –87 (Nat’l Inst. of Justice ed., 2000 ).
402 Wright, supra note 401 , at 197–98. (“According to the prison officials with whom I spoke, the
chief executive of a correctional system . . . will spend about 70 percent of his or her time away from
direct correctional practice, involved in the political processes of interacting with the legislative and
executive branches of government, the press, and concerned cit izens.”).
403 Note, however, that regional jails are often run by appointed jail superintendents. City jails,
which accounted for eight percent of the nation’s jails and housed eight percent of the nation’s jail inmates in 1999, answer to city mayors, sometimes via a city chief of police. These are nearly all quite
small facilities — eighty -five percent of them have an average daily population under 100. On any
given day, nearly half the population housed in city jails nationally is in the enormous systems in New
York City and Philadelphia. BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, 1999 JAIL CENSUS, supra note 82
(analysis included in Schlanger, Techn ical Appendix , supra note 3). I have not studied city or regional
as compared to county jails, but I think that much of what I say in the text about the impact of publicity
is less applicable to jails with appointed rather than elected heads. But in other ways, regional and city
jails are quite typical.

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lic order than a professional identification with detention or corrections
policy. 404 One salient current example of a jail official who seems to go
looking for litigation is Joe Arpaio, who bills himself as the “toughest
sheriff in Americ a.” The frequent lawsuits his department provokes substantiate this claim. 405 Many states have their own Joe Arpaio (in Massachusetts, we have Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, who has
singlehandedly brought the chain gang to the state).406 But my firm impression is that such sheriffs are exceptional. So the perverse consequences of individual inmate civil rights litigation seem to me very limited
overall.
3. Deterrence/Underdeterrence. — More substantial than either the argument about overdeterrence or the argument about antideterrence is a
more obvious possibility: underdeterrence. The rarity of substantial judgments, or even substantial settlements, poses a major challenge to any defense of inmate litigation based on its deterrent effect. Inmate litigation
payouts are clearly dwarfed by the amount of harm caused by unconstit utional conduct in jails and prisons. As Seth Kreimer has written:
The most optimistic interpretation of this outcome [of low litigated success
rate] is to hope that the prospect of ultimate review in a damage action by a
judge outside of the closed institutional culture of corrections provides a mediating influence on the decision to apply or sanction brutality or physical abuse.
The pessimistic version is that the largely symbolic availability of a toothless
remedy allows judges to legitimate brutal prison regimes.407

It seems to me that the optimistic interpretation is more correct. True,
higher and more frequent payouts probably would be a stronger deterrent
— but the near certainty of lawsuits (and consequent need to produce an
accounting), coupled with even rare awards of damages, sufficiently publicized, keeps the threat of court sanction real and salient.
Of course, that threat works only minimally against line officers: the
same indemnification setup that prevents individual officers from being
overdeterred by litigation blocks optimal deterrence as well. Inmates’
judgments or settlements can educate officers about what kind of conduct
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
404 Note, however, that there are some recent signs that elected sheriffs (threatened by an up-tick in
political efforts to restrict their sphere of authority) alter their method of selection, or eliminate the office altogether may themselves be pursuing more professionalism. See sources cited in Donald Lee
Boswell, Virginia Sheriffs v. Police Chiefs and Jail Superintendents: An Empirical Evaluation of Local
Law Enforcement Services 44 (1997) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Virginia Commonwealth University) (on file with author) [hereinafter Boswell, Virginia Sheriffs]; see also Sheriff Johnny Mack Brown,
Accreditation Breeds Professionalism , SHERIFF MAG., Sept.–Oct. 1995, at 12; Sheriff Aaron D. Kennard, Law Enforcement: The Struggle To Break the Professional Barrier, SHERIFF MAG., Sept.– Oct.
1995, at 10–11, 57.
405 See Barry Graham, Star of Justice: On the Job with America’s Toughest Sheriff, HARPER’ S MAG.,
Apr. 2001, at 61.
406 See Ric Kahn, Not Welcome Sign Is Out for Sheriff’s Chain Gangs, BOSTON GLOBE , June 19,
1999, at B4.
407 Kreimer, Dark Matter, supra note 397, at 490.

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the broader world deems unacceptable, if an agency undertakes to inform
officers about them. But education, while important, can only do so much.
More coercive line-officer deterrence depends on agency commitment to
staff training and discipline, and on the variety of control techniques agencies commonly use to bring “street-level bureaucrats” into line with agency
objectives.408
Does the risk of liability in individual inmate cases help goad agencies
to undertake these kinds of supervisory efforts, along with the myriad
other non-supervisory steps required to run a constitutional prison or jail
(provision of medical care, adequate nutrition, and so on)? It’s possible,
after all, that government agencies, which are not profit-driven in the same
way private firms are, simply don’t care about monetary payouts.409 But I
think the evidence clearly shows that, in general, government agencies
seek to avoid fines, which are extremely disruptive to the normal operation
of any bureaucracy — especially if the money must be diverted from other,
already budgeted, priorities.410 Fear of major money judgments or settlements is why liability reduction is a major theme in many areas of corrections — for example, it is one of the chief selling points for those promoting accreditation 411 and various kinds of goods 412 and contracting
arrangements.413
Moreover, anyone who reads the newspaper or watches television news
knows that inmate litigation can trigger bad publicity about correctional
institutions and officials. Even news organizations that don’t do investigative reporting can use filed complaints to expose corruption, sex, drugs,
and death in jails or prisons — all the ingredients for good local, and
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
408 See MICHAEL L IPSKY, STREET-L EVEL BUREAUCRACY: DILEMMAS OF THE I NDIVIDUAL IN
P UBLIC SERVICES 162–69 (1980) (discussing management methods to hold workers to agency objectives); SCHUCK, SUING GOVERNMENT, supra note 377, at 125–46 (discussing how agencies can
“[m]obiliz[e] [o]rganizational [c]hange”).
409 See, e.g., Levinson, Making Government Pay, supra note 351, at 357 (“Government does not
. . . attach any intrinsic disutility to financial outflows.”).
410 The classic account of bureaucratic interest in maximizing budgets is W ILLIAM A. NISKANEN,
JR., BUREAUCRACY AND REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 36–42 (1971).
411 The American Correctional Association website listing of the “benefits of accreditation” includes:
“Defense against lawsuits. Accredited agencies have a stronger defense against litigation through
documentation and the demonstration of a ‘good faith’ effort to improve conditions of confinement”
and pay “[r]educed liability insurance costs.” See American Correctional Association, Accreditation
and
Standards:
Benefits
of
Accreditation,
at
http://www.corrections.com/aca/
standards/benefits.htm (last visited Mar. 16, 2003).
412 As Thomas observes, “Even the private sector has found the threat of litigation a convenient
stage from which to hawk insurance or such prison amenities as better lighting.” THOMAS, P RISONER
LITIGATION, supra note 15, at 252 (citing Joseph Claffy, Lighting the Way to Less Litigation,
CORRECTIONS T ODAY, Apr. 1984, at 90).
413 For example, the Corrections Corporation of America website tells prospective customers (that is,
governments thinking about privatizing jails or prisons) that “[t]he considerable legal liability costs associated with operating jails and prisons can be substantially reduced by privatization.” See Corrections
Corporation
of
America,
Frequently
Asked
Questions,
at
http://www.
correctionscorp.com/overview/faq.html (last visited Mar. 16, 2003).

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sometimes even national, stories. So even for an agency that doesn’t care
about payouts (perhaps because those payouts come from some general
fund rather than the agency’s own budget), media coverage of abuses or
administrative failures can trigger embarrassing political inquiry and even
firings, resignations, or election losses. (I’m speaking of course about the
effects on the more typical, non-Joe Arpaio types.) Note, finally, that this
positive as well as the earlier-mentioned negative effect of publicity is
likely to be partic ularly important for jails. For one thing, every local
newspaper in the country could conceivably be interested in conditions in
and damage awards against its own local jail, whereas small awards
against state prisons are not nearly as likely to be of interest to the press.
Moreover, the election-year consequences are tilted as well: the local sheriff is a good deal more closely associated with problems in a county jail
than the governor is with problems in a state prison. As Vince Nathan, a
frequent special master in jail and prison cases, said to me:
Sure, a $4 million settlement for the Lucasville riot [a prison case] gets a lot of
press. But while a $30,000 award against the state is not a big deal, it can be
more embarrassing when it’s against the county. It could be used against the
Sheriff in his election — but against a Governor? No.414

Thus I conclude that correctional agencies at least often feel and care
about the threat of litigation. Finally, then, we get to the most interesting
question: What do they do about it? This is hard to answer, because prison
administrators, if not jail administrators, tend to deny just about any effect
of litigation — deterrence, overdeterrence, whatever. Prison administrators
have something of a mantra that they worry more about good professiona l
practice than about litigation. For example, according to the head of the
National Institute of Corrections prisons division, at national meetings of
state corrections department directors, deputy directors, and wardens,
“They don’t talk about lawsuits; they talk about good correctional policy.
People aren’t running around afraid of lawsuits — that’s at most a tertiary
motive.”415 Pushed a little on specifics, correctional policymakers admit
to occasionally changing policies because of litigation, but only when the
litigation educates them on good professional practice in a previously underexamined area, or alerts them to a previously hidden organizational
variance from good professional practice. This occasionally happens, they
say, with court-order cases. But for individual litigation, they describe this
effect as extremely rare.416
More detailed inquiry into particular policy changes at particular agencies suggests, however, that changes in prison policy to fend off or respond
to the possibility of damage actions are less unusual than my interview
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
414
415
416

Nathan Interview, supra note 21.
Hunter Interview, supra note 21.
See, e.g., Wilkinson Interview, supra note 21.

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subjects were willing to admit. For example, several large damage verdicts against the Federal Bureau of Prisons relating to inmate suicides
prompted high-level policy review of suicide prevention policies and practices.417 And observers not as highly placed in prison hierarchies regularly
attribute policy changes to fear of liability, as when a journalist who spent
a year undercover as a line officer in New York’s Sing Sing prison attributed the state’s increased willingness to protect inmates from each other to
fear of liability. The frequency of inmate rape at Sing Sing has gone
down, the author says, because “[i]nmates who ask for protection but fail
to get it can make expensive claims.”418
It is possible, then, that the denials of deterrent impact I have heard
from corrections officials are simply disingenuous. I don’t think so, however. Rather, while they are clearly not telling the entire story, I am inclined to take seriously what many prison officials have said to me — that
they do not feel, phenomenologically, that they accede to litigation’s pressure by straying from good correctional practice, but are instead influenced
by litigation’s incentives only when liability reduction coincides with professional norms.
This is not to say, however, that litigation has not been influential. The
very reason that overlap of court-announced constitutional norms and professional norms is common is that the evolution of good professional practice in corrections has been greatly influenced by court cases, and vice
versa. As organizational theorists propose more generally: “Organizations
and rule environments rarely encounter each other autonomously and confrontationally. Rather, both are constituted together, as part of a larger
process of institutional ‘structuration.’”419 This insight certainly holds true
in the area of corrections. Perhaps most generally, constitutional doctrine
governing prisons and jails, as in so many areas, requires the kind of
means-ends rationality that is most consistent with (if it does not actually
require) bureaucratic organization, with some degree of top-down command and control. And, sure enough, this is the most basic requirement of
current professional practice as well. Indeed, the American Correctional
Association’s jail and prison accreditation standards focus heavily on written policies, a feature that critics complain causes standards to lack substantive bite. 420
By comparison with prison administrators, I have found jail administrators far less reluctant to admit that they frequently have changed policies
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
417
418
419

Saylor Interview, supra note 21; Zoldak Interview, supra note 21.
CONOVER, NEWJACK, supra note 393, at 263.
Mark C. Suchman & Lauren B. Edelman, Legal Rational Myths: The New Institutionalism and
the Law and Society Tradition, 21 L. & SOC. I NQUIRY 903, 922 (1996) (reviewing T HE NEW
I NSTITUTIONALISM IN ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS (Walter W. Powell & Paul J. DiMaggio eds.,
1991)).
420 See Elizabeth Alexander, What’s Wrong with the ACA?, 15 NAT’L P RISON P ROJECT J. 1 (2001).

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and practices nearly entirely because of individual lawsuits. Jail administrators concede their own concern about damages exposure and admit that
this anxiety has led them with some regularity to alter their jails’ operations, even when they don’t agree with the change as a matter of policy.
As one jail director said to me, “We’re not doing things out of beneficence. If we’re, say, serving inmates special meals, that’s because we’ve
been sued.”421 Many sources seem to confirm jail administrators’ tendency to worry about damage actions. For example, the National Institute
of Justice’s Large Jail Network’s 422 newsletter and conferences frequently
canvas topics related to damage liability, 423 and the American Jail Association features legal training at all of its conferences.424 I am not aware of
similar discussions in prison fora,425 and the American Correctional Association offers very little training focusing explicitly on civil rights liability
reduction. 426 In my interviews and other encounters with jail officials,
they frequently complain about the law’s impact on jail operations. It’s a
typical kind of comment from jail administrators that “the law” doesn’t
understand their circumstances, and especially that “the law” allows inmates to manipulate jail officers. As one official said to me, “An inmate
who really wants to mess with us will threaten suicide. Then he knows we
have to put him on a 24-hour watch. We know he’s faking, and he knows
we know — but the law is far too rigid and it makes us spend the extra
money.”427 Of course, this is illogical — if an officer is sure that the inmate is faking, then there’s no litigation risk in ignoring him. It’s precisely
when officers are not sure that they feel pressure to institute precautionary
measures.
Why is there a greater feeling of coercion and more expressed resentment of litigation among jail officials? I do not think that these sentiments
simply reflect a lack of public relations polish, although that is certainly in
play. Rather, I see several deeper distinctions that may cause this difference: First, the common wisdom is that jails are far less professionalized
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
421
422

Bradley Interview, supra note 21.
The Large Jail Network is a group of about 100 jails and jail systems with typical daily populations over 1000 inmates, organized by the federal National Institute of Corrections. See National Inst itute of Corrections, Practitioner Networks: Large Jail Network, at http://www.nicic.
org/services/networks/ljn-about.htm (last visited Mar. 16, 2003).
423 See, e,g., National Institute of Corrections, Meeting Highlights: Large Jail Network Meeting, Jan.
6–8, 2001, at 32–36, available at http://www.nicic.org/pubs/2001/016687.pdf.
424 See, e.g., American Jail Association, AJA’s 22nd Annual Training Conference: Tentative Schedule
of Events, at http://www.corrections.com/aja/conferences/tentativeconferenceschedule. html (last visited
Mar. 16, 2003).
425 Those I have asked say they are rare. E.g., Wilkinson Interview, supra note 21.
426 See, e.g., American Correctional Association, Session Schedule for Summer Conference, 2003
(on file with author); American Correctional Association, Session Schedule for Winter Conference,
2003 (on file with author).
427 Interview with anonymous jail official (2001).

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than are prisons. This starts at the top, as already described, but it extends
down the hierarchy as well. As Mays and Thompson summarize:
In simplest terms, jail line officers are too few in number, untrained or poorly
trained, and vastly undercompensated. Local jail officers often find themselves in one of two positions: either they are sheriff’s deputies assigned jail
duty for disciplinary reasons or awaiting transfer to road patrol, or they are
permanent correctional officers with little chance for advancement or job enhancement.428

This point was repeated to me during numerous interviews by people who
have made their careers doing training and consulting for jails. 429 One
would expect, then, a less thorough identification by jail administrators
with coevolving standards of professional corrections practice and legal
compliance.430
Second, when steps that can minimize liability exposure cost real
money, jails and prisons are very differently situated. Prisons, which get
their money from state legislatures, have the usual kinds of public agency
budgetary limits. But sheriffs are even more limited financially, because
their budgets are set by a competing, and more fiscally constrained, governmental entity — their county commissions. 431 In addition, sheriffs generally would prefer to spend their limited budgets on street servic es rather
than on jails, because that is where expenditures are visible to the constituents on whose votes they depend for reelection.432
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
428 G. Larry Mays & Joel A. Thompson, The Political and Organizational Context of American Jails,
in AMERICAN JAILS, supra note 52, at 3, 5 (citation omitted); see also ADVISORY COMM’ N ON
I NTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS, JAILS: I NTERGOVERNMENTAL DIMENSIONS OF A LOCAL
P ROBLEM 172–73 (1984) (observing that training is poor to nonexistent).
429 E.g., Collins Interview, supra note 21; Katsaris Interview, supra note 21.
430 In a classic article, DiMaggio and Powell hypothesize that “[t]he greater the extent of professionalization in a field, the greater the amount of institutional isomorphic change. Professionalization may
be measured by the universality of credential requirements, the robustness of graduate training programs, or the vitality of professional and trade associations.” DiMaggio & Powell, Iron Cage Revisited,
supra note 356, at 77.
431 State legislatures have a variety of methods of raising revenue and a very large resource base (although there is, of course, fierce political competition for budgetary support). But legal constraints
leave county commissions with far fewer ways to raise revenue. See, e.g., MARK BALDASSARE ,
MICHAEL SHIRES, CHRISTOPHER HOENE & AARON KOFFMAN, P UB. P OLICY I NST. OF CAL., RISKY
BUSINESS: P ROVIDING LOCAL P UBLIC SERVICES IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY xv–xvi (2000) (point ing out that Los Angeles County has “little control over its revenues,” and “little control over its expenditures”); Beverly A. Cigler, Revenue Diversification Among American Counties, in T HE AMERICAN
COUNTY: FRONTIERS OF KNOWLEDGE 166, 166–81 (Donald C. Menzel ed., 1996) (setting out the
limited set of revenue-generation options available to counties). Moreover, there is often a serious
power struggle between county sheriffs, who spend an enormous amount of their counties’ money, and
county commissioners, who must come up with the money but have little control over how it is spent.
432 As one former sheriff put it, “[m]ore patrol cars get votes: more jail cells do not.” Boswell, Virginia Sheriffs, supra note 404, at 30. (Boswell was a sheriff in Virginia until he lost reelection.) See
also LINDA L. ZUPAN, JAILS: REFORM AND THE NEW GENERATION P HILOSOPHY 48 (1991) (“The
background, education, training and interests of most sheriffs are in law enforcement. Few have the
expertise, training or incentive to spend inordinate amounts of time on jail concerns. . . . Nor is it politically expedient for sheriffs to devote time and energy to the jail. More often than not, sheriffs are

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The final reason that jail administrators feel more threatened by litigation is that they are more threatened by it, because jail litigation is likely
to pose a larger risk in terms of both probability and magnitude of liability.
Although jails face fewer cases in relation to their daily population,433
there are abundant reasons to think that jail cases are more serious, on average, than prison cases are, and that jails pay out more money, proportionately, than prisons do. First, jails are more dangerous than prisons,434
in large part because of the primary operational difference between the two
types of facilities: prisons take and hold inmates while jails take and release them. 435 This extremely fast turnover makes jails inherently more
chaotic. More generally comparing jails to prisons, classification of jail
inmates is more haphazard, jail routines are less regular, jail time is more
idle, and jail inmates are more likely to be in some kind of crisis. 436 Jail
inmates are also more likely to be vulnerable to harm in many ways —
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
elected on the basis of their crime control and law enforcement abilities, not their skills as jail administrators. It is certainly more glamorous and attractive to be a crime-fighter than a jail keeper.”); Joel A.
Thompson & G. Larry Mays, The Policy Environment of the American Jail, in AMERICAN JAILS, supra
note 52, at 1, 2 (“[W]ithin the sheriff’s department jails must compete with more politically salient programs — patrol, crime prevention, and drug interdiction.”). Boswell’s dissertation about Virginia jails
is the only research of which I am aware that compares the effect of having jails run by elected officials
with the effect of having jails run by appointed officials. Controlling for many features, Boswell finds
that counties with elected sheriffs score lower in periodic state jail inspections than do counties with
appointed jail superintendents. Boswell, Virginia Sheriffs, supra note 404, at 131, 138.
433 See supra pp. 1581–82.
434 There is a long tradition of professional excoriation of jail conditions. See, e.g., NAT’ L COMM’ N
ON L AW OBSERVANCE & E NFORCEMENT, REPORT ON P ENAL INSTITUTIONS P ROBATION AND
PAROLE 273–74 (photo. reprint 1987) (1931) (stating that the American jail is the “most notorious correctional institution in the world”); The Scandalous U.S. Jails, NEWSWEEK, Aug. 18, 1980, at 74, 74
(“The jails are much worse than prisons. They are the worst blight in American corrections.” (quoting
criminologist Daniel Fogel)). And inmates often comment that jails are more dangerous than prisons.
The following message, posted on a corrections listserv, is typical:
I can only speak for myself as an ex offender, jail was much more violent than prison, even
though I was incarcerated in one of the toughest prisons in Georgia at that time. I witnessed
more rapes and fights in jail than prison. People were more seriously hurt for the most part
in the jail.
Posting of Jackie Thompson to correx@www.nicic.org (Feb. 25, 2000) (on file with author).
435 Michael O’Toole, the head of the National Institute of Corrections Jail Division, has explained:
Probably the most significant difference between jail and prison populations is admission
rates. In general, [annual] prison commitments, which include new court commitments and
individuals returned to custody, are about 50 percent of the average daily population (ADP).
In rounded figures, the ADP of the nation’s prisons in 1995 was about 1 million. Total admissions for that year were about 500,000. In contrast, the ADP of the nation’s jails was
about 500,000 in 1995, but the admissions to jail for that year were estimated to be between
10 million and 13 million. Stated another way, it takes two years for the nation’s prison
population to turn over once, while the jail population turns over 20 to 25 times each [year].
O’Toole, Jails and Prisons, supra note 76. So, O’Toole observes, it is typical in a jail for “up to 85
percent of new admissions [to] be released within four or five days.” Id. At the same time, however,
the inmates who do not get out right away can remain in jail for months or even years, either unable to
make bail and awaiting trial or serving out their (relatively short) sentences.
436 See, e.g., Campbell Interview, supra note 21; Katsaris Interview, supra note 21.

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mentally ill,437 inexperienced with incarceration, drunk or high, or suic idal. 438 In sum, one reason that jail officials seem more concerned about
litigation than do prison officials is that the jails are worse places than
prisons. A second source of jail officials’ anxiety is an extra dollop of litigation exposure: jail inmates can suffer vastly greater economic harm than
prison inmates, if they are employed or employable and lose wages because of an injury inflicted in jail, or if they need to pay for medical care.
Third, jail inmates are potentially more sympathetic figures to decisio nmakers, because they are not necessarily convicted criminals, and because
their offenses, even if eventually proven, may be quite minor. Fourth, jail
inmates have somewhat less trouble finding lawyers, since they often can
look after they get out.439 In some (though by no means all) large urban
centers, lawyers in the personal injury bar regularly take on jail cases, or
even specialize in jail and police cases. Fifth, observers report that jail
lawyers are often less experienced and less expert litigators than are prison
lawyers, in part because the job of county counsel has traditionally been a
patronage reward for supporters of county powerbrokers. “In jails,” says
Bill Collins, the editor of the Correctional Law Reporter, who frequently
trains jail officials on legal issues, “there’s lots of learning the hard
way.”440 Finally, demographic differences between jails and prisons can
augment the differential levels of liability exposure. Whereas prison in–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
437 Jeffrey L. Metzner, Fred Cohen, Linda S. Grossman & Robert M. Wettstein, Treatment in Jails
and Prisons, in T REATMENT OF OFFENDERS WITH MENTAL DISORDERS 211, 230 (Robert M. Wett stein ed., 1998) (“Generally, rates of serious mental disorders are greater for inmates in jail than in
prison. By the time an inmate has been convicted of a criminal offense and incarcerated in a prison,
many severely mentally ill inmates will have already been hospitalized or treated on a pretrial basis,
diverted to the mental health system, adjudicated NGRI, had their charges dismissed, or placed on probation.”). Also see the comprehensive table on “The Prevalence of Mentally Disordered Persons in
Jails,” summarizing twenty-three studies, in Linda A. Teplin & Ecford S. Voit, Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill: Putting the Problem in Perspective, in MENTAL HEALTH AND LAW: RESEARCH,
P OLICY AND SERVICES 283, 294–95 (Bruce D. Sales & Saleem A. Shah eds., 1996). Teplin and Voit
conclude both that “the jails have a significantly higher rate of severe mental disorder than the general
population,” id. at 292, and that “the rate of mental disorder among prison detainees is actually lower
than that in the general population . . . because seriously ill offenders are diverted to mental health facilities at some point during the adjudication process,” id. at 292 n.1 (citation omitted). Note, however,
that most of the research they cite is now more than fourteen years old. See id. at 292 & n.1, 294–95.
438 The annual suicide rate in the general population is about twelve per 100,000; in prisons it is
about fifty percent higher. See NAT’ L I NST. OF CORR., U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , P RISON SUICIDE: AN
OVERVIEW AND GUIDE TO P REVENTION 27 (1995). But in jails, it is widely reported that suicide is
nine times greater than in the general population. See LINDSAY M. HAYES & JOSEPH R. ROWAN,
NAT’ L CTR. ON I NSTS . & ALTERNATIVES, NATIONAL STUDY OF JAIL SUICIDES: SEVEN YEARS
LATER xi (1988). Note, however, that because this jail suicide rate is calculated by dividing the annual
number of suicides by the average daily population (rather than a measure that accounts at least somewhat for total population flow), some have argued it is misleading. See, e.g., O’Toole, Jails and Prisons, supra note 76.
439 As one sheriff’s counsel said to me, “[y]ou’ve got all those lawyers on the outside, the inmatechasers.” Griner Interview, supra note 21.
440 Collins Interview, supra note 21; see also DeLand Interview, supra note 21; Farber Interview,
supra note 21.

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mates are disproportionately housed in rural areas,441 large jails, which
house most of the inmates442 (and probably defend most of the lawsuits),
are in urban areas.443 Urban juries may be more ope nhanded to plaintiffs
than rural juries are and, in any event, are widely believed to be so, which
increases settlement pressure regardless of the true state of affairs.444
For all these reasons, it seems very likely that jail damage actions generally pose a larger risk of liability — and of high damages — than prison
cases do, and experienced participants in the litigation system think tha t
this is in fact the situation. 445 Unfortunately, there are no systematic data
available with which to do a thorough comparison. But my checks of all
damage awards from cases filed in 1993 show that one-third are from jail
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
441 No firm figures exist on how many prisoners are incarcerated in the counties labeled “nonmetro”
by the Census Bureau (which have under twenty percent of the nation’s population), but it’s probably
about half. See Calvin L. Beale, Rural Prisons: An Update, RURAL DEV. P ERSP., Feb. 1996, at 25–27
(documenting the shift towa rds nonmetro prisons); Calvin L. Beale, Prisons, Population, and Jobs in
Nonmetro America , RURAL DEV. P ERSP., Mar. 1993 , at 16 (stating that the 390 prisons in nonmetro
areas in 1991 housed forty -four percent of all state and federal prisoners); Calvin Beale, Cellular Rural
Development: New Prisons in Rural and Small Town Areas in the 1990 s (Paper Presented at the Annual
Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, Aug. 18, 2001) (on file with author) (same) ; E-mail from
Calvin Beale, Senior Demographer, U.S. Dep’t of Agriculture, to the author (May 21, 2002 ) (on file
with author); see also , e.g., W ILLIAM G. NAGEL, T HE NEW RED BARN: A CRITICAL LOOK AT THE
MODERN AMERICAN P RISON 46 –52 (1973 ) (analyzing reasons for prison site selection in rural areas);
Daniel L. Feldman, 20 Years of Prison Expansion: A Failing National Stra tegy, 53 P UB. ADMIN. REV.
561 , 561–62 (1993) (observing that in 1992, in New York state, “low-density, Republican districts
. . . housed over 89 percent of state inmates”).
442 See supra note 363.
443 This is a phenomenon that has racial consequences as well. Outside the South, rural counties are
nearly always much whiter, demographically, than urban areas. See JESSE MCKINNON, U.S. CENSUS
BUREAU, THE BLACK P OPULATION: 2000, at 5 (2001 ), available at http://
www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01 -5.pdf (reporting that Southern counties with populations that
are more than fifty percent black are “generally” nonmetropolitan; “[c]oncentrations of Blacks in the
Midwest and West tended to be either in counties located within metropolitan areas or in counties containing universities or military bases or both”; and in the Northeast, blacks are concentrated along the
coast from Philadelphia to Providence and along the Hudson River Valley northward from New York
City). So whereas non-Southern prison inmates disproportionately serve their time surrounded by
communities that are nearly all white, jail inmates do not.
444 See Theodore Eisenberg & Martin T. Wells, Trial Outcomes and Demographics: Is There a Bronx
Effect? , 80 TEX. L. REV. 1839, 1840–43 (2002 ) (summarizing common perceptions about demographic
predictors of jury decisionmaking); id. at 18 50–70 (summarizing results of regression analysis of jury
results and county demography and “find[ing] little robust evidence that a trial locale’s population
demographics help explain jury trial outcomes”). But see Michael J. Saks, Trial Outcomes and Dem ographics: Easy Assumptions Versus Hard Evidence , 80 TEX. L. REV. 1877 (2002) (critiquing the
Eisenberg and Wells study). In addition, except in the South, urban juries are far more likely than rural
ones to include African -Americans and Latinos, which might independently affect jury outcomes. See
Devine et al., Jury Decisionmaking , supra note 177 , at 673 (“The notable finding in this area is that
jury demographic factors interact with [criminal] defendant characteristics to produce a bias in favor of
defendants who are similar to the jury in some salient respect.”). Note, however, that a significant percentage of inmate litigation trials occur before judges. See Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note
3.
445 Collins Interview, supra note 21; DeLand Interview, supra note 21.

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cases, which is probably quite disproportionate to the portion of cases
filed by jail inmates.446
Larger liability risk obviously puts pressure on jails to settle. Moreover, recalling the reasons for the low settlement rate in inmate litigation in
general, one would expect jails to settle proportionally more cases for
more money than prisons do. Regarding the former issue, small- and medium-sized jails do have full-time lawyers, so they pay a far higher marginal cost to litigate. (In small, medium, and even pretty large counties,
most sheriff’s departments largely rely on county counsel for their general
legal needs, but if a case grows intense — if, for example, it goes to trial
— they typically hire an outside lawyer, paid by the hour, to handle the
litigation.) Jail inmates mostly get out — so they do not necessarily tell
each other about settlements, which lowers the cost of settling for jail
administrators. Jail defense counsel, whether employed by their counties
more generally or private lawyers on retainer, are less socialized into the
world of corrections, so their ideas about settlements are less oppositional. 447 And, finally, jail plaintiffs’ readier access to lawyers means not
only that the cases are more serious, but also that the plaintiffs are more
likely to understand the actual value of their cases.448
At the end of the day, then, both jail and prison systems do indeed respond to the salient threat of serious liability. If prison administrators are
to be believed, litigation’s deterrence of unconstitutional conduct by prison
agencies is effective mostly around the edges. I have argued, however,
that this understates the role of litigation, in part because prison administrators are not admitting all that goes on, and in part because the “good
professional practice” prison administrators espouse is itself partially a
product of the litigation system. In any event, in jails the liability threat
has been sharper, and the identific ation with professional norms weaker.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
446 My results are consistent with what little evidence exists elsewhere. For example, when Darrell
Ross looked at over 3200 reported decisions from 1970 to 1994, pulled from the Detention and Corrections Case Law Catalog, he found that forty-two percent of his sample were about jails. See Darrell L.
Ross, Emerging Trends in Correctional Civil Liability Cases: A Content Analysis of Federal Court Decisions of Title 42 United States Code Section 1983: 1970–1994, 25 J. CRIM. JUST. 501, 506 (1997).
He also found that inmates prevailed in forty-three percent of the cases he examined, id. at 508, so obviously his sample was drastically skewed towards the significant cases — thus it is not useful for
evaluation of the entire docket. But it is telling that this skew produced a significant overrepresentation
of jails. Moreover, a study of inmate cases filed in 1994 in the District of Arizona found that jail cases
stayed on the court’s docket for sixty percent longer and were half as likely to be dismissed as frivolous. Fradella, In Search of Meritorious Claims, supra note 47, at 31, 40. (Fradella does not report
success rates by type of facility.)
447 County counsels work for their counties, either full-time or (more typically, I think) on retainer;
they handle a great many kinds of matters for their clients, with only a very small portion of the job
devoted to detention-related issues. Collins Interview, supra note 21; Nathan Interview, supra note 21.
448 See, e.g., NAT’ L I NST. OF CORR., U.S. DEP ’ T OF JUSTICE , P ROCEEDINGS OF THE T HIRD
MEETING OF THE LARGE JAIL NETWORK 3 (Carolyn MacPhail ed., 1991), available at
http://www.nicic.org/pubs/1991/009670.pdf (providing a Nassau County, New York administrator’s account of frequent case settlements, by consent decree or by payment of damages).

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The felt coercive effect of litigation, prior to the PLRA, was therefore
stronger.
C. Operational Effects of the PLRA
How has the PLRA changed litigation pressures on jail and prison personnel? I think there has been a real — but not earth-shattering — loosening of lawsuit incentives. In my survey, about sixty percent of those respondents who answered the question whether the PLRA had increased,
decreased, or left unchanged the “burden” posed by individual inmate lawsuits said that the PLRA had decreased the burden. 449 All but one of the
remaining respondents reported that the PLRA had left the burden unchanged. The people who filled out the survey were typically the staff
members most involved in their agency’s litigation, so they likely feel the
impact of the PLRA more strongly than anyone else. (I would think, that
is, that less-involved personnel would feel both less burden from litigation
and a more muted alteration to that burden.) But even so, the survey results are imprecise.
I cannot, however, do more than speculate about the details, for two
reasons. First, because we are only just emerging from a transition period,
it’s too early to observe long-term cultural changes. Second, because it’s
hard to get a conceptual handle on how to measure deterrence, it’s similarly hard to know how to measure changes in deterrent pressure. A
Gallup-poll-style inquiry, with the same questions asked every month or
two of a large and randomly selected group of affected officials, would
obviously mitigate these uncertainties — but so would telepathy, which
seems about as plausible in the real world. It seems to me that the best
method in the realm of the realistically possible is intense and wideranging engagement in the field through phone and field interviews, professional reading, and conference attendance. I have done some of this
work, and thus my speculation, although hardly definitive, is wellinformed.
I argued above that pre-PLRA inmate litigation pressured jail and
prison personnel in two quite distinct ways — to facilitate the litigation
process itself and to reduce liability exposure. The PLRA likely has
dampened the procedural pressures quite a lot, especially for small agencies, as filings have decreased and as the courts have done more preservice screening. But the distinction here between jails and prisons may
be crucial; since released jail inmates are not covered by the PLRA, it may
be that prison administrators are the ones reaping the vast benefit of the
recent filings decreases, and that jail administrators are experiencing only
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
449 There were thirty-eight responses to this question. Sixty percent is a bit lower than the proportion of respondents who reported that the PLRA had decreased the number of lawsuits filed against
them.

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the benefit of the extra, pre-service judicial screening. But again, this is
very difficult to pin down.
I would guess that the PLRA’s impact on the ordinary deterrent pressures on jail and prison officials is probably less than the tightening of
procedural incentives. The statute’s effect is bound to be negative, as
some actors, confident that they can beat pro se lawsuits with exhaustion
motions, worry less about liability. But the statute is probably not having
devastating effects on this front. After all, given the rarity of any (and especially of large) judgments, individual inmate litigation’s deterrent pressure exists only because of risk aversion, not strict cost-benefit analysis.
What officials are afraid of is the possibility of a large judgment and its attendant fallout. Even if the PLRA makes a large judgment only half as
likely as before, it is implausible to me that the probabilistic reduction
changes behavior by even close to a commensurate amount. It simply belies common sense to think that even so significant a reduction in probabilities matters much psychologically, where the probability was already
so small. 450 Thus, litigation’s deterrence function, while already compromised pre-PLRA, should operate only somewhat less effectively after enactment than it did before.
VI. CONCLUSION
Critics of inmate litigation succeeded in 1996 in enacting a sweeping
topic-specific federal tort reform. Their portrayal of inmate litigation resonated in Congress and apparently (based on the press reception of the
many “top-ten” lists of frivolous cases451) beyond the Beltway as well. On
examination, some of the story they told turns out to be correct. Inmates
do indeed file a large number of cases compared to other federal litigants,
and in 1996, those numbers had been increasing sharply. 452 Those cases
did indeed mostly fail. 453 The system probably cost more to administer
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
450 In a recent article, Cass Sunstein declares this effect a kind of irrationality; he labels it “probability neglect,” and describes the robust empirical data indicating that, especially “when intense emotions
are engaged, people tend to focus on the adverse outcome, not on its lik elihood.” Cass R. Sunstein,
Probability Neglect: Emotions, Worst Cases, and Law, 112 YALE L.J. 61, 62 (2002). My argument is a
little different, in part because I am focusing on the responses not of individuals, but of the entire population of regulated actors. It seems clear that those who responded to litigation pressures prior to the
PLRA’s passage must have been quite risk-averse; I am arguing that it’s implausible to think that they
were all marginal cases, such that any small change in the probability of consequences would change
their compliance behavior. Rather, it is far more likely that many of them were sufficiently risk -averse
that a small change in probabilities would still leave them preferring to avoid litigation risks. For a
general treatment of deterrence under enforcement uncertainty, see, for example, Richard Craswell &
John E. Calfee, Deterrence and Uncertain Legal Sta ndards, 2 J.L. ECON. & ORG. 279 (1986).
451 See supra note 38.
452 See supra p. 1575; supra Figure I.A.
453 See supra Table II.A.

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than the total amount of compensation it provided victims of tortious injury. 454
At the same time, quite a number of the elements of the critics’ account
were misleading. Even though the federal litigation rate per prisoner
was unusually high, once state cases are also included, it turns out that
inmates brought suits at rates comparable to those of noninmates. 455 Increases in raw numbers of filings since 1981 seem to be largely driven
by the vast increases in the incarcerated population. 456 As for outcomes, even if inmate plaintiffs’ success rates were low in comparison
to other federal case categories, they were far from miniscule. In an average year from 1990 to 1995, fifteen percent of cases brought by inmates ended in some kind of negotiated disposition or in litigated victory for the plaintiff. 457
Moreover, the most basic element of the critics’ account — that the
reason so few inmate plaintiffs were successful was that their cases
were simply frivolous (and not just legally frivolous but actually laughable) — is not true. Numerous researchers who have conducted systematic reviews of case records have concluded that a large portion of inmates
“present serious claims that are supported factually,” and that even “most
‘frivolous’ cases are neither fanciful, ridiculous, nor vexing.”458 And careful analysis underscores the tremendous obstacles faced by inmate litigants, among them a jaded or at least very hurried judiciary; 459 an extremely high decision standard or persuasive burden460 (so high that
over twenty percent of cases that meet it are actually egregious enough
to prompt the award of punitive damages); 461 and the absence of counsel, which tends to depress litigants’ success rate. 462 In addition, numerous additional factors decreased the rate of settlement, which for
inmates, as in most case categories, is the chief route to plaintiff success:463 plaintiffs’ poor information; 464 both parties’ low litigation
costs; 465 defendants’ strong perception that settling tends to have the externality of pr omoting additional filings;466 and the antagonistic milieu
of corrections, which discourages “capitulating to inmates.”467 Even
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467

See supra pp. 1623–26.
See supra notes 61–63 and accompanying text.
See supra note 87 and accompanying text.
See supra Table II.A.
Howard Eisenberg, Rethinking Prisoner Cases, supra note 15, at 440; see supra p. 1573.
See supra pp. 1588–90.
See supra pp. 1605–06.
See supra Table II.C; supra p. 1607.
See supra pp. 1609–14.
See supra Table II.B.
See supra p. 1616.
See supra p. 1617.
See supra pp. 1618–19.
See supra pp. 1620–21.

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once a plaintiff — usually pro se — succeeded in winning a liability
judgment, damages tended to be extremely low, due in large part to the
ordinary rules of tort damages, which better compensate the kinds of
economic losses not typically incurred by inmates, and perhaps also to
the more idiosyncratic problem faced by pro se plaintiffs trying simultaneously to act as effective litigators and demonstrate devastating injury. 468
What a close look uncovers then is a very different inmate litigation
problem than that animating the PLRA’s supporters’ account. Looking just
at the courthouse, it was clear that the system was indeed in need of repair.
Inmates were filing many bad cases, and adjudic ation did not filter them
well. The ordinary processes of lawyer screening, discovery, and settlement were inoperative when the parties were indigent prisoners and public
corrections agencies. Litigation was both burdensome for defendants and
unable to fulfill even its simple compensation role. (However, these problems probably applied somewhat less to the jail docket, because jail inmates sued less and were more likely to file after release from incarceration and with counsel.)
Outside the courthouse, the effects of the litigation system were less
problematic. Correctional agencies’ need to respond to so many lawsuits
promoted bureaucratization,469 which joined with more ordinary deterrent
effects to play a positive, if limited, role in the governance of prisons and
jails. Claims of overdeterrence — that litigation chilled vigorous decisionmaking by correctional officials, and in fact encouraged inaction —
are undermined by the basic structure of constitutional rights in a corrections setting, which affords no more protection to inaction than it does to
actions taken. 470 And claims of antideterrence — that litigation actually
encouraged the very conduct subject to challenge — are implausible in at
least the correctional context, except in the quite rare circumstance of an
administrator overwhelmingly interested in demonstrating toughness. 471
Any reform effort thus faced a very difficult cha llenge: how to limit the
number of bad cases, or at least the resulting transactional burden, while
protecting and even strengthening both litigation’s already compromised
compensation function and the positive effects of the litigation system on
correctional practice. The preliminary evidence indicates that the PLRA
failed this challenge. The statute has been highly successful in reducing
litigation, triggering a forty-three percent decline over five years, notwithstanding the simultaneous twenty-three percent increase in the incarcerated
population. 472 But far from succeeding more often (as would have hap–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
468
469
470
471
472

See supra pp. 1622–24.
See supra pp. 1669–72.
See supra pp. 1674–75, 1677.
See supra pp. 1679–80.
See supra Table I.A; supra section IV.A.

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pened if the statute’s disincentives applied disproportionately to bad
cases), the cases remaining after that decline are succeeding less than before.473 This outcome ought not be a surprise. The provisions of the
PLRA are not, in fact, well calculated to affect low-probability filings disproportionately. In particular, the new filing fee makes it uneconomical
for inmates to pursue low-stakes cases even when such cases are high in
merit, 474 and the new attorneys’ fee limits further increase the difficulty for
even those inmates with good cases to find counsel and actually litigate
successfully. 475 Moreover, the PLRA’s exhaustion provision has effected a
major liability-reducing change in the legal standards: inmates who experience even grievous loss because of unconstitutional misbehavior by prison
and jail authorities will nonetheless lose cases they once would have won,
if they fail to comply with technic alities of administrative exhaustion. 476
The statute’s effects on jail and prison operations are less certain, and
probably subtler. Outside the courthouse, the PLRA has not caused the
sky to fall, although it likely has reduced the positive pressure created by
litigation, to the detriment of inmates and correctional practice.477
Could Congress have done better? Absolutely, if inmate litigation reform had been less about anti- litigation, anti- inmate symbolic politics and
more about calibrated regulation. There are a number of available approaches that would better serve the project of minimizing litigation burdens, particularly the burdens posed by bad cases, while allowing good
cases to go forward. The goal ought to be to abate the absolute number of
inmate lawsuits and the resulting transactional burden of such suits, while
respecting — or even bolstering — the beneficial functions of inmate litigation. A softened PLRA might include something like the following provisions:
Filing Fees. The current filing fee requirement makes it irrational for
an inmate to file a low-stakes case, which seems to me inappropr iate as a
matter of policy and perhaps even constitutional law.478 Yet federal court
is far from the ideal forum for what are essentially constitutional small
claims. One solution would be for Congress to institute a filing fee applicable only in states in which some kind of small claims adjudication of
constitutional claims is made available for jail and prison inmates. This
would be a very useful change — burden-reducing for federal courts
(though admittedly not for defendants), and simultaneously helpful to in–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
473
474
475
476
477
478

See supra section IV.B.
See supra pp. 1646–47.
See supra pp. 1654–57.
See supra pp. 1649–54.
See supra pp. 1690–91.
See Laurence H. Tribe, Jurisdictional Gerrymandering: Zoning Disfavored Rights out of the Federal Courts, 16 HARV. C.R.-C.L. L. REV. 129, 137–39 (1981) (arguing that the Constit ution may require
effective remedies for constitutional wrongs).

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mates with real constitutional grievances who could litigate those grievances in a more appropriate, less formal, forum. Of course, I argue above
that a filing fee in fact discourages not only low-stakes cases, but also others. But I find this an acceptable compromise. Inmates, like most other
litigants, can appropriately be asked to bear some of the costs of their litigation.
As for frequent filers, it makes sense to want to get rid of the most
abusive inmate filings — the hundreds of lawsuits filed by the Clovis
Greens of the world. 479 The PLRA’s frequent filer provision is far, far
broader than this quite limited problem, but that is not to say that the problem is not worth solving. A provision disallowing in forma pauperis filings by anyone with more than, say, ten (rather than three) district court
cases (rather than district court cases or appeals) dismissed as frivolous
(rather than for failure to state a claim) would avoid the draconian nature
of the current regime but still regularize court response to inmate hyperlitigiousness when hyperlitigiousness is actually present.
Exhaustion. More important, the exhaustion provision should be reconfigured to encourage agencies to create internal compliance mechanisms, rather than pleading traps.480 The basic idea is a well-worn one.
The Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA), before
amended by the PLRA, was not far from a good model: it required
exhaustion only where a given administrative remedy system had been
certified “plain, speedy, and effective.”481 CRIPA’s particular strictures on
how to construct an administrative remedy system were too narrow482 —
but its essential premise remains a good one. A good administrative remedy system can serve simultaneously to educate upper level officials about
what is happening on the agency front lines and to resolve some disputes.483 Federal law should use the carrot of a district court exhaustion
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
479 See In re Green, 669 F.2d 779, 781–85 (D.C. Cir. 1981) (detailing the litigation history of Rev.
Clovis Green).
480 See Branham, Enigmatic Exhaustion, supra note 193; cf. Burlington Indus., Inc. v. Ellerth, 524
U.S. 742, 764–65 (1998) (encouraging creation of an internal compliance mechanism relating to workplace sexual harassment by allowing employers to assert as part of an affirmative defense that the employer took “reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior”);
Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775, 806–08 (1998) (same). See generally Susan Sturm, Second Generation Employment Discrimination: A Structural Approach, 101 COLUM. L. REV. 458, 463
(2001) (discussing an approach to employment discrimin ation in which “compliance is achieved
through, and evaluated in relation to, improving institutional capacity to identify, prevent, and redress
exclusion, bias, and abuse”).
481 42 U.S.C.A. § 1997e(b)(1) (West Supp. 1994) (since amended).
482 Exhaustion was required only if an administrative remedy system was in “substantial compliance” with “minimum standards” set by the Attorney General, id. § 1997e(c)(1), among which was the
unpopular requirement that both staff and inmates play an advisory role in the formulation, implementation, and operation of any grievance process. Id. at § 1997e(b)(2)(A).
483 See, e.g., Dora Schriro, Correcting Corrections: Missouri’s Parallel Universe, in SENTEN- CING
& CORRECTIONS: I SSUES FOR THE 21 ST CENTURY (U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Papers from the Executive

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requirement for inmate plaintiffs to encourage states to implement such a
system.
Screening. Justice Jackson had it right in Brown v. Allen; judges and
other court personnel often prove not to be good screeners of inmate cases,
because they lose interest in the buried needles. 484 To state a related point
economically, screeners — judges, magistrate judges, pro se clerks, and
law clerks — find each false positive (or “Type I error”) costly, reputationally or otherwise, when the should-have-been-screened-out case takes
many other people time and effort to deal with. But false negatives
(“Type II errors”) are less costly for screeners; they essentially disappear
forever.485 The result is an institutional tilt against inmate cases. The
problem is, however, a solvable one. 486 If, for example, the screening
process were done in two stages and by two different people , the first
screener would likely be less nervous about mistakes made in “screening
in” cases. And the second screener would have a far more evenly divided
pool, which would be cognitively easier to manage.487
Attorneys’ Fees. Attorneys are ordinarily good screeners of cases, but
not in inmate cases, because there are so few chances for inmates to access
lawyers. It would be good to harness this screening ability, but it’s difficult to see how, absent federal funding for inmates’ lawyers, or mandatory
liquidated damages in inmate cases, or some other such implausible
scheme. It is far easier to think of how to harness lawyers’ other contrib ution — the value they add to litigation. Whether by legislation or by other
court policy, it would be a very useful change to have many more lawyers
in the component of the inmate docket that survives summary judgment.
This would tend to increase the settlement rate (reducing the litigation
burden) and also make the trials far more accurate adjudicatory events.
The current political climate makes it unlikely that Congress will revisit the PLRA and solve its problems. But it should. Inmate litigation’s
most evident problem — too many bad cases — is not the creation of
tough-on-crime politicians or tort reformers. But the litigation’s contrib ution to appropriate governance and oversight of correctional policy and
practice should be strenthened, not abandoned. More generally, unless
policymakers both intend and justify substantive intervention, purported
litigation reform should be far more careful than the PLRA to have the
primary effect of reducing the transactional burden of litigation, not the li–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Sessions
on
Sentencin g
and
Corrections,
May
2000),
available
at
http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/181414.pdf.
484 See supra p. 1588.
485 Appeal, much less appellate victory for inmate plaintiffs, is too rare to have much impact. See
Clermont & Eisenberg, Plaintiphobia , supra note 15, at 966–96.
486 Solutions might be more appropriately judicial than legislative.
487 See William J. Stuntz, Looking for Needles in Haystacks (Mar. 7, 2003) (unpublished manuscript, on file with author).

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ability exposure of defendants. I began this Article suggesting that close
scrutiny of the PLRA is important because the statute may very well serve
Congress as a model for future litigation reform. I close with two
thoughts: First, litigation reform requires extreme attention to context,
which counsels against trans-substantive one-size-fits-all measures. Second, the PLRA is currently sufficiently flawed, even in its own context,
that any borrowing from its provisions should proceed with care and skepticism.

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DATA APP ENDIX
The one way to take a nationwide, systematic, and reasonably unbiased
look at inmate litigation case filings and outcomes — albeit only those in
federal court — is to use the dataset compiled by the Administrative Office
of the U.S. Courts (AO) and cleaned up by the Federal Judicial Center
(FJC), respectively the administrative and research arms of the federal
court system. The dataset includes each and every case “terminated” (that
is, ended, at least provisionally) by the federal district courts since 1970.
The FJC lodges this database for public access with the Inter-University
Consortium for Political and Social Research, which maintains it at
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu.488 The data are published in a machine readable file, with SPSS and SAS “data definition statements” that enable import of the data into either of those formats. Codebooks are available
online as part of the study.
A. Putting Together the Dataset
The largest obstacle to use of the AO data is that the AO groups it by
“termination” year. That is, each of the computer files includes only records for cases “terminated” in a given year; pending cases are in their
own file. In order to group cases by filing year rather than termination
year, I merged all the data into one file, an operation that is far trickier
than it sounds due to the AO’s changing codes over the years.489 Next, I
regularized the data — introducing a consistent statistical year for both filing and termination and dealing wit h a variety of coding changes. I then
tried to ensure that in any given analysis I counted each case only once.
(The AO’s published tables double count a good number of cases.) I
coded as duplicates all the cases with perfect matches in docket number,
district, and office. I then coded as “subsequent filings” all but the first of
such duplicate cases, and introduced a new variable for “original date of
filing” — the filing date of the first known record for each case. Finally,
from the first of the dup licates, and all the nonduplicates, I coded as
“original filings” only the records whose “origin” code was not inconsistent with this status (that is, I excluded records coded specifically as transfers, reopenings, and the like). For analysis of filings in this Article, I
have used only the records thus coded as original filings. And for analysis
of outcomes, I have used only the last record I have for any case, though
whenever I discuss outcomes based on filing dates, the date I have used is
the original date of filing.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
488 Federal Court Cases Database, 1970–2000 , supra note 3; Federal Court Cases Database, 2001,
supra note 3.
489 I did my work in the program SPSS and have posted the code I used to perform the merger. See
Schlanger, Technical Appendix, supra note 3.

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B. Accuracy of the Data
Staff in the court clerks’ offices fill in a computerized query screen for
each case upon filing, and again on termination. Case coding is done by a
court clerk, following guidelines offered by the AO. I have generally
found the AO’s data very accurate.490 I have not done a comprehensive
systematic audit, however. An audit would be possible (if time consuming
and expensive) using the federal courts’ Public Access to Court Electronic
Records (PACER) system.491
Nearly every district participates in
PACER;492 it makes available, online, dockets and occasio nally pleadings
themselves, for a fee of $.07/page. Since dockets are far more complete
and very accurate sources for information about a case’s progress and outcome, they can be used to check particular variables.
Without doing a true audit, I have taken some serious steps to check
the data’s accuracy. Specifically, I have looked at several hundred docket
sheets for cases in the dataset, comparing what the AO record says about a
case to what the docket reveals. There are a number of areas where the
AO’s accuracy fails:
1. Nature of Suit Codes. — One of the required fields is a code for
“nature of suit.” One such code, 550 , has long been attached to “prisoner:
civil rights” cases. An additional code, 555 , for “prison cond itions” cases,
was added in 1997. The idea of the 555 classification was to track the
language of the PLRA, which, for example, requires exhaustion in “prison
conditions” cases. But the AO’s directions to district court clerks about
how to choose between 550 and 555 are extremely sketchy. The operative
memo states only: “prison condition cases are defined as civil actions seeking relief from the conditions of a prisoner’s confinement or the treatment
of the prisoner in the course of that confinement.”493 The Supreme Court
has since made it clear that the PLRA’s reference to “prison conditions” is
not very selective — it includes “all inmate suits abo ut prison life.”494
The only kind of inmate civil rights litigation that does not fit this defin ition of “prison conditions” suits are cases brought by inmates about civil
rights violations outside prison — and there is no reason to think that this
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
490 On the general reliability of the Administrative Office database, see Eisenberg & Schlanger, Reliability of AO Database, supra note 129 .
491 See P ublic Access to Court Electronic Records (“PACER”), at http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov (Mar.
16, 2003).
492 The PACER website lists all districts as participants except: Southern District of New York, District of Alaska, District of Idaho, District of Montana, District of New Mexico, Eastern District of
Oklahoma, District of the Northern Mariana Islands, District for the Virgin Islands. See id. These districts see only six percent of the federal district court docket. See Schlanger, Techn ical Appendix , supra
note 3.
493 Leonidas Ralph Mecham, Director, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Collection of Statistical Information on Pro Se Prison Condition Cases 2 (Dec. 18, 1996) (unpublished memorandum, on
file with author).
494 Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 532 (2002).

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is what district court clerks intend when they code a case 550 rather than
555. In any event, I have been unable to discern any systematic difference
between cases with these two codes, and I refer to them together as constituting the set of inmate litigation cases.
Generally speaking, district court clerks include in these code categories all nonhabeas civil actions brought by inmates, regardless of their
nominal cause of action. As stated in the text, however, there may be a
number of systematic biases relating to what is included and what is not.
The data probably do not include all the cases brought by former inmates
relating to the conditions they used to live under, or by the families of
dead inmates. Cases brought under the Federal Tort Claims Act or the
very few diversity cases brought under state law relating to prison or jail
conditions are certainly not included. Moreover, some observers suspect
(though none of the district audits done by researchers seems to have confirmed this) that in some districts the AO’s classification excludes at least
some of the cases filed by non-indigent inmates and also cases filed by
lawyers on behalf of inmates. Such cases may instead be categorized under the AO’s catch-all code 440 (“other civil rights”).495 For purposes of
understanding outcomes, these distinctions may be quite important. But
for purposes of understanding filings, they are not — the very great mass
of federal district court cases filed relating to prison or jail conditions or
by inmates are coded as 550 or 555.
2. Subsequent Activity . — Of course the AO’s data go only so far into
a case’s history. After cases leave the district courts, new things can happen: An appeal can reverse the district court’s judgment. Or, especially
when a plaintiff has won a damage award, the parties can settle on a lesser
amount in exchange for the defendant’s foregoing an appeal. Money
awarded may never be paid. And so on. This is a very real limit on the
ability of the AO district court data to show the actual results of cases. I
don’t mean to overstate this limit, however. Many subsequent actions are,
indeed, reflected in the AO data. Vacateur by an appellate court should
usually be detected in the dataset, for example, because it requires that the
case be reopened and reprocessed in the district court.
3. Federal vs. Nonfederal Inmates. — Calculating inmates’ filing rates
requires separating cases filed by federal inmates from others. The AO
codes allow this, with some caveats. One of the variables in the AO’s case
termination data is the complaint’s alleged basis for federal court jurisdiction. Of the six codes allowed, only two are relevant: federal question496

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
495
496

Jim Thomas makes this point in PRISONER LITIGATION , supra note 15, at 20.
See 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (2000) (establish ing district court jurisdiction for cases “arising under the
Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States”).

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and federal defendant.497 State inmates filing civil rights lawsuits nearly
always sue state or local officials to enforce federal rights — so for them,
federal question jurisdiction is the only applicable answer to the “jurisdictional basis” question. But cases brought by federal inmates might appr opriately be coded either as federal question or as federal defendant cases.
The AO directs court clerks to follow a hierarchy in filling out this field,
so that any case in which a federal defendant appears should be classified
this way, regardless of the applicability of other codes.498 Prior researchers have relied on this assertion and used the “federal defendant” category
in the inmate civil rights cases as coextensive with the filings of federal
inmates.
But a closer look at the data reveals that any confidence in this variable
is misplaced. Each year there are thousands upon thousands of cases in
the inmate civil rights docket classified as federal question cases (that is,
as nonfederal defendant cases) that are, quite to the contrary, filed against
federal defendants. To try to get a more accurate count, I wrote code to do
the following: First, I listed all the entries in the “defendant” field for all
cases actually coded as “federal defendant” cases. Then I went through
them, one by one, and categorized them as “certainly federal” and “ambiguous.” For example, I classified the defendant field “U.S. Attorney
General” as the former, but the defendant “Attorney General” as the latter.
I was very conservative in this classification, not wanting to inflate my
federal defendant count with nonfederal cases. Next, I wrote code to flag
cases coded as “federal question” if their defendant field was identical to
one of the several hundred I had labeled “certainly federal.” This operation flagged quite a few habeas cases, adding less than 1% to the federal
inmate habeas docket each year in the early 1970s; 1–3% each year from
1976 to 1985; and 3–9% (6% on average) each year from 1986 to present.
The effect was far greater for civil rights cases. The recoding increased
the federal defendant inmate civil rights docket tally by 1–4% each year in
the early seventies, by 4–8% from 1976 to 1985, and by 16–34% (25% on
average) from 1986 to the present. It seems more than likely that even so,
the results undercount federal inmate cases because many of those cases
were likely against individual wardens, officers, or other defendants who
were not self-evidently federal.
4. “Judgment for”. — The database includes a variable usually referred to as “judgment for.” Five options are available: plaintiff (1); defendant (2); both (3); unknown (4); and not-applicable (-8). Before I dis–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
497 See id. § 1346 (establishing district court jurisdiction where the United States is a defendant); id.
§ 1442 (establishing district court removal jurisdiction where a federal agency or officer is a defendant).
498 See Technology Training and Support Division, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, CIVIL
Statistical Reporting Guide 3:6 (Version 2.1, July 1999) (unpublished training document on file with
author) [hereinafter CIVIL Statistical Reporting Guide].

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cuss this data element’s accuracy, I should mention two quirks. First, it’s
not at all clear what the difference is between a recorded judgment for
plaintiff and a recorded judgment for both. Having read many dockets and
finding no plausible operative distinction, I use the simplifying assumption
that these two categories are the same and accordingly count them both as
plaintiffs’ victories. Second, “not applicable” does not mean that there was
no victor in the case; unfortunately, the code is more idiosyncratic. The
AO consistently classifies certain kinds of outcomes as “dismissals” and
other kinds of outcomes as “judgments.”499 The “judgment for” variable is
supposed to be filled in only in cases in which the disposition is considered a judgment. The point is that for a number of large “dismissal” categories — dismissals for “want of prosecution” and for “lack of jurisdiction” — the defendant is necessarily the victor. And it seems very likely
that the “other” category is similar (I’ve looked at a number of cases so
coded; they were all defendants’ victories of various kinds). Thus, when I
discuss outcomes, I supplement the coding included in “judgment for”
with assumptions that any cases with one of these three disposition codes
is also a defense victory.
Moreover, there are apparently some accuracy problems in the “judgment for” code. An audit of 1993 cases reveals that those coded, anomalously, as plaintiffs’ victories but with damages coded as equal to zero are
frequently but not always defendants’ victories.500 This is not a large category, however, and leaving these cases out does not change the analysis in
any significant way.
5. Damages. — Analyzing damages from the AO data is perilous. The
AO asks court clerks to code damages in thousands — so $2000 is to be
coded as “2” — and to round — so “2” is $1500 to $2499. (The code “1”
is a bit peculiar — it has variously been intended to mean $1 to $1499, or
$500 to $1499. 501) The problem is that, especially in small-damage cases,
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499 See, e.g., Federal Court Cases Database, 1970–2000, supra note 3, pt. 104 (civil terminations,
1997, codebook) at 14 (describing “disposition” codes); id. at 15 (describing “nature of judgment”
codes, and specifying that “[t]hese codes should only be present for disposition involving a judgment”).
Dismissals are divided into the following outcome codes: “want of prosecution,” “lack of jurisdiction,”
“voluntarily,” “settled,” and “other.” Id. at 14. Judgments are divided into categories labeled “default,”
“consent,” “motion before trial,” “jury verdict,” “directed verdict,” “court trial,” and a few other inapplicable headings. Id. at 14–15.
500 For a full discussion of this coding issue, see Eisenberg & Schlanger, Reliability of AO Database,
supra note 129.
501 In the training manual instructing court personnel on data entry, the AO directs that any award
under $500 be entered as zero. CIVIL Statistical Reporting Guide, supra note 498, at D:2. However,
the computer system produces an error report whenever the person entering the data indicates a monetary award for the plaintiff by entering that award as zero. Id. at 5:1, 5:4. (It seems likely that clerks
avoid the error report by coding awards between $1 and $1499 as “1”.) Prior to 1987 (when the coding
system was overhauled), the clerks apparently were instructed to code any award of less than $1000 as
zero. See Federal Court Cases Database, 1970–2000, supra note 3, pt. 57, at 49. I am not sure what
the instruction was between 1987 and 1999. In any event, interviews, an examination of the 1993 inmate data that produced Table II.C, and a sample of 2000 terminations all suggest that court clerks have

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clerks often mistakenly put in the actual amount. For example, they code
5900 for an award of $5900, though that entry should mean $5,900,000.
AO employees informed me that they do not use this variable because it is
not trustworthy for this very reason.
Because this seemed to me quite important, I did conduct an actual audit, though I limited my comprehensive checking to cases terminated in the
year 1993 in which the plaintiffs were coded as winning damages. Table
App.A presents the results:
TABLE APP.A: E RRORS IN AO AWARD CODING,
INMATE CIVIL RIGHTS CASES T ERMINATED FISCAL YEAR 1993
AO award
range
(in 1000s)
1
2–999
999–9998
9999
Total

Type of error — n (% of errors)
n
52
47
17
5
122

Errors:
n (% of sample)
2
(4%)
17
(36%)
17502 (100%)
5
(100%)

Rounding
0
(0%)
4 (24%)
3 (18%)
-

Digit
0 (0%)
8 (47%)
13 (76%)
-

2
5
5
5

Other
(100%)
(29%)
(29%)
(100%)

41

7

21 (51%)

17

(41%)

(34%)

(17%)

It may be possible to use the information from my audit and others like
it to develop an algorithm for using the coded data without case-by-case
docket reviews.503 But for the purpose of my discussions of damages and
case stakes, I simply substituted the more accurate docket-reviewed data
for the AO coding.
6. Class Actions. — I also have found that the AO’s data are singularly unreliable in the coding of class actions. Here, I agree with other observers.504 There’s no way around this one; the data are simply unusable.
C. Grouping Case Categories
In Tables II.B (plaintiffs’ success rates) and II.D (plaintiffs’ pro se
rates), I deal with the entire federal docket in two different years, 1995 and
2000, grouping the data according to Table App.B into my own categories based upon Administrative Office “nature of suit” codes.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
used “ 1” to indicate any damages amount from $1 to $1499, at least since 1993. See also Hurley Interview, supra note 21.
502 Some case entries reported in this row have errors of multiple types and are therefore listed more
than once.
503 See Eisenberg & Schlanger, Reliability of AO Database, supra note 129, for a first attempt to
develop such an algorithm.
504 See, e.g., T HOMAS E. W ILLGING, L AURAL L. HOOPER & ROBERT J. NIEMIC, FED. JUDICIAL
CTR., EMPIRICAL STUDY OF CLASS ACTIONS IN FOUR FEDERAL DISTRICT COURTS: FINAL
REPORT TO THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON C IVIL RULES 197–200 (1996).

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TABLE APP.B: CATEGORIZATION OF AO “N ATURE OF SUIT” CODES

Category
Contract

Torts
(non-product)

Product
liability

AO “Nature of Suit”
110 Contract: Insurance
120 Contract: Marine
130 Contract: Miller Act
140 Contract: Negotiable
Instrument
160 Contract: Stockholder Suits
240 Torts to Land
310 Airplane Personal Injury
320 Assault, Libel and Slander
330 Federal Employers Liability
340 Marine Personal Injury
350 Motor Vehicle
195 Contract Product
Liability
245 Real Property Product
Liability
315 Airplane Product Liability
345 Marine Product Liability

Civil rights

440 Civil Rights: Other
441 Civil Rights: Voting

Civil rights:
employment
Inmate civil
rights
Labor

442 Civil Rights: Jobs

Statutory
actions

Code and Description
150 Contract: Other
Recovery, Enforcement
151 Contract: Medicare
Recovery
190 Other Contract
360 Other Personal Injury
362 Medical Malpractice
370 Fraud, Truth in Lending
371 Truth in Lending
380 Other Personal Property
Damage
470 RICO
355 Motor Vehicle Product
Liability
365 Personal Injury Product Liability
368 Asbestos
385 Property Damage Product
Liability
443 Civil Rights:
Accommodations
444 Civil Rights: Welfare

550 Civil Rights: Prisoner

555 Prison Conditions

710 Fair Labor Standards Act
720 Labor Management
Relations
730 Labor Management
Reporting and Disclosure
410 Antitrust
430 Banks and Banking
450 Commerce: ICC Rates, etc.
810 Selective Service
820 Copyright
830 Patent
840 Trademark
850 Securities, Commodities
Exchange

740 Railway Labor Act
790 Other Labor Litigation
791 ERISA

865 Social Security: RSI
875 Customer Challenge:
12 U.S.C. § 3410
890 Other Statutory Actions
891 Agricultural Acts
892 Economic Stabilization Act
893 Environmental Matters
894 Energy Allocation Act
895 Freedom of Information Act

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U.S. plaintiff

Other

Habeas/
quasi-criminal
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861
862
863
152

Social Security-HIA
Black Lung (923)
Social Security-DIWC
Recovery of Defaulted
Student Loans
153 Recovery of Veterans
Benefit Overpayment
210 Land Condemnation
220 Foreclosure
610 Forfeiture and Penalty:
Agriculture
620 Forfeiture and Penalty:
Food and Drug
625 Drug-Related Property
Forfeiture
230 Rent, Lease, and
Ejectment
290 All Other Real Property
460 Deportation
510 Vacate Sentence
530 Habeas Corpus
422 Bankruptcy Appeals

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900 Appeal of Fee Determination
Under Equal Access to Justice
630 Liquor Laws
640 Forfeiture and Penalty:
Railroad and Truck
650 Air Line Regulations
660 Occupational Safety/Health
690 Miscellaneous Forfeiture
and Penalty
870 Taxes (U.S. Plaintiff)
871 Internal Revenue ServiceThird Party (U.S. Plaintiff)

400 State Reapportionment
950 Constitutionality of State
Statutes
535 Death Penalty Habeas Corpus
540 Mandamus and Other:
Prisoner
423 Withdrawal (Bankruptcy)

In both Tables II.B and II.E, I have left out bankruptcy appeals and
withdrawals because either debtors or creditors can bring such actions, so
it is hard to know how to think about either success or pro se rates. In addition, in Table II.B I have left out habeas cases and those like them, and
deportation cases. These are cases that rarely if ever settle and do not have
trials, so the success measures in Table II.B seem unhelpful for
understanding them. 505

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
505 I use the code descriptions as they are set out in the CIVIL Statistical Reporting Guide, supra
note 498, at A:1–A:4; they are also available, each time worded slightly differently, in the Federal Judicial Center’s civil terminations codebooks. See Federal Court Cases Database, 1970–2000, supra note
3, pts. 57, 94, 95, 103, 104, 115–117. My case category groupings are not far off from those used by
Kevin Clermont and Ted Eisenberg in their article, Plaintiphobia in the Appellate Courts. See Clermont & Eisenberg, Plaintiphobia , supra note 15, at 954–55, 967.

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