Discuss and explain the impact that both the Prison Litigation Reform Act and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act have had on the rights of inmates?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Two congressional acts signed into law in 1996—the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA)—have severely curtailed prisoner access to the court. Both acts were passed in part to reduce the thousands of lawsuits filed by inmates that clog the federal courts. In the year of the passage of these acts, inmates filed 68,235 civil rights lawsuits in the federal courts, by 2000, the number of such lawsuits dropped to 24,519, a 64% decrease. The primary intention of the PLRA was to free prisons and jails from federal court supervision as well as limit prisoners’ access to the federal courts. Both intentions have largely succeeded. Among the requirements of the PLRA is one that state inmates cannot bring a section 1983 (civil rights) lawsuit in federal court unless they first exhaust all available administrative remedies such as filing a written grievance with the warden. The PLRA also states that inmates claiming to be unable to afford the required filing fee for the lawsuit may still have to pay a partial fee, which will be collected whenever money appears in their inmate accounts. This provision may limit the airing of genuine grievances in federal court because of financial difficulties. As the name implies, the AEDPA is mostly about antiterrorism and the death penalty rather than an act specifically designed to limit habeas corpus proceedings. It was passed in response to the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, with the reform of habeas corpus law being a rider to it. The AEDPA does not eliminate inmates’ rights to habeas corpus, but it does restrict its availability. It does so by limiting successive petitions and judicial review of evidence, and may now apply only to inmates who have sought, but have been denied, state court remedies available to them. The AEDPA thus takes habeas corpus partially back along the road to again becoming the preconviction remedy against unlawful imprisonment that it was initially.