Contributions > Joshua Guetzkow

Joshua Guetzkow
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Recent Trands in Prisoner Litigation in the U.S.

Abstract

In the last two decades, landmark court cases and policy changes have made a significant impact on prisoners’ rights in both the U.S. and Israel. In the U.S., the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act of 1996 significantly curtailed prisoners’ rights to appeal to the judiciary for injunctive relief of inhumane conditions. But in spite of these significant limitations that have reduced to a certain extent some litigation activities and badly impact the rate of prison suicide, the literature has overlooked the analysis of these effects that have to be taken into account when we analyse the impact of civil rights on prisons. By contrast, much more attention has been paid to a major prisoner litigation case in California that witnessed some of the strongest activism from the bench that the field of prisoner rights litigation has seen since the 1970s. This paper takes stock of these changes in the American perspective that is drawn  with a view to discussing the relations between litigation and decarceration.