Juries, Not Judges, Decide if Administrative Remedies Have Been Exhausted
The PLRA, or the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996, was designed to prevent frivolous lawsuits from prisoners in state and federal prison from clogging up the courts. The PLRA is what requires inmates to file grievances, and attempt to resolve them within the BOP before bringing an action before a federal judge, including a bivens, civil lawsuit, and in most cases, Habeas Corpus, also known as a 2241. By these rules, administrative remedies must be fully exhausted without a satisfactory resolution at every level of the BOP before bringing the issue to court.
One of the exceptions is compassionate release, modified by the First Step Act, which allows inmates to bring motions forward after either fully exhausting their available administrative remedies, or waiting 30 days after asking the prison’s warden to provide compassionate release, and getting denied. That second route gives inmates a dramatically faster method to get their compassionate release petition heard by the court.
Of course, nowadays, the U.S. Attorney’s office weaponizes the PLRA and the exhaustion requirement to the furthest extent possible.
However, in the recent Supreme Court ruling in Kyle Richards v. The State of Michigan’s DOC, administrative remedies are now an issue for a jury. Until now, it was decided by the judge alone, which can be biased and tends to lean in support of the U.S. Attorney’s argument.
Now, if an inmate can bring their grievance that far, they can demand a jury trial to determine whether or not they’ve fully exhausted their administrative remedies or not.
This may help address the ongoing issue of futility in administrative remedies, where inmates either aren’t provided adequate means to navigate the administrative remedy process, or they’re somehow forced into a situation where they are unable. In the case of Kyle Richards, a state case, he claimed at a COO destroyed his remedies, violating his First Amendment rights and rendering the administrative remedy process futile.
There are instances where a claim of futility will win, and in many First Step Act related actions, exhaustion isn’t taken into account since it’s taken over six and a half years to fully implement the law at the policy level.
Hopefully, this will allow more inmates to win in their grievances in the prison system by putting their issues in front of a jury of their peers, rather than a biased court judge.