Abstract
Thousands of people under the supervision of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) file formal grievances each year that range from mundane to egregious violations of legal rights. Nearly all of them are denied. In Appealing to Justice, Kitty Calavita and Valerie Jenness explore how and why, in an often hostile and repressive environment, people who are incarcerated file formal grievances about the conditions of their confinement. Drawing on evidence from several hundred case records and interviews with people who are incarcerated and corrections employees, Calavita and Jenness generate a theoretically rich and broadly relevant account of how the social and organizational environment shapes the expression of legal consciousness and the interpretation of legal rights.
Appealing to Justice begins with an illuminating discussion of conducting research within and about American prisons in a historically unique period of heightened rights consciousness and mass incarceration. Decades of growth in America’s prisons and jails came on the heels of the civil rights movement and related legislation promising greater equality of opportunity. While rights consciousness movements and legal protections have been afforded and expanded to same-sex couples, people with disabilities, and crime victims (p. 14), mass incarceration has “disproportionately targeted disadvantaged young men, particularly those of color” (p. 15). Calavita and Jenness place the grievance system within prisons “at the very fault line” (p. 3) of the tension between the expansion of legal rights and repressive criminal justice practices. Their research on the grievance system reveals what they term “conflicting logics” (p. 4) between rights and punishment. Their research also reveals how the logic of punishment dominates the promise of rights in a highly bureaucratic institutional setting characterized by gross inequalities in access to information, resources, and power.
In Chapter Two, Calavita and Jenness carefully review the legal history of the inmate grievance system. They argue that the rise of the prisoner-rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s was part of a broader system of social movements of the time. The prisoner-rights movement and its adherents contested religious discrimination by prison officials and actively supported legal challenges to conditions of confinement. As the prison and jail population escalated through the 1980s and 1990s, so did civil rights lawsuits challenging conditions of confinement. All of that changed, however, with the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) of 1996, which limited prisoners’ lawsuits through imposing filing restrictions, requiring filing fees, and limiting damage awards. The PLRA shifted the burden of inmate grievances from the federal court system to the states. Although in existence since 1973, California’s inmate grievance procedure adopted new significance after the passage of PLRA, when it became necessary for prisoners to exhaust the internal grievance system before seeking access to the courts.
After the passage of the PLRA, the number of grievances submitted to prison authorities in California skyrocketed. By carefully combing through case records and drawing on the language used in the grievance filings and associated reviews, Calavita and Jenness draw attention to grievances filed for apparently minor complaints as well as for very serious issues. Grievances relate to a range of different concerns, from medical needs to living conditions. Calavita and Jenness also show that claims are routinely, often summarily, denied. But the process of filing grievances and the exercise of denying claims are essential elements of a socio-legal system that promises equal opportunity yet produces inequality at nearly every turn.
In Chapters Three and Four, Calavita and Jenness draw on data from interviews with prisoners to explore how they talk about and understand the grievances they file. Filing grievances is an important way for prisoners to identify and make claims on formal rights. In Chapters Five and Six, Calavita and Jenness draw on data from interviews with corrections employees to explore how they talk about and understand the grievances they process. Processing grievances can be, and often is, a highly bureaucratic exercise of power. Contrasting the accounts of the grievance process from these different perspectives powerfully illustrates a seemingly impassable chasm between the expression of legal rights by inmates and their recognition by corrections employees. The routine dismissal—or failure to grant—grievances is a clear indication of the institutionalized repressiveness of the prison system.
Appealing to Justice is an important and timely book that warrants serious attention by scholars, advocates, and policymakers. It is brilliantly crafted, carefully researched, powerfully argued, and eloquently written. It is of broad relevance to those interested in the legal system, punishment, and inequality. It is likely to be of interest to readers with a wide range of expertise interested in the ways in which institutional logics intersect with existing inequalities to generate and maintain a repressive system that creates an illusion of access to justice.