Oh, The Injustice!

I have a friend in prison who we sometimes call the "Grievance Man." He writes a lot of grievances on the prison administration, both for himself and for others. Many of the issues he grieves are legitimate injustices, but as I have often told him, you have to pick your battles. 

The grievance system was set up to give prisoners a voice against injustices they experience inside of prison, from corrections officers, administrative officials, and other corrections staff. You might call it a system for accountability. The unfortunate reality is that the system is deeply flawed and does not provide much justice for prisoners who experience legitimate injustice. If a prisoner is sexually harassed, intentionally put in danger by corrections staff, or if his property is stolen or destroyed by corrections staff, for example, the prisoner is afforded an opportunity through the grievance process to request corrective action. The grievance process is also very frequently used against the medical care and food services provided to prisoners. This system was originally intended to ensure the prisoners' due process rights are protected and to be a filter against frivolous lawsuits. In order to file a civil lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC), prisoners must first exhaust their grievance remedies, through all three steps, which can take months to complete. Unfortunately, the grievance process has become a nearly useless remedy for injustice, partly because prison officials often refuse to take grievances seriously and partly because some prisoners use the grievance process to try to resolve petty problems. 

First, the grievance is heard by whoever is in authority over the person or persons whom the grievance is written against. The normal response to nearly any grievance, if it is not rejected by the grievance coordinator as "untimely" or for some other reason, is to summarily deny any remedy. Most responses include some line about finding that no policy has been violated, or simply denying the prisoner's accusations. After the first step, the prisoner may appeal to step two, which for many grievances goes to the Warden's office for review. These, too, are nearly always summarily dismissed as frivolous. The final step, step three, is to send the grievance to the regional coordinator. These prison officials are MDOC administrative personnel whose job it is to protect the MDOC. Although I am sure it happens, I am not aware of a single prisoner in my eight years in prison who has been successful on a step three grievance. After the final step, the prisoner may pay a $350 filing fee and file a civil lawsuit against the MDOC. I know of several prisoners who have done this and successfully won a judgment against the medical staff in Michigan prisons for medical malpractice, but I don't know of any that have been successful for other injustices, at least in the last twenty years.

The MDOC grievance system is a broken and ineffective remedy for holding MDOC employees accountable for misconduct and for protecting prisoners' rights. A prisoner who abuses the process by writing large numbers of grievances earns a reputation among staff members as someone who complains a lot (or worse, he is retaliated against by staff), and this rarely helps to resolve any problems--in fact, it often makes them worse. The reality is that injustices happen in prison, sometimes quite frequently. This often happens when there is a large disparity in the power dynamic. But the other reality is that many prisoners have a heightened sense of injustice and poor conflict resolution skills. If prisoners were trained in conflict resolution skills (Chance For Life does offer this in prison to some prisoners), and real injustices were taken seriously by MDOC staff, perhaps the number of grievances the MDOC deals with would decline significantly. 

I don't know if my friend will stop writing grievances anytime soon, but as much as I give him a hard time for it, I appreciate his passion for holding those in power accountable. I hope he becomes a powerful voice for genuine transformation. We need people to passionately care like he does.