NCJ Number
130988
Date Published
1990
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This examination of recent court cases that affect jails and jail programs determines whether there are any identifiable trends in the number of law suits or the types of issues upon which law suits are being filed against jails.
Abstract
The data base established was drawn from the publication "Detention and Corrections Caselaw Catalog" and included 1,107 legal cases involving prison and jail litigation from 1979 through 1989. A number of more recent cases were also added to the trend analysis. This study first reviews general trends and then focuses on court cases pertinent to inmate access to the courts and civil rights issues. The trend over the past ten years has apparently moved from challenges based on specific conditions and failure to provide for basic human needs to litigation that examined administrative procedures and tests for the limits on the quality of services provided. The 1988 challenges in the areas of access to court and civil rights addressed the quality of institutional life and the extent to which that quality might be restricted due to the diagnosis of an inmate as having AIDS. Three of the civil rights deprivation cases in 1988 pertained to whether an inmate gets free dental hygiene teeth cleaning, the late delivery of free dentures to an inmate, and the inconvenient scheduling of dental appointments for an inmate. Overall, trends in jail litigation are difficult to identify, since 75-80 percent of the cases pertain to prisons rather than jails. 2 notes and a table of 20 cases