PRISONERS' RIGHTS

In 1996, Congress passed a law that made it much harder for inmates
to challenge abusive treatment. It has contributed significantly to
the bad conditions -- including the desperate overcrowding -- that
prevail today. The law must be fixed.

In the name of clamping down on frivolous lawsuits, the Prison Reform
Litigation Act barred prisoners from suing prisons and jails unless
they could show that they had suffered a physical injury. Prison
officials have used this requirement to block lawsuits challenging
all sorts of horrific conditions, including sexual abuse.

The law also requires inmates to present their claims to prison
officials before filing a suit. The prisons set the rules for those
grievance procedures, notes Stephen Bright, the president of the
Southern Center for Human Rights, and they have an incentive to make
the rules as complicated as possible, so prisoners will not be able
to sue. "That has become the main purpose of many grievance systems,"
Mr. Bright told Congress last year.

In the last Congress, Representative Robert Scott, Democrat of
Virginia, sponsored the Prison Abuse Remedies Act. It would have
eliminated the physical injury requirement and made it harder for
prison officials to get suits dismissed for failure to exhaust
grievance procedures. It would have exempted juveniles, who are
especially vulnerable to abuse, from the law's restrictions.

The bill's supporters need to try again this year. Conditions in the
nation's overcrowded prisons are becoming increasingly dangerous;
recently, there have been major riots in California and Kentucky.
Prisoner lawsuits are a way of reining in the worst abuses, which
contribute to prison riots and other violence.

The main reason to pass the new law, though, is human decency. The
only way to ensure that inmates are not mistreated is to guarantee
them a fair opportunity to bring their legitimate complaints to court.