1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910825784303321

Autore

Calavita Kitty

Titolo

Appealing to justice : prisoner grievances, rights, and carceral logic / / Kitty Calavita and Valerie Jenness

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Oakland, California : , : University of California Press, , 2015

©2015

ISBN

0-520-28418-6

0-520-95983-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (264 p.)

Disciplina

365/.64

Soggetti

Grievance procedures for prisoners - California

Prisoners - Civil rights - California

Prisoners - California - Social conditions

Prisons - Law and legislation - California

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Tables -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction: Rights, Captivity, and Disputing behind Bars -- 2. "Needles," "Haystacks," and "Dead Watchdogs": The Prison Litigation Reform Act and the Inmate Grievance System in California -- 3. Naming, Blaming, and Claiming in an Uncommon Place of Law -- 4. Prisoners' Counternarratives: "This Is a Prison and It's Not Disneyland" -- 5. "Narcissists," "Liars," Process, and Paper: The Dilemmas and Solutions of Grievance Handlers -- 6. Administrative Consistency, Downstream Consequences, and "Knuckleheads" -- 7. Grievance Narratives as Frames of Meaning, Profiles of Power -- 8. Conclusion -- Appendix A: Procedures for Interviews with Prisoners -- Appendix B: Procedures for Interviews with CDCR Personnel -- Appendix C: Coding the Sample of Grievances -- Cases -- Notes -- References -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Having gained unique access to California prisoners and corrections officials and to thousands of prisoners' written grievances and institutional responses, Kitty Calavita and Valerie Jenness take us inside one of the most significant, yet largely invisible, institutions in the United States. Drawing on sometimes startlingly candid interviews with



prisoners and prison staff, as well as on official records, the authors walk us through the byzantine grievance process, which begins with prisoners filing claims and ends after four levels of review, with corrections officials usually denying requests for remedies. Appealing to Justice is both an unprecedented study of disputing in an extremely asymmetrical setting and a rare glimpse of daily life inside this most closed of institutions. Quoting extensively from their interviews with prisoners and officials, the authors give voice to those who are almost never heard from. These voices unsettle conventional wisdoms within the sociological literature-for example, about the reluctance of vulnerable and/or stigmatized populations to name injuries and file claims, and about the relentlessly adversarial subjectivities of prisoners and correctional officials-and they do so with striking poignancy. Ultimately, Appealing to Justice reveals a system fraught with impediments and dilemmas, which delivers neither justice, nor efficiency, nor constitutional conditions of confinement.