We Must Put an End to Frivolous Inmate Lawsuits

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We Must Put an End to Frivolous Inmate Lawsuits

Our forefathers were bright enough to establish a system of government with a series of checks and balances to maintain a balanced government. For the past decade a series of checks and balances has begun to fail our government. In our failing system of government inmates have taken advantage of the court system and have flooded it with an inconceivable number of frivolous lawsuits. Laurel Walters, a writer for the Christian Science Monitor, investigated inmates' lawsuits and found that these "recreational litigators...are suing the courts as an intramural sports activity." Action needs to be taken in order to rectify and protect "US" from this squandering of our tax payer provided funds and resources. Today in a world when knowledge is power, I'm ready to hand other tax payers an entire empire.

The United States (US) and "us" the tax payers are being taken advantage of and it is time that those in power begin to notice. Linda Greenhouse, in a New York Times article, cites one of the few to become aware of this problem. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist feels, "prisoners often squander judicial resources with little offsetting benefit to anyone." Our Supreme Court Chief Justice has realized this shortcoming, and it is about time the rest of "us" wake-up too. For over a decade our legislative branch has been dragging its feet and slow to react to this extremely costly prison industry.

Eight-hundred inmate lawsuits costing $1.7 million were filed in Ohio in 1995 and as many as 95 percent of those cases were dismissed. A total of 53,312 inmate lawsuits were filed nationwide in federal courts in 1994, this comes at a total of $113 billion dollars* of tax money esse...

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...Cited

Duhaime, Lloyd. "Outrageous Lawsuits." WWLIA: World Wide Legal Information Association. http://wwlia.org/lawsuit.html

Freedman, Eric. "Two inmates ordered to pay costs of lawsuits." Detroit News. Aug. 13, 1993. B6.

Fugate, Larry. "New law cracks down on frivolous inmate lawsuits." Source News & Reports." July 19, 1996. http://sddtsun.sddt.com/~columbus/Files3/9607193.html

Greenhouse, Linda. High court, changing recent course, makes it harder for prisoners to sue. New York Times. June 29, 1995. B7.

Harris, Sandra Ann. "People Are Talking: Crime: Inmate lawsuits costly to taxpayers." Detroit Free Press. October 23, 1995.

Officials to fight frivolous inmate lawsuits." New York Times. February 5, 1996. B2.

Walters, Laurel Shaper. "States rewrite laws to week out suits for cruel and unusual Jello." Christian Science Monitor. October 16, 1995.

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