Prisoner Grievances in California: Disputing Behind Bars

该项目审查了加州惩教和改造部(CDCR)的囚犯申诉制度，该部门的33个成人监狱关押着美国最多的监狱人口。这项研究将囚犯的不满视为纠纷，考察了监狱极端等级设置下冲突解决的动态。重点是从囚犯和监狱官员的角度看申诉过程的意义，这些意义如何被记录在书面申诉叙述中，它们与不同机构所在地的联系，以及它们的互动质量。研究假设包括这样的预期，即大多数囚犯的申诉作为法律手段都失败了，而且这一过程严重不对称；囚犯提出申诉的动机多种多样；囚犯的叙述在与官员的回应互动中随着时间的推移而变化和演变，而官方的叙述往往更稳定，反映了遏制干扰的制度战略；以及，尽管内部申诉制度可能代表着一种狭隘的、个性化的囚犯辩论方法，但它可能在主观层面上赋予权力。这些数据来自CDCR年度报告；CDCR的基于罪犯的信息系统；随机抽样的456份囚犯申诉表格；以及对加州三所男子监狱的监狱官员和囚犯的半结构化采访。这项研究将增加关于法律意识、纠纷和冲突解决的理论文献。它将阐明具有深远宪法和人类后果的问题，更大的希望是揭示囚犯质疑监禁条件的主要程序中有待改进的领域。

This project examines the inmate grievance system in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) whose thirty-three adult prisons house the largest prison population in the United States. Treating inmate grievances as disputes, this research examines the dynamics of conflict resolution in the extreme hierarchical setting of prison. The focus is on the meaning of the grievance process from the point of view of inmates and prison officials, how these meanings get inscribed in the written grievance narratives, their links to different institutional locations, and their interactive quality. The research hypotheses incorporate expectations that most inmate grievances fail as legal maneuvers, and that the process is heavily asymmetrical; that prisoners have various incentives for filing a grievance; that inmates' narratives shift and evolve over time in interaction with officials' responses, while official narratives tend to be more stable and reflect institutional strategies for the containment of disruption; and, that while the internal grievance system may represent a narrow and individualizing method of prisoner contestation, nonetheless it may be empowering at a subjective level. The data are from CDCR annual reports; the CDCR's Offender Based Information System; a random sample of 456 inmate grievance forms; and, semi-structured interviews with prison officials and inmates in three California men's prisons. The research will add to the theoretical literature on legal consciousness, disputing, and conflict resolution. It will shed light on issues of profound constitutional and human consequences, with the larger hope of revealing areas for improvement in the principal process whereby inmates contest conditions of confinement.