Grievances have been around since the early 1970s, but they became central to U.S. prisons following the 1996 passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act. The PLRA required incarcerated people to exhaust all institutional remedies available before filing a federal lawsuit, meaning that an incarcerated person who wants to sue must first go through their prison’s internal complaint system.

Although every state’s grievance process is different, the first step is usually to try resolving the complaint informally. If that fails, the incarcerated person files a complaint with a grievance coordinator at their facility. If the filing is denied, the filer can appeal the denial with staff, then prison administration, then the state department of corrections and, finally, the courts. 

At each step, the case is judged not only on its merits, but on whether incarcerated people have followed the institution’s grievance timelines and filed paperwork correctly. Not doing so often results in a dismissal. Critics of the grievance process say that it gives prisons too much latitude to hold themselves accountable and blocks outside oversight.

In the stories below, writers from across the United States weigh the benefits and drawbacks of filing grievances, as well as how results differ based on experience, identity and geography.

— E.B. Zimmerman, Learning manager and managing editor of PJP Inside 

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“Do People in Prison Have a Right to Be Heard?” by Jeffrey McKee: In McKee’s two decades of incarceration, he has filed over 300 grievances, resulting in 10 lawsuits. Through firsthand experience, he shows how grievers are often met with retaliation instead of resolution and proposes his own solution to the dysfunctional grievance and appeals system: granting incarcerated people the vote.

“Riots, Protests and Double Standards” by Reginald Stephen: Stephen examines the tools incarcerated people in New York have to stand up to staff misconduct. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and the Jan. 6, 2001, attack at the Capitol, he describes how grievance appeals are both a tool for accountability and a method of intimidation that particularly impact incarcerated people of color.

“At This Private Prison, Hawaiians Are Treated Worse Than Mainlanders” by James Mancuso: Mancuso, a PJP senior reporter, describes the unequal treatment Hawaiian men receive at Saguaro Correctional Center, a private prison in Arizona where Mancuso was housed until 2024. This includes a dysfunctional grievance appeals process that makes establishing a paper trail for legal action nearly impossible. Mancuso documents the resulting stress grievers faced and the isolation of being stranded far from home in a facility where institutional accountability is scarce.

How I Won a Lawsuit Against the Department of Corrections by Jeffery Shockley: In 2023, Shockley’s typewriter broke during a transfer between state prisons in Pennsylvania. Staff denied any responsibility for the broken typewriter, even though Shockley had evidence that they might be at fault. In his story, Shockley reflects on the long journey to a lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and gives advice for how to successfully navigate the grievance and appeals process.