Banned in the Bighouse: With elimination of prison law libraries in Arizona, inmates mustrely on paralegals to prepare petitionsAuthor(s): JILL SCHACHNER CHANENSource: ABA Journal, Vol. 84, No. 3 (MARCH 1998), p. 26Published by: American Bar AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27839865 .

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?^ NEWS

Banned in the Bighouse With elimination of prison law libraries in Arizona, inmates must rely on paralegals to prepare petitions

Laur?ane L?tzau ?s one of 14 paralegals hired by the Arizona Department of Corrections to provide legal aid to inmates, reducing time and money spent on frivolous litigation.

BY JILL SCHACHNER CHANEN

In

a move being watched closely by civil libertarians and correc

tional officials alike, the Arizona Department of Corrections has eliminated its prison law libraries and is instead providing limited legal assistance to inmates through paralegals.

Implemented last summer, the new system is designed to save money and reduce frivolous inmate

litigation. The changes come on the heels of Lewis v. Casey, 116 S. Ct. 2174 (1996), which overturned an

injunction requiring Arizona to pro vide inmates with well-stocked law libraries. The lower court order had

specified everything from the edu cational levels of the librarians to the hours of library operation.

State officials have seized on

language in Justice Antonin Sca lia's opinion in Lewis stating that "the Constitution does not require that prisoners be able to conduct generalized research, but only that they be able to present their griev ances to the courts."

The cost of maintaining the former libraries was in excess of

$650,000 a year, officials say. Now general prison libraries include only a core collection of legal texts. Gone are the federal, state and re

gional case law reporters, the legal encyclopedias and the federal and state annotated statutes.

The 16 law books that remain on the shelves include non-annotat ed Arizona statutes, state and dis trict court rules, portions of the U.S. Code, court forms and a few

self-help manuals.

No 'Nonqualified' Complaints Inmates must rely on 14 para

legals hired on an independent con tractor basis, who will help prepare fact-based complaints in four "qual ified" areas: appeals from convic tions, civil rights claims, habeas corpus petitions, and challenges to conditions of confinement. Parale

gals are barred from giving assis tance after a complaint is filed or in other types of litigation, such as

family law cases. "We will no longer entertain

'nonqualified' complaints," states Terry L. Stewart, director of the Arizona Department of Corrections. "Prisoners will have to go to court

directly on their own for those." Marjorie Rifkin, a staff attor

ney with the ACLU's National Pris ons Project, finds Arizona's new

system "rife with problems." She maintains that Arizona

has effectively vested the parale gals with Article 3 judicial powers to decide whether a particular case is worthy of state assistance. "They have clearly put these paralegals, who are completely unqualified, into the position of making the de cision as to whether the claims are

meritorious."

Rifkin also questions the deci sion to remove library resources, es

pecially the reporters. "What does the inmate do to respond to a brief that recites case law?" she asks.

The lack of case reporters trou bles other civil libertarians as well.

"Very little of the meat of the law is in the federal statutes," says Ira Robbins, professor of criminal law at American University's law school and the author of Habeas Corpus Checklists and Prisoners and the Law. "This is particularly true for challenges to conditions, civil rights claims and habeas cor

pus petitions. There is so much Su preme Court development."

Another observer, however, en

dorses a system that provides ac cess to courts through quality legal assistance.

Lynn Branham, a visiting se nior research scientist at the Uni versity of Illinois' Institute of Gov ernmental and Public Affairs, cites her own 1996 study on pro se in mate litigation. It found that 70 percent of prisoners cannot compre hend or synthesize material from complex texts, which legal research requires. This low aptitude rate is an argument for providing quality legal help to prisoners rather than law libraries, she says.

Yet Branham criticizes Ari zona for doing nothing more than

implementing a minimal system of access. Corrections departments need to create policies that de crease the number of frivolous claims while ensuring that merito rious ones are processed efficiently and effectively, she says.

Arizona correctional officials, for their part, vow to review their system after six months and make any necessary changes. If the state does not act on its own, it may have a push from the courts: Sixteen lawsuits have been filed challeng ing the new system.

26 ABA JOURNAL / MARCH 1998 ABAJ/TOM GERCZYNSKI

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