Criminal Justice Policies
Repository: Criminal Justice Document Repository
By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse
July 1, 2022
This repository launched in November 2014. It includes policies from nearly every state prison system and a dozen or so of the nation’s largest jails.
Repository Summary
We are currently posting policies relating to prisoner grievances, mail and publications, and visiting. In addition, we have inmate handbooks—some state-wide, others facility-specific—from nearly all the states, as of 2015. And we post grievance statistics covering varying periods from 2007 to 2014 for about twenty states. Many of these documents were posted by the relevant governmental entity, but for many more a state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was necessary. (Those FOIA requests, made by University of Michigan law students, are also posted.)
On a separate page, we also post 2006 versions of prison grievance policies. And from 2018, we've added disability policies from all the state prison systems that had them.
Publications/Resources
By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse
October 15, 2015
This is a searchable and sortable repository for prison and jail policy documents. It includes policies, from nearly every state prison system and a dozen or so of the nation’s largest jails, governing prisoner grievances, mail and publications, and visiting. It also includes inmate handbooks—some state-wide, others facility-specific—from nearly all the states. And it includes previously unavailable grievance statistics covering varying periods from 2007 to 2014, for about twenty states. Many of these documents were posted by the relevant governmental entity, but for many more a state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was necessary. A more detailed view is available here. This page includes the policies relevant to this report: "Prison and Jail Grievance Policies: Lessons from a Fifty-State Survey." More details available at https://clearinghouse.net/policy/2/5.
By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse
June 12, 2022
This folder includes sample disability-related policies from state prison systems. It is part of the foundation of the Clearinghouse's Project: "Effective Communication for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing and Blind and Low Vision People in Jails and Prisons," which is available at https://clearinghouse.net/policy/1/1.
By: Margo Schlanger
October 1, 2006
This 2006 list links to grievance polices for every state prison system, and a number of jails, organized by state. Private prison grievance policies appear at the bottom of the list. Many of these policies were first gathered for the briefs filed in Jones v. Bock and Williams v. Overton, in the U.S. Supreme Court, by Yale Law School's Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization. Those briefs (linked) are good resources for discussion of inmate grievance policies nationwide.
By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse
December 31, 2018
This folder includes disability-related policies from state prison systems, collected in 2018. It also includes a spreadsheet compiling and cataloging these policies.
