The Bane!
The Inmate Grievance System

The constitutional idea was that a citizen could always seek the "impartial" review of the courts against the tyranny of the Department Of Corrections ("DOC"). The conservative fanatics objected. Their view was that prisoners should have no recourse. Prisoners should have to silently endure every tyranny. They should not be allowed to seek fair legal review.

By and large, Conservatives are phonies. They like to pretend that they want to protect and enforce the Constitution. We all realize that that's only true in cases where the Constitution benefits them. In other situations, where the Constitution benefits one of the many conservative hate-objects, the conservatives are anxious to scoff the law.

The fanatics enacted a number of insidious measures to bar prisoners from their First Amendment right to petition the courts. As with most phonies, the conservatives are clever and devious.

One clever scheme was PLOY 4, called the "Inmate Grievance System." This serpent looks innocent enough. The new law says that before the prisoner can go to court, he must "exhaust administrative remedies." That means that the prisoner must complain to the captors who are tormenting him before he can go to court. In turn, this scheme allows the thugs in the DOC to devise systems of red-tape and frustration which prevent the prisoner from "exhausting" the supposed remedies which are supposedly available.

Sixty-one expensive executives and lawyers cooked up the "Inmate Grievance System." It was engineered to protect the DOC and DOC thugs from having to face up to court action for their abuses of the law. Like most of what DOC does, the system is completely crooked! It is administered by public servants committed to protecting the DOC. At the same time, it harms the trouble-maker prisoners who dare to complain.

And so, we have "The Bane!" The real-life bureaucrat who administers the scheme at the local prison.

As you know, a "bane" is a killer, a source of harm or ruin. A bane is, as Webster says, "poison!" The Bane of the Inmate Grievance System, delights in doing just those things: killing the grievance and ruining the prisoner's access to the court, poisoning the man's constitutional rights. You pay the The Bane to do this unsavory job. Aren't you proud?!

You want some examples of how your system works and I'm here to oblige. Here are a few real-life examples of The Bane doing ruin!

A guard stole some personal clothing from a prisoner. The prisoner complained about the theft of his treasured personal property. The Bane (an oddly emaciated and jaundiced, older member of the staff) refused to process the grievance saying that mere theft by a guard wasn't a "grieveable" matter. The Bane thereby barred the prisoner from recovering in court for a few hundred dollars worth of clothing.

The prison censor seized some merchandise catalogs from the mail and the first-class envelope in which the catalogs were sent. The catalogs were just your ordinary gift ware items used to buy gifts for a prisoner's loved-ones. The prisoner wanted the envelope so that it could be scanned as an illustration for this website. Calling the grievance "absolutely frivolous," The Bane punished the prisoner by forbidding him to file further grievances. His access to the court was eliminated by a DOC bureaucrat resentful of his contributions to the Web.

The prison is dangerous and full of safety and fire violations. A prisoner filed a grievance in an effort to get a few of the worst violations corrected. The Bane refused to process the grievance. The prisoner had not been "personally" injured and his complaints about fire risk were "speculation." The prisoner was barred from court! Fuck prisoner safety! In addition, the prisoner was punished for his complaint!

It was turning winter. A prisoner complained that a block had no heat and hadn't had any heat for years; water in the toilets froze! The bane refused to process the grievance because the prisoner had not first approached "appropriate staff" to have the problem "addressed." Who, the prisoner wondered, were the "heat-police?" The prisoner was effectively prevented from going into court with a cruel and unusual punishment claim for frostbitten gonads.

An Hispanic prisoner with AIDS complained that he was fired from his job as a sweeper and refused medical care on account of his disease. He was literally being killed and tormented because of his terrible illness and his race.

The Bane refused to process the prisoner's grievance. The prisoner had failed to beg the staff to stop harassing him! To you and me it seems silly for the victim to have to beg his harasser to stop tormenting him before he can complain to the authorities. That's not the way the "Inmate Grievance System" works. Prisoners are required to crawl before they dare to protest being abused. Besides, The Bane liked the fact that the man was being harassed and was suffering.

You'd think that a man with a fatal disease already had plenty of stress in his life and plenty of unpleasantness, but not for The Bane. The Bane arranged for the suffering prisoner to be punished by having the plumbers turn off the water supply to his cell and by interfering with the mail he was sending to support groups asking for help. The prisoner was barred from petitioning the court to redress the danger to his life. The Bane didn't seem to mind. After all, the prisoner was only an Hispanic, and a sick one at that!

Prison administrators had given some valuable under-the-table deals to their local cronies. Among the ways that the contractors were breaking Pennsylvania law was that they failed to employ any minorities or women. A prisoner claiming his right as a citizen and a taxpayer, tried to complain to The Bane. Minorities and obeying the law are not things to be raised in the phony grievance system. What did The Bane care about "minorities?" (Now women, that's a whole different matter for The Bane!)

The grievance was not processed because it was "speculative." Minorities don't count. What does the prison care about law. That's for the sucker-citizens. The prison was barred from the courts.

It's clear that the conservative-crazies who have slithered into power, want the Constitution and the laws to be ignored. The only "rights" they care about are their own rights to exploit and enslave. The "Inmate Grievance System" is a conservative/DOC lie.

When you let the fox guard the hen house, the chances are the hens will not fare very well.