Impact of Prisoner Litigation Reform, 1992-2000 [United States]
Description
In 1996, the United States Congress enacted two policies
to regulate the use of the legal system by state prisoners. They were
the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). The purpose of this research
project was to examine whether the PLRA and the AEDPA had their
intended effects of reducing the number of Section 1983 lawsuits and
habeas corpus petitions, respectively, at both the national and
circuit court levels. The researchers obtained data, from the Research
and Statistics Division of the Administrative Office of the United
States Courts, on the number of civil rights suits and the number of
habeas corpus petitions filed by state prisoners in district courts
from April 1992 to December 2000. These data were organized into
monthly increments. Dataset 1, Civil Rights Suits Filed, contains 105
cases, and Dataset 2, Habeas Corpus Petitions Filed, also contains 105
cases. The trends in civil rights suits filed (Dataset 1) and habeas
corpus petitions filed (Dataset 2) were measured by the number of
petitions filed per 10,000 state prisoners. Filing rates were measured
at the level of district courts, grouped together by the circuit court
that has jurisdiction over them.
Variables in Dataset 1, Civil Rights Suits Filed, include filing
date and the number of civil rights suits filed per 10,000 state
prisoners at the national level as well as for district courts within
each of the 11 circuits and the District of Columbia. An intervention
flag variable is also included. Variables in Dataset 2, Habeas Corpus
Petitions Filed, include filing date and the number of habeas
corpus petitions filed per 10,000 state prisoners at the national
level, as well as for district courts within each of the 11 circuits
and the District of Columbia. A pulse flag variable and two
intervention flag variables are also included.
Resources
| Name |
Format |
Description |
Link |
|
0 |
ICPSR20354.v1 |
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20354.v1 |
Tags
- convictions-law
- habeas-corpus
- prisoners-rights
- supreme-court-decisions
- legislative-impact
- civil-rights
- evaluation
- lawsuits
- prison-conditions
- judicial-decisions
- prison-inmates
- legislation