Joe Carlson, reporting for the Times of Northwest Indiana, has a story about prisoner suits against Lake County for the conditions of its jail. A nitpick: he states that the suits are against the “Lake County Jail” — if they are, they should be dismissed quickly since the jail is a structure and not an entity subject to a federal lawsuit. I’ve successfully had claims dismissed on this basis.

Carlson notes that the Lake and Porter county jails have been the subject of 39 prisoner lawsuits most of which he describes as “rambling, hand-written screeds that have been dismissed by judges before the jails could file answers.” Under the Prisoner Litigation Relief Act, federal suits filed by prisoners are to be reviewed by the court before being served on the defendant, thereby requiring a response. The standard of review does not require the judge to believe the claim for it to advance, rather the judge is required to determine whether, if all facts alleged in the complaint are taken as true, the plaintiff would be entitled to some sort of relief under the law.

The quality of prisoner lawsuits, unsurprisingly, is as varied as the prison population itself. Some are incomprehensible. Others are surprisingly well written. There is one inmate in particular I get a lawsuit from every two years or so whose obvious abilities cause me to be a little disappointed when he inevitably gets into another scrape with the law. He’s obviously a sharp guy, but he has problems with drugs, a chaotic life, and anger that turn him into a drain on society when he could be much more.

But, I digress. According to the article; in addition to several suits involving staph infections at the Lake County Jail:

Van Bokkelen gave Robert Stanley Cranshaw permission to sue the Lake County Jail under a wide range of claims, including denial of toothpaste, failure to allow inmates to use the bathroom for 10 hours at a time and serving of meals that are not adequate in portion or nutrition.

It’s an almost identical set of claims for which Lake County inmate James Wesley Hunt received permission to sue.

That last line about the “identical set of claims” reminds me of another phenomenon of prisoner lawsuits – the jail house lawyer. Every so often, a guy shows up in jail and helps the other guys with their litigation. (And I use the word “guy” advisedly — I don’t think I’ve ever had a jail lawsuit from a woman.) Sometimes this will result in a flurry of similarly written suits, often advancing the same sorts of claims.