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Inmate Litigation, Legal Access, and Prison Privatization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2022

Anna Gunderson
Anna Gunderson*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
*
Email: agunderson@lsu.edu
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Abstract

Debates over prison privatization neglect to consider differences in legal access across private and public prisons. I argue that private prisons experience lower filing rates than public prisons, and that cases brought against publicly traded private prison companies are less likely to be dismissed and more likely to succeed than similar cases against public prisons. I find evidence consistent with these claims, a result that is not driven by other explanations of judicial decision-making. This paper has implications for skepticism of private interests in public policymaking, and encourages investigation of access to justice for inmates in public and private custody.

Keywords

private prisonsinmate litigationjudicial politicsjudicial ideology
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , October 2023 , pp. 256 - 276
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association

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