Crying Wolves, Paper Tigers, and Busy Beavers—Oh My!: A New Approach to Pro Se Prisoner Litigation

To say that the United States is infatuated with incarceration would be a gross understatement. As a result of “tough on-crime” laws, the United States has “the largest prison population in the world, with more than 2.3 million persons behind bars on any given day” and it “also has the world’s highest per capita rate of incarceration” with a rate that is “five to ten times higher than those of other industrialized democracies like England and Wales . . . . Canada . . . , and Sweden.” Due in part to prison population increases, the conditions of U.S. prisons are atrocious. Prisons are often overcrowded, “which in turn leads to an increase in violence, neglect, and gross mistreatment.”