WITNESS
Alvin J. Bronstein founded the National Prison Project in Washington in 1972 and was Director until 1996. He is presently Director-Emeritus of the Project and a consultant to the National ACLU. Mr. Bronstein is U.S. Board Member of Penal Reform International (London) and a member of the Assembly of Delegates, World Organization Against Torture (Geneva). He has been a consultant to state and federal correctional agencies, has appeared as an expert witness, and has authored numerous books and articles on human rights and corrections.
Mr. Bronstein began his private law practice in New York in 1952, before becoming Chief Staff Counsel of the Lawyers Constitutional Committee from 1964-68 in Jackson, Mississippi. He litigated civil rights cases during that time in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. From 1969-71, he was at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, first as a Fellow and then Associate Director.
Among many awards he has received is a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1989 for his contributions in the development of prisoners rights and corrections law. He has been regularly listed as one of the hundred most influential lawyers in America by the National Law Journal and has been honored by various law schools and organizations. He has argued numerous cases in state and federal trial and appellate courts as well as the Supreme Court of the United States.
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STATEMENT
As a natural outgrowth of the post-World War II civil rights and civil liberties movements, and aided by the public awareness that resulted from the explosion at Attica in 1971, judicial attitudes began to move away drastically from the notion of de facto rightlessness that had been almost universally accepted for prisoners. …Thus for more than twenty years, the courts carefully examined what went on behind the curtain, and set limits on the government's curtailment of the rights and civil liberties of prisoners.…
But times changed. …The "harsh on prisoner" movement began a widespread attack on the very notion of prison litigation, insisting that frivolous lawsuits were tying up the courts and activist liberal federal judges were tying the hands of prison administrators by micro-managing every area of prison management through intrusive consent decrees. …It is interesting to note that none of these claims came from senior prison officials. They came instead from state attorneys general, prosecutors, members of Congress and conservative media. This campaign of misinformation brought about the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) which severely restricted prisoners' access to the courts and the power of the courts to ameliorate bad prison conditions.
I am neither foolish enough nor young enough to believe that bringing the Constitution into our jails and prisons will solve all or most of the issues concerning the problems that flow from the incarceration of 2.3 million men, women and children in the United States. …We must begin to think and speak in terms of human rights as we talk about prisoners.
Excerpted from a written statement submitted to the Commission
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