The 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act requires incarcerated people to pursue all available administrative remedies before filing a federal lawsuit. While some prisoners sought staff assistance with recovering stolen property or arranging a medical appointment, a state review of records returned no complaints of unconstitutional treatment or civil rights violations.
“None of the petitioners were found to have submitted any formal grievance to the Great Plains Correctional Center,” attorneys Lauren Ray and Lexie Norwood wrote in the filing.
U.S. District Judge Shon Erwin ordered the grievance history report on June 11 following back-and-forth filings between the plaintiffs and defendants. The prisoners will have 30 days to respond to the state’s report.
In response to the state’s initial motion to dismiss, which alluded to the lack of formal grievances over prison conditions, the prisoners claimed a hostile environment discouraged prisoners from seeking administrative relief and prison officials hindered their efforts at resolving the issue.
“Management at ODOC and the Great Plains Correctional Center attempted to intimidate honest correctional officers who refused to participate in sadistic measures and reported the events by completing incident reports,” attorneys Richard Labarthe and Alexey Tarasov wrote in a May filing. “This punitive response to staff highlights the hostile environment and discourages inmates from filing grievances, as it suggests that complaints would not only be ignored but might also lead to further retaliation.”
Oklahoma Watch reported in October that prisoners were held in the three-by-three-foot shower stalls for several hours or days without regular access to restrooms, water, bedding material or hygiene products. Two correctional officers working temporarily at the prison filed an incident report in August describing the conditions, triggering an internal Department of Corrections investigation.
The inspector general’s investigation confirmed that prisoners were held in the shower stalls for up to three days. The 200-page report noted that staff were overwhelmed with prisoners refusing to be housed in eight-man cells, causing a backlog in the prison’s restricted housing unit. Investigators ruled claims that staff were intentionally keeping some prisoners in the confined space as punishment as inconclusive.
LaBarthe, one of the Oklahoma City-area attorneys who agreed to represent the prisoners, said poor planning and a small dose of sadism combined to create unconstitutional conditions for dozens of prisoners housed in the shower stalls. He said some prisoners housed in the shower stalls became suicidal as the hours and days passed.
“Imagine the horror of having to be in that small space with your excrement,” LaBarthe said in an April 30 interview with Oklahoma Watch. “It’s barbaric and not worthy of our society to pretend that it’s not bad.”
LaBarthe and Tarasov said they hope to obtain a permanent injunction barring the Department of Corrections from housing prisoners in shower stalls. The agency said it no longer allows prison staff to house inmates in such a confined space.
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Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
