Many of the inmates in the Montana Correctional System have been forced to utilize the internal grievance process, which is tilted against the inmate.
Now, yet another hurdle has been placed on the inmate with the May 13th, 2009, policy updates. Policy now requires that an inmate attach the staff’s response on the Informal to grievance and this requires the inmate to either give up his copy of the staff’s response (which he will never see again) or make a photocopy at the library at .20c per page.
The population needs to understand a few things, in that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) requires you to exhaust through the internal grievance process, it does not however require you to pay to exhaust, which is essentially what grievance policy 3.3.3. (f.) (5) is stating.
Article II, Section 16 of the Montana Constitution states in part:
“…justice shall be administered without sale, denial, or delay.”
In all four stages of the grievance process, the forms are made up of three (3) parts (white, canary, and pink) and the white is to be forwarded to the grievance coordinator by the responding staff. If you give up your copy of the response from staff and/or attach a photocopy of it to the grievance, then you are fulfilling the duties of the responding staff.
The prison population needs to grasp the fact that a state employee is not unlike a chimpanzee, with training they can accomplish even the most simple of tasks like forwarding necessary paperwork to the grievance coordinators office.
Robert Rose, in his 2009 letter regarding REPORTING STAFF MISCONDUCT hit the nail on the head. MDOC and MSP staff can be held accountable through the “Mandatory Misconduct Reporting” process, even for something as simple as failing to adhere to policy for not forwarding the necessary paperwork to the grievance coordinator after responding.
If your grievance is blocked, refused, or denied because you refuse to buy your way through the internal grievance process that is to be free, well then, you have an even stronger case against Mr. Ferriter and his fellow primates.
~Douglas R. Boese #24525 | MSP
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