Prison Litigation Under the PLRA

This is the Large-Print Edition of Volume II of the Habeashelper Press PLRA Field Manual. The complete content of the 6x9 standard edition (ISBN 979-8-950298-01-1) is typeset here at 14-point body type with 1.5-line leading on 8.5 x 11 inch pages following NLS/APH-aligned guidance for low-vision readers, prison law-library use, and clinical photocopying.

Volume I mapped the procedural gates the Prison Litigation Reform Act puts in front of the federal courthouse door - exhaustion, filing fees, three strikes, screening, and pleading. Volume II begins where those gates end. It takes up the substantive claims a prisoner or detainee can raise under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 and Bivens, the constitutional standards the courts apply, the PLRA's overlays on damages, fees, and prospective relief, and the trial-practice questions that follow once a case has survived screening.

Seventeen chapters trace the route from claim to judgment. Twelve appendices supply practice materials a litigator can use the week they file: claim-element checklists, a qualified-immunity research template, discovery requests for medical-care and excessive-force cases, an expert-disclosure template, a fee petition, a circuit-by-circuit physical-injury survey, jury instructions, a settlement template, and tables of cases and statutes.

Like the standard edition, this Large-Print Edition is citation-checked against the published reporter and the United States Code through early 2026.