Prison Litigation Under the PLRA

Volume I of the Habeashelper Press PLRA Field Manual mapped the procedural gates the Prison Litigation Reform Act puts in front of the federal courthouse door - who counts as a prisoner, what counts as a prison-conditions case, exhaustion of administrative remedies, filing fees and in forma pauperis, the three-strikes rule, sua sponte screening, and pleading standards after Twombly and Iqbal. Volume II begins where those gates end.

Volume II addresses the substantive claims a prisoner or pretrial detainee can bring in federal court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, the constitutional standards the courts apply to each claim, the PLRA's distinctive overlays on damages, attorney's fees, and prospective relief, and the trial-practice questions that arise once a case has survived screening and made it into discovery.

Seventeen chapters walk the case from claim to judgment: Section 1983 for state and local prisoners; Bivens for federal prisoners; Eighth Amendment conditions-of-confinement, medical-care, and excessive-force claims; Fourteenth Amendment claims by pretrial detainees; First Amendment free-exercise, speech, and retaliation claims and RLUIPA; qualified immunity; the physical-injury requirement of Section 1997e(e); attorney's fees under Section 1997e(d); compensatory, nominal, and punitive damages after the PLRA; discovery in prisoner cases; summary judgment practice; trial practice; prospective relief under Section 3626; termination of prospective relief; consent decrees and PLRA-compliant settlements; class actions; and appeals. Each chapter is grounded in the governing Supreme Court decisions, the circuit applications, and the PLRA-specific procedural rules the federal district courts actually enforce.

Twelve appendices complete the volume with practice materials a litigator can use the week they file: practice checklists; a qualified-immunity motion template; discovery templates for medical-care and excessive-force cases; an expert-disclosure template; a fee petition; a circuit-by-circuit survey of the physical-injury requirement covering every federal circuit; model jury instructions; a settlement template; a table of cases; a table of statutes; and a subject index.

Like Volume I, Volume II is citation-checked against the published reporter and the United States Code as of early 2026. An internal erratum record is maintained by Habeashelper Press and supplied on request.

Primary audience: prisoners' lawyers, civil-rights practitioners, public-defender offices, clinical professors and students, court staff attorneys, and pro se litigants with some prior federal-court exposure.