On November 20, 1988, a class-action lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on behalf of prisoners at Northampton County Prison challenging the adequacy of the prison law library materials and inmates' access to the courts. The plaintiff class was represented by the Philadelphia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. We do not have access to the original complaint or the ensuing court decree so we do not know whether the issues in the case were limited solely to inmates' access to the courts or if it covered institutions other than Northhampton.

On March 8, 1989, a consent decree was entered in the case. Serrano v. Northampton County Prison Commission, No. 88- 8966 (E.D.Pa.1989). It required a number of changes to law library policies, including establishing hours of operation, ensuring current volumes of a number of specific law reporters, rules and journals, providing inmates with timely access to materials requested that were not in the library, ensuring a working typewriter, and staffing the prison law library with an inmate trained in legal research to assist inmates in research. In subsequent separate litigation concerning adequacy of law library materials, prison officials submitted an affidavit attesting to the procedures they employed to remain in compliance with the 1989 decree.

According to the docket on PACER, the case was closed in June 1990. Because the docket is devoid of content save a listing of parties, all information about this case was obtained from a reference to the court decree in Thomas v. Olander, 877 F.Supp. 242 (E.D. Pa. 1995), a different case that addressed adequacy of law library provisions.

Denise Lieberman - 11/14/2005


compress summary