Ralph Lee Abraham: “Instead, what we have seen is the Department of Justice intervening in lawsuits in a way that would, in fact, preclude…”

“Instead, what we have seen is the Department of Justice intervening in lawsuits in a way that would, in fact, preclude, rather than allow, States to extricate themselves from these various judicial circumstances where judges were running the prison systems with no clear evidence of a constitutional violation ever having occurred. Instead, we find the Justice Department finding ways to allow the judges to stay in charge and to allow for various things such as we have seen around the country, where these prisoner lawsuits are growing in number, where judges are requiring prisons and State authorities to expend millions of taxpayer dollars simply to ensure and improve the comfort of prisoners. We think that is the wrong direction.”