Bryant v. Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services

Fifty or even fewer years ago this case would never have arisen. It is only since the courts have been thrust into the business of overseeing the penal institutions that the type of litigation now before us has come to the fore, but, “[t]o everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1. This is the season and the time for judicial airing of inmate grievances.

Apparently, in response to the then prevailing practice of inmates of the Maryland penal institutions 1 to seek redress in federal courts for real or imagined wrongs suffered by the inmate in…