There are many reasons why experts believe that crimes against inmates within the prison system continue to take place on a regular basis. Most of these reasons usually fall within two major classifications. The first of these reasons is that inmates have little to no legal recourses available to them to help them deal with these assaults. There are many factors that contribute to this lack of legal opportunity to deal with these assaults. One such factor is the problem that there is a lack of legal counsel available to inmates because of their lack of funding. In most cases, inmates have little or no money and therefore must depend on the donation of legal services if they are to have legal counsel available to them at all. However, freely donated legal counsel has always been difficult to find as has become even more so in the past decade. A large blow was stricken to inmate's ability to receive such free legal counsel in 1996 when a law was passed that added inmates to the list of people who are not allowed to receive free legal service from the federal Legal Services Corporation. This law, in addition to the lack of free legal organizations that are available to help inmates file lawsuits, has led inmates to not have adequate legal representation at their disposal. As a result, the inmates themselves file many inmate lawsuits. And, given that most inmates are generally not adequately educated on the law, most of their lawsuits are not successful, with many never even being heard.
Another reason why inmates seem to have no legal recourse is that prosecutors seem to have no interest in prosecuting offenders from crimes committed in prison. In fact, it seems as if a number of members of the criminal justice culture feel that prison crime is simply par for the course. Justice Clarence Thomas echoed this sentiment when he stated that, "Prisons are necessarily dangerous places; they house society's most antisocial and violent people in close proximity with one another.