When a person is convicted and sentenced to incarceration, we imagine that that person will be incarcerated within the boundary lines of the state that convicted them. That tenet is foundational to the United States’ federalist scheme, wherein states retain the sovereign authority to adjudicate crime and punishment within their borders. Naturally, then, the convicting state will serve as the recipient and determinant of all legal and administrative complaints arising from their incarcerated citizens. But for a select population of incarcerated persons—the story is not so simple.
Every year, several thousand people incarcerated in correctional facilities are transferred out of the state that convicted them into the custody of another state. These out-of-state transfers are governed by interstate corrections compacts, the largest of which includes thirty-nine states and the federal government. Corrections compacts govern every facet of a person’s incarceration out-of-state and, on paper, provide clear remedies for out-of-state prisoners to vindicate grievances with their conditions of confinement. In reality, the act of transferring an incarcerated person completely alters the legal infrastructure surrounding them, making it almost impossible to determine who is responsible for providing administrative and post-conviction relief.
This Note unfurls the intricate legal, administrative, and constitutional issues raised by interstate corrections compacts. Its primary concern is in exploring whether the Compact Clause of the Constitution has transformed the various interstate corrections compacts currently in operation into federal law. The question is not purely academic: if the Compact Clause has transformed corrections compacts into federal law, violations of the rights conferred under these agreements can serve as the basis for claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the primary mechanism through which incarcerated litigants challenge the conditions of confinement. Under current law, however, federal courts have shut the courthouse door on those incarcerated out-of-state based on an incomplete history of the legal and political history of these agreements. This Note aims to reset the historical narrative through compelling legal and historical evidence that weigh decisively in favor of reading corrections compacts as elements of federal law.
Part I traces the political history of interstate compacts generally and criminal compacts specifically. This engagement with the historical record contextualizes corrections compacts as only one facet of a broad, national movement that encouraged regional cooperation between states with the legal and political blessing of the federal government. Part II introduces the complex web that comprises Compact Clause jurisprudence with a keen eye towards its application to corrections compacts. The Part concludes by engaging with the legislative and jurisprudential history of these agreements, and demonstrates that Congress has provided ample evidence that correction compacts received the requisite consent to be transformed into federal law. Part III then canvasses the history of state, and later federal, prison administration from the Founding Era to date. This engagement buttresses the legislative record, and once again strongly suggests that corrections compacts have been transformed into federal law. This Note does not suggest that the ability to access federal court is a panacea for incarcerated persons; instead, it asserts that access to federal court is one of several pathways to which incarcerated citizens are constitutionally entitled, and one that may provide desperately needed relief.