ABSTRACT
Jim, a seventeen-year-old boy in a California Youth Authority (CYA) institution, summed up CYA's grievance procedure: "Without grievance, we wouldn't have rights. Rights would be meaningless. They would be favors." The difference between a favor and a right is power. In a prison, the people with power are "the authorities"–the guards, the administration, the warden. The only check on the arbitrary exercise of that power lies with the courts; but the courts, traditionally and even today, are reluctant to intervene between p-o' pie in prison and prison authorities. The result is a real potential for arbitrariness, especially about "small" things, where judicial help is even less likely.
