I'm not sure I can offer much more than educated speculation, but here it is: I think that prison (especially in America) sucks, even when your legal rights aren't being violated. It's full of indignities and unpleasant conditions. A lot of what makes prison unpleasant may genuinely feel like violations of your rights, even if the law would disagree. As a result, many prisoner suits are about conditions and situations that really are unpleasant, but not illegal. (Some suits also have to do with conditions that are illegal, but which the law requires prisoners to try to get addressed through the prison's own internal grievance system, before resorting to a lawsuit.)
Then mix in the fact that, as a prisoner, you have a lot of time on your hands and one of the few things you can spend your time doing is visiting the prison law library. Even better, if your lawsuit actually goes somewhere, you might have the hope that prison officials will have to take you to court appearances. This stuff would indeed be pretty annoying for most people, but less so for some prisoners (especially compared with their limited alternatives).
Prisoner lawsuits are so plentiful that there is actually a federal law that specifically restricts them, called the Prison Litigation Reform Act[1]. It doesn't block suits altogether, but it limits the situations where a plaintiff can file a suit without paying the filing fees. I have, at best, mixed feelings about it (which parallel my complicated feelings towards prisoner suits generally). But the law's existence helps to illustrate the scale of the problem.
Then mix in the fact that, as a prisoner, you have a lot of time on your hands and one of the few things you can spend your time doing is visiting the prison law library. Even better, if your lawsuit actually goes somewhere, you might have the hope that prison officials will have to take you to court appearances. This stuff would indeed be pretty annoying for most people, but less so for some prisoners (especially compared with their limited alternatives).
Prisoner lawsuits are so plentiful that there is actually a federal law that specifically restricts them, called the Prison Litigation Reform Act[1]. It doesn't block suits altogether, but it limits the situations where a plaintiff can file a suit without paying the filing fees. I have, at best, mixed feelings about it (which parallel my complicated feelings towards prisoner suits generally). But the law's existence helps to illustrate the scale of the problem.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/images/asset_upload...