What Is a 602 Inmate Grievance Form in California?

The 602 inmate grievance form in California is the official document people in CDCR custody use to formally challenge a departmental decision, report staff misconduct, or ask for a change in their conditions of confinement. Submitting a completed 602 opens a tracked administrative review that the department must answer in writing. It also starts the clock on something federal law requires before any lawsuit about prison conditions: exhausting every step of the internal grievance process.

What You Can Grieve With a 602

Title 15, Section 3481 of the California Code of Regulations lets you grieve any CDCR decision, action, condition, or policy that has a material adverse effect on your welfare.¹ In practice, that covers:

Staff misconduct, including verbal harassment, threats, discrimination, or improper use of force.
Medical, dental, or mental health care problems such as denied appointments, delayed medications, or refusal to treat a diagnosed condition. Under the Eighth Amendment, officials who knowingly ignore a serious medical need can be held liable for deliberate indifference, meaning they were aware of a substantial risk to your health and consciously failed to act.²
Property disputes involving loss or destruction during transfers, cell searches, or confiscations.
Housing and classification disagreements over security level, custody designation, or placement.
Program access, when you are excluded from education, vocational training, or rehabilitative programming without justification.
Disability accommodations, such as a ground-floor cell for a mobility impairment or a TTY phone for hearing loss.

The 602 only reaches matters CDCR itself controls. You cannot use it to challenge a court-imposed sentence, a parole board decision, or the actions of any agency outside the department. Those claims require separate legal channels.

How to Fill Out the Form

The identifying information at the top drives tracking. Enter your full legal name, your CDCR identification number, and your current housing unit so the reviewing office can confirm your status and send a response back to you.³

The description section does the real work. Give a clear factual account: the exact date and time of the incident, where it happened, and the names of any staff members involved. Stick to what you personally saw or experienced. Vague complaints give reviewers a reason to ask for clarification or reject the grievance before the merits are reached.

The “action requested” field is where you state the specific outcome you want. That might be return of confiscated property, a transfer to a different housing unit, a referral for medical treatment, or a formal investigation into an employee’s conduct. A concrete request gives the reviewer a standard to meet and makes a vague, non-responsive answer harder to issue.

What to Attach as Evidence

The attachments should match the type of complaint. For property claims, include property receipts, inventory sheets, or trust account statements that prove ownership and value.⁴ For medical grievances, attach sick-call request slips or any written requests for treatment showing you asked for care and were denied or delayed. For housing and classification disputes, attach the automated classification committee chronos that reflect your security score and placement history.

Every attachment should tie directly to the incident described. Unrelated paperwork slows the review. Keep copies of everything you submit, because originals can go missing in institutional mail and you will need your own records if the matter later goes to court.

Submitting the Form and Meeting Deadlines

Put the completed form and attachments in the grievance collection box in your housing unit. If you are on parole or housed in a specialized unit without a collection box, mail the form directly to the institution where the incident occurred.³ CDCR will assign a log number you can use to follow up.

File quickly. CDCR regulations set time limits for submitting a grievance after an incident, and missing the deadline can get the grievance rejected before anyone looks at the substance of your complaint.

The Two Levels of Review

CDCR’s current grievance system has two levels. At the first level, the Office of Grievances reviews your submission, investigates, and issues a written decision.⁵ The decision may grant, deny, redirect, reassign, reject, or disallow the grievance, among other outcomes.

If you are not satisfied, whether because the grievance was denied, granted with an inadequate remedy, or rejected, you can appeal to the second level.⁶ The second level is the final step inside CDCR. Once you get a decision there, you have exhausted your administrative remedies, the legal term for completing every available internal step, and you may take the matter to state or federal court.

CDCR has regulatory response timeframes, though the exact number of working days varies with the complexity of the issue. If the department misses its own deadlines, that silence may itself satisfy the exhaustion requirement and let you file in court. Keep copies of every form you submit and every response you receive so the timeline is documented.

Healthcare Grievances Use a Different Track

Complaints about medical, dental, or mental health care do not go through the general 602 process. They are governed by Title 15, Section 3999.225 and the sections that follow, with their own definitions, document rules, and timelines.⁴ If your issue is a denial of treatment, a medication delay, or any other healthcare decision, use the healthcare grievance form and follow the healthcare-specific procedures. Filing in the wrong track means your grievance gets redirected, which only adds delay.

Emergency Grievances

Standard timelines do not fit situations where waiting could get you hurt. Federal minimum standards for correctional grievance systems require that emergency grievances, those where normal processing would expose you to a substantial risk of personal injury or serious irreparable harm, be forwarded immediately to a decision-maker who can act, bypassing the usual lower-level substantive review.⁷ Those procedures also call for expedited responses at every level and review by someone outside the institution’s direct chain of command.

If you face an immediate threat, such as credible threats of violence or a life-threatening medical condition, label the grievance as an emergency and describe the danger in detail. The more specific you are about why the risk is urgent, the stronger your case for expedited handling.

Why Finishing the 602 Process Matters

The 602 is more than a complaint form. It is a legal prerequisite. Under the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act, no lawsuit challenging prison conditions can be filed under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 or any other federal law until you have exhausted every available administrative remedy.⁸ That means finishing both levels of CDCR’s process before a federal court will hear your case. A judge will dismiss the lawsuit if you skipped a step or failed to appeal an unfavorable decision.

The exhaustion requirement is mandatory, and courts apply it strictly. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that judges generally cannot create exceptions. The narrow situations where exhaustion may be excused involve a remedy that was genuinely unavailable, for example when staff actively prevented you from filing or the process led to a dead end. Not knowing about the process, or finding it inconvenient, does not qualify.

The PLRA also limits damages. If you sue in federal court for mental or emotional suffering, you must first show a physical injury that is more than trivial.⁹ The injury does not have to be severe or require medical treatment, but it has to be real. Claims based purely on emotional distress with no physical component are barred. This restriction does not apply when you are alleging a constitutional violation that is not grounded in emotional harm, such as a due process claim or a challenge to an unconstitutional policy.

Retaliation for Filing a 602

Filing a 602 is protected activity under the First Amendment. Federal courts have long recognized that submitting grievances and pursuing civil rights litigation against prison officials are constitutionally protected acts.¹⁰ If a staff member takes adverse action against you because you filed a grievance, you may have a separate retaliation claim.

To succeed on a retaliation claim, you generally need to show five things:

You engaged in protected conduct, such as filing a 602.
A staff member took an adverse action against you, meaning something that would discourage a reasonable person from filing future grievances. Even a threat of harm qualifies; the action does not have to be an independent constitutional violation.
Your protected conduct was a substantial factor behind the staff member’s action. Circumstantial evidence counts, for example if the adverse action came shortly after you filed.
The retaliation chilled your exercise of First Amendment rights, even if it did not silence you completely.
The staff member’s action did not reasonably advance a legitimate correctional goal, such as institutional security or order.

Document any retaliatory behavior as it happens. Note dates, times, the staff member involved, and any witnesses. That record becomes critical evidence if you later pursue a retaliation claim in court. If retaliation involves threats to your physical safety, consider filing an emergency grievance alongside your standard 602 so the department is on notice of the danger.¹⁰

1
Cornell Law Institute. California Code of Regulations Title 15 Section 3481
2
Ninth Circuit District & Bankruptcy Courts. 9.31 Particular Rights – Eighth Amendment – Convicted Prisoners Claim re Conditions of Confinement/Medical Care
3
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Resentencing and Release Information
4
New York Codes, Rules and Regulations. California Code of Regulations 15 CCR 3999.225
5
LII / Legal Information Institute. California Code of Regulations Title 15 Section 3483
6
LII / Legal Information Institute. California Code of Regulations Title 15 Section 3483 – Section: Exhaustion
7
eCFR. 28 CFR 40.8 – Emergency Procedure
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S. Code 1997e – Suits by Prisoners
9
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Section 1983 Outline
10
Ninth Circuit District & Bankruptcy Courts. 9.12 Particular Rights – First Amendment – Convicted Prisoner/Pretrial Detainees Claim of Retaliation