I'm going to try to answer your question, but it's going to be a little indirect. I will try to get there quickly.
What happens inside a correctional institution doesn't really have a parallel in the outside very much. The relationship between the kept and the keepers is one of constant negotiation. The ability of the staff to deal with the relationships with inmates varies across institutions and across time.
The inmates will try to push and test, and staff will do their best to use their authority appropriately and lawfully, but it doesn't always happen in the way it's designed on paper to happen. So when you get somebody making a complaint, many first-level complaints are dismissed and that's the end of it. They don't all go forward to the second and third levels.
Sometimes you have a complaint made about a guard. You have a complaint—about discrimination, harassment, abuse, use of force—about a correctional staff person. Those complaints need a different set of eyes to look at them. Those are often the kinds of complaints that will be dismissed at the first level, will then go to the second level, and then may ultimately end up at the commissioner's level.
So we're not talking about a situation where it's just that you don't want to take no for an answer. We're talking about a situation that happens within a context of a power relationship that is, as I said, constantly being negotiated. Part of that negotiation has to do with this give and take about what is or is not considered to be a legitimate grievance at a point in time.