152
Opinion of the Court
U. S. 367 (1983), the Court found the Bivens remedy displaced because Congress had legislated an elaborate and comprehensive remedial scheme. Schweiker, 487 U. S., at 425; Bush, 462 U. S., at 388. "When the design of a Government program suggests that Congress has provided what it considers adequate remedial mechanisms for constitutional violations that may occur in the course of its administration, we have not created additional Bivens remedies." Schweiker, 487 U. S., at 423. Here Congress has enacted nothing.
B
Because Congress has not required exhaustion of a federal prisoner's Bivens claim, we turn to an evaluation of the individual and institutional interests at stake in this case. The general grievance procedure heavily burdens the individual interests of the petitioning inmate in two ways. First, the procedure imposes short, successive filing deadlines that create a high risk of forfeiture of a claim for failure to comply. Second, the administrative "remedy" does not authorize an award of monetary damages—the only relief requested by McCarthy in this action. The combination of these features means that the prisoner seeking only money damages has everything to lose and nothing to gain from being required to exhaust his claim under the internal grievance procedure.
The filing deadlines for the grievance procedure require an inmate, within 15 days of the precipitating incident, not only to attempt to resolve his grievance informally but also to file a formal written complaint with the prison warden. 28 CFR § 542.13 (1991). Then, he must successively hurdle 20-day and 30-day deadlines to advance to the end of the grievance process. § 542.15. Other than the Bureau's general and quite proper interest in having early notice of any claim, we have not been apprised of any urgency or exigency justifying this timetable. Cf. Yakus v. United States, 321 U. S. 414, 435 (1944) ("The sixty days' period allowed for protest of the Administrator's regulations cannot be said to be
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