Chapter 15 Conclusion: The Importance of Judiciary Involvement in Correctional Management

• Jurisdiction: United States

Chapter 15 Conclusion: The Importance of Judiciary Involvement in Correctional Management

Prison policies can limit the constitutional rights of prisoners, so long as these limits can be justified logically and rationally as supporting a legitimate penological interest. As discussed through the pages of this book, the complex relationship between the courts and correctional management has helped reshape corrections and forms of punishment in the decades that followed the Attica riot. Prior to the 1970s, judges followed a "hands-off" doctrine, allowing correctional administrators to run their facilities as they saw fit and avoiding interference in how correctional facilities were managed. But the years that followed changed that approach. Yet the courts also acknowledge that they cannot always impose their opinions and policies on correctional administrators, at least not without recognizing them as the authority in their correctional domains, as they are the ones who run the facilities and are the front line of the penological enterprise. A somewhat recent example of this dynamic is found in the case of Giano v. Senkowski, which examined whether prison administration could censor seminude photos sent to an inmate by his wife. The Court's decision in favor of the prison administration empowered correctional officials as holders of the final word on how prisons should be managed and operated. Citing the reasoning established in Turner v. Safley in 1987, the Court ruled that if prison officials are to justify practices that would in free society be deemed unconstitutional, they must prove the following four conditions: (1) a rational connection between the prison regulation and the reason put forward to justify it; (2) alternative means of exercising the right; (3) a situation wherein accommodating the right would have a negative impact on guards and other inmates; and (4) an absence of reasonable alternative to the regulation. Further affirmation was found in the case of Goff v. Nix, in which the Court determined that mandatory visual body cavity searches after visitation are reasonably related to legitimate security goals of the facility and that such a search outweighs the Fourteenth Amendment privacy rights that prisoners may otherwise have. These cases were not decided in a vacuum, but were a by-product of almost two decades of legal and political ping-pong in which the courts directed correctional officials to develop more sustainable policies and procedures, while advancing the correctional profession and consequent professionalism.

Yet, the effect of judicial intervention in correctional management has not always been so smooth and positive. Long periods of struggle between the courts and state correctional administrators have sometimes resulted in worsening relations between the courts and state department of corrections, as with the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) during the years following the decade-plus-long case of Ruiz v. Estelle, which was finally decided in 1980 and set the standards for minimum mental-health care. As you recall Ruiz v. Estelle dealt with the totality of confinement conditions and found that the TDC had violated constitutional rights of prisoners guaranteed under the Eight Amendment. As a result of this case, the judiciary appointed a special master to ensure that the TDC would comply and operate its prisons in accordance with constitutional principles (see Anderson, Mangels & Dyson, 2010). As discussed in the previous chapter, the explosion of prisoner litigation during the "hands-on" period forced many states to reevaluate their modes of operations. Judges were interested in making change, but also understood the limits of correctional administrators, and gave them some leeway. The fruits of all this discourse was some success in changing the organization operations at correctional institutions. These changes took place gradually, as the learning period was lengthy.

While prisoner litigation and judicial intervention had an effect on actual conditions of confinement, other cases made it clear that prisoners necessarily lose some of the conveniences of a free society once convicted and placed behind bars. Wilson v. Seiter, which addressed conditions of confinement, was a case in which the Supreme Court emphasized that the conditions of confinement may be restrictive and harsh, but they are part of the penalty that convicted offenders ought to pay for their offenses against society. A similar Supreme Court opinion from the same year, Johansen v. Ozim, reiterated that comfort and convenience are not elements that need be supplied to incarcerated offenders. Justice Warren Burger stated that federal judges should not be dealing with prisoners' often minor complaints; any well-run institution should be able to resolve them fairly, without the involvement of the courts (as cited in Clear & Cole, 1997). In other cases, the courts have also made it clear that incarcerated individuals should not expect to enjoy all constitutional rights that are the domain of free individuals. As James Q. Wilson (1975) argued, the function of the correctional system should be to isolate and to punish, which by default provides inmates with unfavorable conditions and deprivation of some rights. For example, in United States v. Hitchcock, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that prisoners should not have a reasonable expectation of privacy or Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures in their prison cells. Further affirming the limitation of prisoners' constitutional rights, Hewitt v. Helms was a Supreme Court ruling that within the context of correctional settings, due process may be limited by the needs of the facility. The judgment identified the safety of guards and other inmates as the most fundamental responsibility of prison administration, and this responsibility outweighs due process claims. Examining such cases, Wright (1973) identifies an apparent paradox within correctional institutions. He describes this as liberal totalitarianism, in which all-controlling correctional institutions seemingly adopt a very progressive approach to dealing with prisoners. Correctional institutions, as their name suggest, promote the goal of "correcting" (rehabilitating) offenders, yet they exert totalitarian control over inmates' movements and every other aspect of their daily lives, all for the greater good of public safety. Even through their seemingly liberal programs, correctional institutions serve to control the prisoner population in a totalitarian manner, requiring, for example, urine and blood tests and strict adherence and compliance to rules and standards for continued participation. Prisoner litigation can be viewed as another part of this liberal totalitarianism. Prisoners have the right to challenge their oppressive environment through litigation—the very definition of playing by the rules—whereas the controlling system of the administration and the courts helps maintain the status quo of such institutions as agencies of control, as long as the prisoners actions are viewed in a professional manner and justifying their final decisions on the basis of the revered aim of public safety.

As noted earlier in this book, the courts are more likely to decide issues regarding prison safety and regulation in favor of prison administrators. Such was the case in Block v. Rutherford, in which the Supreme Court stated that courts "should play a very limited role since such considerations are peculiarly within the province and professional expertise of corrections officials." This suggests that the courts allow prison administrators great discretion in managing their facilities and the inmate population that resides within them. This is all the more...