Criminal Justice: Rights for Prisoners

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Whether model prisons or hellholes, jails have traditionally been off limits to U.S. courts. Behind that position was the belief that prison officials needed a free hand to maintain discipline. In the case of state prisons, there was extra reluctance by federal courts to intervene. Mostly, however, this hands-off attitude has protected the worst of prison life. Recently the tide has begun to turn. Now the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, has extended to state prisoners the right to seek injunctions against cruel and unusual punishment.

Not Even Toilet Paper. Twice, after he was accused of breaking rules at Clinton State Prison in Dannemora, N.Y., Lawrence Wright, 28, claims that he was put in solitary confinement in a "strip cell" for 33 days in 1965 and 21 days in 1966. Something of a jailhouse lawyer, he drew up a complaint that the cell was "dirty, filthy and unsanitary, without adequate heat, and virtually barren; the toilet and sink were encrusted with slime, dirt and human excremental residue; plaintiff was without clothing and entirely nude for several days; plaintiff was unable to keep himself clean as he was denied the use of soap, towel, toilet paper, toothbrush, comb and other hygienic implements and utensils."

From 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Wright continued, he had to leap to attention whenever a guard appeared, under threat of being beaten. Neither was he allowed to sleep during that time, and at night the windows were kept open despite the subfreezing winter weather of upstate New York and despite the fact that he had no covering as he tried to sleep on the stone floor.

His complaint was summarily dismissed by a U.S. district court. But Circuit Court Judge Irving Kaufman ruled that it should have heard the case. If Wright's complaint was true, said Kaufman, it certainly constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. As far as the problem of federal interference in a state prison was concerned, Kaufman concluded reluctantly that New York did not seem to offer Wright any adequate path to an injunction barring a repetition of his punishment.

Judge Edward Lumbard, who also sat on the three-judge panel, concurred still more reluctantly: "All would agree that it is far better that the states should formulate, supervise and enforce their own rules for recalcitrant prisoners." But "it is clear that there is no ad- ministrative or judicial body with an unmistakable mandate to entertain an application by Wright."