St. Louis Post Dispatch

GUEST COMMENTARY

 

When courts meddle in prison operations

 

By Dave Morris

 

11/29/2007

 

The founding fathers rightly feared too much government interference in citizens' lives. We've witnessed a lot of interference in our lives from the judicial branch: the courts.

 

One area in which court interference has been especially damaging is corrections. For almost 200 years, our courts operated according to a "hands-off" policy: , i.e., the courts did not interfere in the internal administration of prisons.

 

There were good reasons for this. First, there was the constitutional principle of separation of powers, which the framers saw as necessary to keep any single branch of government from having too much authority. Second, there was the acknowledgement by the courts that they had no expertise when it came to managing prisons. There also was the valid concern that judicial interference would be detrimental to prison discipline. Finally, there was the notion that convicted felons had forfeited the privileges of citizenship.

 

In 1871, a Virginia court in the case Ruffin v. Commonwealth found that "A convicted felon is one whom the law in its humanity punishes by confinement in the penitentiary instead of death . . . . For the time being, during his term of service in the penitentiary, he is a slave of penal servitude to the State."

 

Think of it: In America, convicted felons once were regarded legally as slaves of the state.

 

In 1964, almost 100 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court took another look at the hands-off policy and didn't like what it saw. In Cooper v. Pate, the court ruled that prisoners in state prisons could sue to force authorities to address complaints arising from the Civil Rights Act of 1871. The court said convicted felons remain citizens with rights protected by the Constitution.

 

In a little less than a century, the legal status of imprisoned felons in the United States went from that of slaves of the state to that of inconvenienced citizens.

 

Each year since Cooper v. Pate, state prisoners have filed more and more lawsuits. Think that doesn't affect you? Well, think again. The government hires attorneys to represent prison employees. You pay for those attorneys. Trials, depositions, witnesses, court costs . . . all these things cost money — your money. Since most prisoners are indigent, they cannot afford attorneys, so attorneys are appointed to represent them. Guess who pays their fees.

 

Remember that one of the reasons for the hands-off approach by courts was to avoid disrupting prison discipline. Since courts have become more "hands-on," discipline has been disrupted in lots of institutions.

 

Some prisons now operate under legal consent decrees establishing numerous mandatory rules, some of which make prisons unsafe places for inmates and staff alike. In addition, many prison administrators and employees are concerned that they may be hauled into court for just doing their jobs.

 

The result? The emotional costs that litigation inflicts on staff and inmates tend to increase tension, producing more violence, more management problems and, in the long run, even higher costs to the taxpayer.

 

Dave Morris of Smithton is a semi-retired criminologist who worked for the Illinois Department of Corrections. He serves on the adjunct faculty at Southwestern Illinois College in Belleville.