Santana v. Collazo

• Decision Date: 30 September 1983
• Docket Number: 82-1418,Nos. 82-1345,s. 82-1345
• Parties: Flora SANTANA, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Jenaro Collazo COLLAZO, et al., Defendants, Appellees. Flora SANTANA, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, and United States of America, Plaintiff-Intervenor, Appellant, v. Jenaro COLLAZO, et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 1172

714 F.2d 1172

Flora SANTANA, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Jenaro Collazo COLLAZO, et al., Defendants, Appellees.

Flora SANTANA, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, and United States of America, Plaintiff-Intervenor, Appellant, v. Jenaro COLLAZO, et al., Defendants, Appellees.

Nos. 82-1345, 82-1418.

United States Court of Appeals,

First Circuit.

Argued June 8, 1983.

Decided Aug. 3, 1983.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Sept. 30, 1983.

Harry F. Swanger, St. Louis, Mo., and John R. Bird, Frankfort, Ill., with whom Maria Laura Colon, Hato Rey, P.R., was on brief, for Flora Santana, et al.

Charles J. Cooper, Deputy Asst. Atty. Gen., Washington, D.C., with whom Wm. Bradford Reynolds, Asst. Atty. Gen., J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Deputy Asst. Atty. Gen., Brian K. Landsberg, Walter W. Barnett, and Miriam R. Eisenstein, Attys., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., were on brief, for the United States of America.

Donato Rivera De Jesus, Hato Rey, P.R., for Jenaro Collazo.

Before McGOWAN, ^* Senior Circuit Judge, COFFIN and BREYER, Circuit Judges.

COFFIN, Circuit Judge.

In October, 1975, eight juvenile residents of the Mayaguez Industrial School (Mayaguez), in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, filed a complaint, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, urging the court to declare conditions at Mayaguez unconstitutional. Since that time, two similar suits have been consolidated with the first, and the actions have been certified as a class action on behalf of all present and future juveniles committed to Mayaguez or the Maricao Juvenile Camp (Maricao), in Maricao, Puerto Rico. In addition, on December 6, 1976, the court accepted a Complaint in Intervention of the United States, reinforcing the claims of the main plaintiffs.

After extensive discovery, the district court, on March 27, 1978, ordered the parties to attempt to settle the case. Between August 11, 1978 and June, 1979, the parties submitted three proposed consent decrees, all of which the district court rejected as "unduly and unnecessarily disruptive of the Commonwealth's juvenile justice system." Desiring to see and hear for itself whether conditions at the camps warranted the remedy agreed upon by the parties, the court held extensive hearings, in December and January of 1979-1980 and April to July of 1981. The court also personally inspected conditions at the two camps.

On February 15, 1982, the court rendered its decision, reported at 533 F.Supp. 966 (D.P.R.1982). It analyzed the legal theories on which plaintiffs relied and set out detailed factual findings regarding conditions at the camps. The court rejected plaintiffs' proposed "right to treatment", but agreed that conditions at the camp were reviewable under the Eighth Amendment and the due process clause. ¹ With five exceptions, relating primarily to use of the intensive care or "isolation" unit at Mayaguez, see 533 F.Supp. at 992, the court found conditions at Mayaguez and Maricao constitutionally acceptable.

On appeal, plaintiffs challenge the court's refusal to enter the proposed consent decrees. They also renew their claim for a "right to treatment", and, on that basis, challenge a number of conditions and deprivations which the court found constitutionally acceptable. Finally, they urge that certain conditions, particularly those relating to the use of the isolation unit as a disciplinary sanction, which use the district court did not enjoin or limit, violate their right not to be cruelly and unusually punished. Plaintiff-intervenor, on appeal, challenges only the district court's failure to find certain fire hazards at Mayaguez unconstitutional and to order that they be remedied.

I. Consent Decrees

We sympathize with plaintiffs' frustration in having been ordered to negotiate a settlement and then having had three proposed consent decrees rejected by the court. We also acknowledge our role in rendering the district court's refusals essentially unreviewable. Plaintiffs appealed to us from those decisions and we dismissed for lack of an appealable order. Since then, the Supreme Court has made clear the error of our ways. In Carson v. American Brands, Inc., 450 U.S. 79, 101 S.Ct. 993, 67 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981), the Court held that a district court's refusal to enter a proposed consent decree is immediately appealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1). Plaintiffs did not, however, seek relief from the Supreme Court for our refusal to hear their interlocutory appeal. And, somewhat ironically, the reasons given by the Court in Carson for holding the district court's refusal immediately appealable are the same reasons why it appears to us now too late to review the merits of the proposed consent decrees.

In Carson, the Supreme Court reasoned that:

"unless the District Court order denying the motion to enter the consent decree is immediately appealable, petitioners will lose their opportunity to 'effectually challenge' an interlocutory order that denies them injunctive relief and that plainly has 'serious, perhaps irreparable, consequence.' First, petitioners might lose their opportunity to settle their case on the negotiated terms .... Settlement agreements may ... be predicated on an express or implied condition that the parties would, by their agreement, be able to avoid the costs and uncertainties of litigation. .... Because a party to a pending settlement might be legally justified in withdrawing its consent to the agreement once trial is held and final judgment entered, the District Court's order might thus have the 'serious, perhaps irreparable, consequence' of denying the parties their right to compromise their dispute on mutually agreeable terms." 450 U.S. at 86-88, 101 S.Ct. at 997-98 (citations omitted).

In this case, defendants have withdrawn their consent to the proposed settlement. Moreover, having the evidence presented at the trial before us, and the benefit of the district court's assessment of that evidence, it would be difficult for us now to "judge the fairness of [the] proposed compromise by weighing the plaintiff[s'] likelihood of success on the merits against the amount and form of the relief offered in the settlement." See Carson, 450 U.S. at 88 n. 14, 101 S.Ct. at 998 n. 14. Finally, while public policy favors the enforcement of an amicable settlement of litigation without trial, see Cities Service Oil Co. v. Coleman Oil Co., 470 F.2d 925, 929 (1st Cir.1972), it is now too late to avoid the time and expense of trial. Rather than seeking to return to the situation as it existed before the parties and the court invested a year and a half in a trial, we think it wiser to turn to the merits of the issues presented to and reviewed by the district court and which form the basis of its detailed findings regarding conditions at Mayaguez and Maricao.

II. Conditions of Confinement at Mayaguez and Maricao

On appeal, plaintiffs renew both their "right to treatment" claims and their Eighth Amendment challenge to the length of time a juvenile may be confined in isolation at Mayaguez and to the conditions under which the juveniles live while so isolated. We agree with the district court that the state has no constitutional obligation to provide rehabilitative treatment to the juveniles within its custody, simply because its professed purpose in taking custody of the juveniles is to help them. We are concerned, however, that the district court, in rejecting the right to treatment, may have passed too lightly over other substantive limitations on the conditions of involuntary confinement, particularly the extensive use of isolation at Mayaguez. Before addressing those concerns, we pause to explain why we agree with the district court's rejection of a broad right to rehabilitative treatment and training.

A. Right to Rehabilitative Treatment and Training

Plaintiffs challenge, as violative of their right to rehabilitative treatment, the inadequate intake assessment of each juvenile's psychiatric, medical, academic, vocational and social strengths, weaknesses and needs, coupled with the inadequate classification system (based on age and physical characteristics); the absence of adequate individualized treatment plans covering all aspects of each juvenile's care, education, growth and development; the absence of adequate educational, vocational and recreational programs; the deficient qualifications and training of the staff; and overreliance on the custodial staff. Basically, they claim that the juveniles are just being incarcerated, not rehabilitated, and that in light of the state's professed purpose in institutionalizing the juveniles--to treat them--the state has an obligation to provide the promised treatment.

A number of courts have found that juveniles involuntarily incarcerated have a right to rehabilitative treatment. See, e.g., Morgan v. Sproat, 432 F.Supp. 1130 (S.D.Miss.1977); Martarella v. Kelley, 349 F.Supp. 575, 586, 600 (S.D.N.Y.1972); Nelson v. Heyne, 355 F.Supp. 451 (N.D.Ind.1972) aff'd, 491 F.2d 352 (7th Cir.1974). The reasoning of these courts is two-fold. First, relying on the Supreme Court's insistence, in Jackson v. Indiana, 406 U.S. 715, 738, 92 S.Ct. 1845, 1858, 32 L.Ed.2d 435 (1972), that "the nature and duration of commitment must bear some reasonable relation to the purpose for which the individual is committed", courts have reasoned that because the state's authority over delinquent juveniles derives from its parens patriae interest in their welfare, see, e.g., 34 L.P.R.A. § 2015, due process requires that juveniles confined under that authority be given treatment consistent with the beneficent purpose of their confinement. See Morgan v. Sproat, supra, 432 F.Supp. at 1135-36; Martarella v. Kelley, supra, 349 F.Supp. at 585. Second, courts have relied on the fact that the juvenile justice system denies certain due process safeguards, which denials have been found constitutionally acceptable because the purpose of incarceration is rehabilitation, not punishment. See, e.g.,...