Duran v. Elrod

• Decision Date: 12 April 1985
• Docket Number: No. 85-1534,85-1534
• Parties: Dan DURAN, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Richard J. ELROD, et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 756

760 F.2d 756

85 A.L.R.Fed. 291

Dan DURAN, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Richard J. ELROD, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 85-1534.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 12, 1985.

Decided April 12, 1985. ^*

Opinion April 26, 1985.

Ruthanne DeWolfe, Richard Hess, Robert E. Lehrer, Legal Assistance Foundation, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Henry A. Hauser, Chief Civil Actions Bureau, Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellants.

Before CUMMINGS, Chief Judge, and POSNER and FLAUM, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

The administrators of the Cook County (Illinois) Jail appeal from an order refusing to lift, for seven weeks, a provision in a class-action consent decree regulating the living accommodations in the jail. The jail houses people who are awaiting trial on criminal charges because they have been denied bail or (more commonly) have been unable or unwilling to post the amount of cash required to make bail; it also houses convicted defendants en route to a penitentiary to serve their sentence, but they are not involved in this litigation. In 1974 a class action was brought on behalf of the pretrial detainees against the Cook County officials ("County," for short) in charge of the jail. The suit, which charged that conditions in the jail were so harsh, unsafe, and unsanitary as to constitute punishment of pretrial detainees in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, was settled in 1982 by the entry of a consent decree. The decree places numerous restrictions on the jail. Living space, food, exercise, law books, grievances, security, and visits are all regulated by the decree. The decree appoints the John Howard Association, a private (and we add, highly respected) group concerned with prison conditions, to monitor, like a special master, the County's compliance with the decree.

One provision of the decree forbids "double bunking" (double occupancy of a cell) in Division I of the jail. Division I was built in 1927, and its cells, even after having been doubled in size as required by another provision of the decree, are only 8 feet by 8 feet in size (64 square feet). In 1983, with the jail population growing rapidly, the County asked the district judge who had approved the decree to modify it to permit double bunking in Division I until the jail was enlarged. The judge (1) denied the motion and (2) ordered the County to release as many pretrial detainees on their own recognizance (that is, without making them put up any bail money) as necessary to keep the jail's population at 4,500 (approximately the number of beds), and to do so in reverse order of the size of their bonds, so that low-bond pretrial detainees would be released before high-bond ones (if the bonds were of equal size, the inmate who had been in jail the longest had to be released first). The County appealed; this court affirmed both the "cap" order and the denial of the motion to modify the decree. Duran v. Elrod, 713 F.2d 292, 297-98 (7th Cir.1983).

With the number of people charged with crime in Cook County continuing to grow rapidly, it became impossible to comply with the "cap" order by releasing just inmates awaiting trial on misdemeanor charges. In the first six months of 1984 the County had had to release 6,434 inmates to avoid having to double bunk; in the last six months this number rose to 9,462. Beginning in November 1984 the County began releasing inmates awaiting trial on felony charges, and by March of this year it was apparent that the release of these inmates was a menace to public safety. A study showed that 311 of the 1,474 inmates who had been released on their own recognizance in January pursuant to the district judge's order were accused felons and that by March 12, 53 of the 311 accused felons had become fugitives. Others had been convicted, acquitted (or the charges against them dropped), or otherwise removed from the status of pretrial detainee. Of the 154 accused felons against whom charges were still pending on March 12 (other than the fugitives), 16 had already been arrested for subsequent crimes--10 for felonies and 6 for misdemeanors. They undoubtedly had committed other crimes that had not resulted in arrests, for most crimes are not solved, and most of the accused felons released pursuant to the judge's order have substantial criminal records. This is not because the County willfully selects the most dangerous people to release but because the "cap" order required that those with the lowest bonds be released first, regardless of the nature of the crime or the defendant's record, and because the jail has run out of low-bond inmates to release. To comply with the judge's order the County now is routinely releasing inmates with bonds as high as $5,000 ($500 in cash), even though, as its study shows, many of the released inmates will become fugitives, or commit felonies while awaiting trial, or become fugitives and commit crimes.

On March 27 the County filed a motion asking the district judge to modify the consent decree to allow double bunking of accused felons until May 15, when the renovation of an existing building at the jail and the completion of a new one will add 738 new beds. The judge denied the motion, noting that the County had dragged its heels in constructing new facilities to relieve overcrowding and suggesting that the County devise a system for releasing on their own recognizance the least dangerous persons accused of felonies. The County appealed to us, as it was entitled to do under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1292(a)(1) since the judge's order was the refusal to modify an equitable decree. Following oral argument on April 12, we issued an order, effective immediately, reversing the district court's order and granting the modification requested, with the notation that this opinion would follow.

From the recital of facts it should be clear that the plaintiffs' first argument--that our previous opinion definitively establishes the lack of merit in the County's request--is itself without merit. The issue before us two years ago was different from the issue today:

1. The decree had been entered only a year before.

2. The modification sought was not limited to a definite time period; the County wanted the prohibition against double bunking postponed until the expansion of the jail was complete--a matter (it has turned out) of years, not weeks.

3. The County had not even begun the construction required to comply with the decree.

4. Many of the inmates being released on their own recognizance could have made bail with less than $100 in cash, see 713 F.2d at 298, and we regarded these inmates as unthreatening. There was no suggestion that accused felons might have to be released, and there was nothing corresponding to the study of flight and recidivism that the County has put in to support its present request to modify.

We must therefore consider the merits of that request.

A court of equity has the power "to modify an injunction in adaptation to changed conditions though it was entered by consent," United States v. Swift & Co., 286 U.S. 106, 114, 52 S.Ct. 460, 462, 76 L.Ed. 999 (1932), and this regardless of whether there is an express reservation of the power: "A continuing decree of injunction directed to events to come is subject always to adaptation as events may shape the need." Id. Although recent decisions have suggested that a more liberal standard than that laid down in Swift for exercising the power to modify (the standard in Swift is whether there has been "a clear showing of grievous wrong evoked by new and unforeseen conditions," id. at 119, 52 S.Ct. at 464) is appropriate in the case of decrees supervising public institutions, see New York State Ass'n for Retarded Children, Inc. v. Carey, 706 F.2d 956, 970 (2d Cir.1983); Alliance to End Repression v. City of Chicago, 742 F.2d 1007, 1020 (7th Cir.1984) (en banc) (dictum); United States v. City of Chicago, 663 F.2d 1354, 1359-60 (7th Cir.1981) (en banc); Newman v. Graddick, 740 F.2d 1513, 1520-21 (11th Cir.1984); Philadelphia Welfare Rights Organization v. Shapp, 602 F.2d 1114, 1120-21 (3d Cir.1979); but see Rajender v. University of Minnesota, 730 F.2d 1110, 1115-16 (8th Cir.1984) (citing cases), we have no occasion in this case to consider an alternative standard. Even if the Swift standard applies with full force, the district judge's refusal to modify the decree for the short period of time requested by the County must be reversed.

Two principles, one having to do with the limits of judicial competence, the other a conventional principle of equity jurisprudence, frame our analysis.

1. Federal judges must always be circumspect in imposing their ideas about civilized and effective prison administration on state prison officials. See Block v. Rutherford, --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 3227, 3232, 82 L.Ed.2d 438 (1984); Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 404-05, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 1807, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974); Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 351 n. 16, 101 S.Ct. 2392, 2401 n. 16, 69 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981). The Constitution does not speak with precision to the issue of prison conditions (that is an understatement); federal judges know little about the management of prisons; managerial judgments generally are the province of other branches of government than the judicial; and it is unseemly for federal courts to tell a state or city or, as here, a county how to run its prison system. Of course the County agreed to a consent decree which severely limits its freedom of action, but the County is not the state. Federal courts must be wary of entanglement in the intramural struggles of state or local government.

2. When an equity decree affects other people besides the parties to it, the judge must take account of the interest of those people--the public interest--in his decision whether to grant or deny equitable relief. See, e.g., Yakus v. United States, 321 U.S. 414, 440-41, 64...