Finney v. Hutto

• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Arkansas
• Writing for the Court: HENLEY, Circuit , Sitting by Designation
• Citation: Finney v. Hutto, 410 F.Supp. 251 (E.D. Ark. 1976)
• Decision Date: 19 March 1976
• Docket Number: No. PB-69-C-24.,PB-69-C-24.
• Parties: Robert FINNEY (Lawrence J. Holt) et al., Petitioners, v. Terrell Don HUTTO, Commissioner of Correction, State of Arkansas, et al., Respondents.

410 F. Supp. 251

Robert FINNEY (Lawrence J. Holt) et al., Petitioners, v. Terrell Don HUTTO, Commissioner of Correction, State of Arkansas, et al., Respondents.

No. PB-69-C-24.

United States District Court, E. D. Arkansas, Pine Bluff Division.

March 19, 1976.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Jack Holt, Jr., Philip E. Kaplan, Phillip H. McMath, Little Rock, Ark., for petitioners.

Jim Guy Tucker, Atty. Gen., State of Arkansas, Robert A. Newcomb, Jack T. Lassiter, Asst. Attys. Gen., Little Rock, Ark., for respondents.

HENLEY, Circuit Judge, Sitting by Designation.

These consolidated cases are now before the court pursuant to the mandate of the Court of Appeals in Finney v. Arkansas Board of Correction, 505 F.2d 194 (8th Cir. 1974), reversing the decision of this court in Holt v. Hutto, 363 F.Supp. 194 (E.D.Ark.1973),¹ and remanding the litigation for further proceedings. The remand requires the court to inquire again into the federal constitutionality of practices and conditions existing and prevailing in the principal penal institutions administered by the Arkansas Department of Correction, an agency of the State of Arkansas.

Petitioners are Arkansas convicts who have been convicted of felonies in the circuit courts of the State and who are now confined in the Department. The principal respondents are Correction Commissioner Terrell Don Hutto, the members of the Arkansas State Board of Correction, A. L. Lockhart, Superintendent of the Cummins Unit of the Department, and R. G. Britton, Superintendent of the Tucker Intermediate Reformatory. Jurisdiction is predicated upon 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3) and 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

Pursuant to the remand extensive hearings have been held,² and in mid-August, 1975 the court accompanied by court personnel and counsel on both sides visited the principal units of the Department and also visited the new Reformatory for Women which was then nearing completion in the City of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

The cases before the court are in part class actions brought by and on behalf of inmates of the Department generally, and in part individual complaints of particular inmates. In view of the large number of complaints that have been consolidated, this opinion will be confined to the class claims in which petitioners seek for themselves and other inmates similarly situated declaratory and injunctive relief with respect to alleged institutional conditions and practices which they claim deprive inmates of rights protected by the Constitution of the United States. Inmate claims of personal deprivations, including claims for money damages, will be dealt with later. The cases collectively will generally be referred to herein as "the case" or as "this litigation."

The Department administers three principal institutions and a number of recently established off-stations. The principal units are the Cummins Unit, a maximum security farm type prison located in Lincoln County, Arkansas; the Arkansas State Reformatory for Women located on the Cummins property; and the Tucker Intermediate Reformatory located in Jefferson County, Arkansas. The off-stations are the Alcoholic/Narcotic Rehabilitation Center located on the grounds of the Benton State Hospital a little more than twenty miles from Little Rock, Arkansas, a Work Release Center and a Pre-Release Center also located at the Benton State Hospital; the Blytheville Work Release Center located in Mississippi County in the northeastern part of the State; and the Department of Correction Livestock Production Center located near Booneville in Logan County in northwestern Arkansas.

No claim has been made that any unconstitutionalities exist in any of the off-stations. While the Women's Reformatory is involved in the case to some extent, the court is principally concerned with conditions and practices at Cummins and Tucker.

In approaching the issues before it the court recognizes that it should not embroil itself unreasonably in the affairs of the Department; in areas of prison administration and security, the classification of inmates, prison discipline, and the like, much must be left to the discretion of the prison administrators. The court is concerned ultimately with constitutional deprivations, and if it finds that such deprivations exist or have existed, the court has the power to intervene and devise appropriate relief. See Kelly v. Brewer, 525 F.2d 394, 399 (8th Cir. 1975), and the numerous cases therein cited.

Overcrowding

The court first considers whether the principal units of the Department are now overcrowded to a point of unconstitutionality. The matter was discussed in Finney v. Arkansas Board of Correction, supra, 505 F.2d at 200-02.

As to the Women's Reformatory, the court found, on the basis of its own observation of that facility in August, 1975, and of the fact that the new Women's Reformatory had still not been completed and put into use as of mid-February, 1976, that the institution was hopelessly overcrowded. And on February 18, 1976 the court entered an order directing that the institution be closed and the inmates transferred or released not later than June 30 of the current year.

Since that order was entered, Commissioner Hutto has indicated compliance with it and has stated publicly that the June 30 deadline will give the Department no trouble. The court hopes that the new Reformatory will be completed and put into use substantially before June 30.

Turning now to Cummins and Tucker, the court recognizes at the outset that the serious overcrowding of a prison operates adversely on inmate safety, morale, and welfare, on the security and good order of the institution, and on the administration of the prison in general. The question of whether a prison is overcrowded to the point of unconstitutionality involves more than determining how many square feet of living space are allocated to individual inmates. Regard must be had to the quality of the living quarters and to the length of time which inmates must spend in their living quarters each day; further some small housing units although cramped may be more comfortable and livable than more spacious quarters.

The question of overcrowding actually involves two questions: First, is the institution as a whole overcrowded? Second, are individual housing units within the institution overcrowded? In other words, the question is not only how many inmates are housed in the prison but also how the prison population is distributed throughout the institution.

Roughly speaking, Cummins houses about three times as many inmates as does Tucker, and, as a class, the Cummins inmates are older men and more hardened criminals than are the inmates of Tucker.

In both Holt I and Holt II the court found that both of the institutions in question were seriously overcrowded, and that the overcrowding constituted a serious threat to inmate safety, particularly when considered in connection with the trusty guard system which was still in use when Holt II was decided in 1970. As of that date the population of Cummins had been declining for some time, and amounted to somewhat less than 1,000 men; at the same time Tucker was housing about 325 inmates.

In those days the basic housing units for inmates at both institutions were large, dormitory type barracks, which are still in use. Each barracks contained, and still contains, about 5,000 square feet of floor space, and each has a maximum capacity of not more than 100 men. Additionally, at Cummins there was a separate building which contained a number of isolation cells. At Tucker there were two rows of small cells reserved for persons who had been condemned to die and who were awaiting execution.

By 1973, when Holt III was decided, the Cummins population had grown to about 1200 and that of Tucker had grown to about 349. The basic housing units were still the barracks, and each barracks probably had more than 100 men in it. The old isolation cells at Cummins had been abandoned in favor of a new maximum security facility commonly referred to as the East Building. At Tucker the "death cells" had ceased to be used as such, and were being used to hold prisoners in "administrative segregation" or in "punitive isolation." That was the condition that the Court of Appeals found to be unconstitutional in Finney. The holding of that court was based in part on the testimony of Commissioner Hutto that the barracks could not "be successfully operated with more than 60 to 80 inmates," 505 F.2d at 201, whereas in truth and fact the respective barracks were housing from 125 to 135 men.

When the 1975 hearings were held, the overcrowding at both institutions was worse than it was in either 1973 or 1974. The population at Cummins had grown to 1518 and that at Tucker had grown to 501. According to Mr. Hutto, the population growth was not attributable to any defect or malfunction of the Arkansas parole system, but solely to the fact that inmate intake began to exceed releases about the first of 1974.

The 1975 record reflects a difference between the testimony that Mr. Hutto gave about barracks capacity in 1973 and that which he gave in 1975. In 1973 he had said that there should not be more than 60 to 80 men in a given barracks; in 1975 he raised that figure to 100. He explained the difference by saying that when he was testifying in 1973 he had convenience of administration, rather than overcrowding, in mind, and that as far as overcrowding is concerned, each barracks can properly house 100 men without loss of administrative efficiency. However that may be, the fact remains that as late as the date of the court's August, 1975 inspection of the prisons all of the barracks at both Cummins and Tucker had substantially more than 100 men in them, and inmates who could not be housed in the barracks and who were not in the East Building at Cummins or in the administrative segregation-punitive isolation cells at Tucker, were being housed in facilities that were not designed...