Nelson v. Collins, Civ. No. B-77-116.

• Decision Date: 17 May 1978
• Docket Number: Civ. No. B-77-116.
• Citation: 455 F. Supp. 727
• Parties: Warren C. NELSON, Earl A. Curreri and Carl Jackson, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated v. George H. COLLINS, Warden, Maryland Penitentiary, Mary Lou Bartram, Superintendent, Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center, Mark A. Levine, Commissioner, Maryland Division of Correction, Robert J. Lally, Secretary, Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, Henry P. Turner, Chairman, Maryland Parole Commission, Marvin Mandel, Governor of the State of Maryland, McLindsey Hawkins, Assistant Warden, Maryland Penitentiary, Sigmund Fine, Assistant Warden, Maryland Penitentiary, Maryland Division of Correction, Louis Goldstein, Member, Board of Public Works, William S. James, Member, Board of Public Works, D. J. Smith, Sergeant, Maryland Penitentiary, Sued Individually and in their official capacities.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maryland

455 F. Supp. 727

Warren C. NELSON, Earl A. Curreri and Carl Jackson, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated v. George H. COLLINS, Warden, Maryland Penitentiary, Mary Lou Bartram, Superintendent, Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center, Mark A. Levine, Commissioner, Maryland Division of Correction, Robert J. Lally, Secretary, Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, Henry P. Turner, Chairman, Maryland Parole Commission, Marvin Mandel, Governor of the State of Maryland, McLindsey Hawkins, Assistant Warden, Maryland Penitentiary, Sigmund Fine, Assistant Warden, Maryland Penitentiary, Maryland Division of Correction, Louis Goldstein, Member, Board of Public Works, William S. James, Member, Board of Public Works, D. J. Smith, Sergeant, Maryland Penitentiary, Sued Individually and in their official capacities.

Civ. No. B-77-116.

United States District Court, D. Maryland.

May 17, 1978.

Richard G. Fishman, Mary S. Elcano, and Richard L. North, Prisoner Assistance Project, Legal Aid Bureau, Inc., Baltimore, Md., for plaintiffs.

Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, Stephen B. Caplis, and W. Timothy Finan, Asst. Attys. Gen., Baltimore, Md., for defendants.

BLAIR, District Judge.

In this class action the plaintiffs, prisoners at the Maryland Penitentiary and the Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center (MRDCC), claim that the conditions of confinement in these institutions violate their constitutional rights.¹ The class, formed under Rule 23(a) and (b)(2), F.R.Civ.P., consists of all persons who are now or will be in the future confined in each institution.² The defendants are numerous state officials and employees whose responsibilities directly or indirectly involve the operation of these prison facilities. Plaintiffs seek declaratory and injunctive relief.³ The action is brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and directly under various amendments to the United States Constitution. Jurisdiction is present under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1343.

Introduction

The Penitentiary is the maximum security prison in the Maryland correctional system. The Penitentiary is no country club nor should it be. Its population is made up of felons who have committed the most serious crimes. As of October 1976 the average prisoner sentence in the Penitentiary was 28 and one-half years. More than 250 prisoners were serving sentences of life or more.

Since 1967 the MRDCC has been housed within the Penitentiary and shares some of its facilities. The MRDCC operates, however, as a separate institution. It receives prisoners convicted in Maryland state courts and committed to the Division of Correction with sentences of 90 days or more. The MRDCC is responsible for the initial classification and assignment of prisoners to one of the state correctional facilities. The MRDCC is operated also as a maximum security institution.

The population of the institutions is to some extent fluid and the approximate total population at the time of trial was 1500 prisoners, of whom approximately 1000 were confined in the Penitentiary and approximately 500 were confined in the MRDCC. The combined facilities are staffed by approximately 450 employees and the cost of operation is in excess of eight million dollars annually.

The Claims

The parties agree that the basic question to be decided is whether the Penitentiary and the MRDCC are unconstitutionally overcrowded. Plaintiffs contend that overcrowding exists to the extent that it causes psychological and physical harm and otherwise violates their constitutional rights. They assert, inter alia, that there are inadequacies in medical facilities, food services, sanitation and hygiene, recreation, vocational and other rehabilitative programs, psychological and psychiatric services, discipline and punishment, parole and release procedures, and operation of a meaningful classification system. Defendants concede that the institutions are overcrowded from a correctional point of view but they deny that the overcrowded conditions reach constitutional proportions. They further contend that the prisoners receive adequate food, shelter and medical care and that other conditions and services meet constitutional standards.

Following extensive pretrial discovery and numerous conferences between the court and counsel, the case was tried to the court without a jury.⁴ Shortly before the trial, counsel and the judge made an extensive tour of substantially all areas of the Penitentiary and MRDCC. Most of the basic facts were presented by stipulation and the evidence at trial consisted mainly of the testimony of correctional and other experts called by the parties. The court's findings and conclusions are based in part upon its observations and the information obtained during its tour of the facilities.

The Law

Absent constitutional violations, federal courts have no right and hence no business in meddling in matters of state prison administration. The problems of prison administration are "complex and intractable" and are "not readily susceptible of resolution by decree." Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 405, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 1807, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974). Thus, federal courts have traditionally adopted "a broad hands-off attitude toward problems of prison administration." Id. at 404, 94 S.Ct. at 1807.

A lawfully convicted and sentenced state prisoner necessarily suffers the loss of rights and privileges which ordinary citizens enjoy to the fullest extent. Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 822, 94 S.Ct. 2800, 41 L.Ed.2d 495 (1974). Because federal judges have no particular expertise in prison management, prison officials must be accorded wide latitude in the administration of prison affairs, Cruz v. Beto, 405 U.S. 319, 321, 92 S.Ct. 1079, 31 L.Ed.2d 263 (1972), and their judgments "are entitled to considerable weight." Ross v. Blackledge, 477 F.2d 616, 618 (4th Cir. 1973). In Sweet v. South Carolina Dept. of Corrections, 529 F.2d 854, 859 (4th Cir. 1975), the Fourth Circuit summed up its review of the law in this area by stating:

Courts are accordingly limited in their exercise of power in this area to deprivations which represent constitutional abuses and they cannot prohibit a given condition or treatment in prison management unless it reaches the level of an unconstitutional deprivation. It has been well said that "Courts encounter numerous cases in which the acts or conditions under attack are clearly undesirable and are condemned by penologists, but the courts are powerless to act because the practices are not so abusive as to violate a constitutional right." Note, Decency and Fairness: An Emerging Judicial Role in Prison Reform, 72 Va.L.Rev. 841, 843 (1971).

Plaintiffs here are entitled to relief only if they can show that they have been subjected to "cruel and unusual punishment" under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court has defined cruel and unusual punishment as that punishment which is incompatible with "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 102, 97 S.Ct. 285, 290, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976). This principle is more easily articulated than applied. Quite clearly, however, conditions unnecessary to the confinement status, offensive to basic human dignity, and detrimental to the physical and psychological well-being of a prisoner are likely to suffer universal condemnation and constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Many courts have been confronted with the question of whether certain prison conditions constituted cruel and unusual punishment.⁵

Discussion

As stated earlier, the central question presented in this case is whether overcrowding has resulted in the deprivation of constitutional rights. Overcrowding results from extensive double-celling. The national trend in the late 1960's and early 1970's was one of a declining prison population. In the early 1970's this trend was reversed and the prison population in the nation began to climb. Maryland experienced a similar prison population growth.⁶ This is illustrated by the fact that the prison population in Maryland in the first quarter of 1972 was approximately 4900 and in the last quarter of 1976 was approximately 8000. Due to the unexpected increase in prison population, the Maryland Department of Correction placed a second bunk in most of the cells at the Penitentiary and MRDCC.

In this circuit it is established that double-celling of prisoners in a cell containing 65 square feet is not per se unconstitutional. Hite v. Leeke, 564 F.2d 670 (4th Cir. 1977); see also Crowe v. Leeke, 540 F.2d 740 (4th Cir. 1976). This does not end the inquiry, however, because the court must determine from the totality of the circumstances whether double-celling in this case violates the Eighth Amendment. For reasons to be discussed, the court concludes that the nature and extent of double-celling under the circumstances here presented is a violation of constitutional dimensions. It further concludes with one exception that none of the other conditions considered alone or in combination amount to constitutional deprivation.

The buildings which constitute the Penitentiary and the MRDCC were constructed partly in the 1800's and partly in the early part of the 1900's and are typical of the maximum security facilities constructed in that period. The Penitentiary contains approximately 690 cells and has a population of approximately 1000. The MRDCC contains approximately 260 cells and has a population of approximately 500. The American Correctional Association (ACA) rates the capacity for the Penitentiary as 743 prisoners and the capacity of MRDCC as 260 prisoners. ACA standards for the operation of correctional institutions are instructive and useful guidelines but they are not dispositive on the question of constitutional deprivations. They are postulated as desirable correctional goals and in...