Osorio v. Rios

• Decision Date: 26 February 1976
• Docket Number: 75-322 and 75-938.,Civ. No. 74-240,74-924
• Citation: 429 F. Supp. 570
• Parties: Francisca OSORIO et al., Plaintiffs, v. Carlos RIOS et al., Defendants. Evelyn HERNAIZ et al., Plaintiffs, v. Norberto GARCIA et al., Defendants. Angela RODRIGUEZ et al., Plaintiffs, v. Carlos RIOS et al., Defendants. Juana NIEVES et al., Plaintiffs, v. Carlos RIOS et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico

429 F. Supp. 570

Francisca OSORIO et al., Plaintiffs, v. Carlos RIOS et al., Defendants.

Evelyn HERNAIZ et al., Plaintiffs, v. Norberto GARCIA et al., Defendants.

Angela RODRIGUEZ et al., Plaintiffs, v. Carlos RIOS et al., Defendants.

Juana NIEVES et al., Plaintiffs, v. Carlos RIOS et al., Defendants.

Civ. Nos. 74-240, 74-924, 75-322 and 75-938.

United States District Court, D. Puerto Rico.

February 26, 1976.

Lcda. María Laura Colón, Puerto Rico Legal Services, Inc., Hato Rey, P. R., for plaintiffs.

Secretary of Justice, Dept. of Justice, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, San Juan, P. R., for defendants.

Before CAMPBELL, Circuit Judge, TOLEDO, Chief Judge, and PESQUERA, District Judge.

OPINION

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Circuit Judge.

This class action is brought by certain juvenile offenders in Puerto Rico who were placed in adult jails by judicial order. Plaintiffs contend that 34 L.P.R.A. § 2007(c), a statute allowing courts to put juvenile offenders in adult jails or prisons, violates the Constitution of the United States, and is therefore invalid. The challenged portion of the statute reads as follows:

"No child shall be held in a police station, lockup, jail, or prison, except that, by order of the Judge, setting forth the reasons therefor, a child over 16 years of age whose behavior or condition is such as to endanger his safety or welfare or that of other inmates in the custody center for children, may be put in jail or other place of detention for adults, provided it is a room or apartment entirely separated from the adults confined therein."

Plaintiffs have invoked the jurisdiction of this three-judge court under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1332(3) & (4) and 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201 and 2202.

A judge of this court has certified as members of the plaintiff class all juveniles who are or will be incarcerated in adult penal institutions pursuant to the above-quoted provision contained in Section 2007(c), Title 34, Laws of Puerto Rico Annotated. We have approved, and we confirm, that order, dated November 4, 1975.

The facts before us, largely undisputed, will be found in (1) stipulations of the material histories of each of the individual plaintiffs; (2) testimony of Dr. Salvador Santiago, a clinical psychologist, called by plaintiffs, who, among other matters, described the conditions for detention of juveniles in the San Juan District Jail and elsewhere; (3) testimony of Judge Gladys Lasa Diaz, Chief Judge and General Administrator of the Juvenile Court System in Puerto Rico; and (4) certain exhibits.

We adopt and include as a part of our findings herein the stipulated histories of the individual plaintiffs.

The individual plaintiffs are persons who come within the special jurisdiction of the superior court over offenders under the age of 18. At one or another time the superior court has ordered that each be held either in San Juan District Jail (La Princesa) or Anexo de Miramar, a facility for sentenced young adult offenders. Their subsequent incarceration in these adult facilities lasted from a month or so to eleven months, and, in some cases, was ended only by temporary order of this court placing the child in a juvenile facility.

In his testimony and report, Dr. Santiago described conditions existing at the two adult jails in contrast to the Industrial School for Minors, a juvenile facility having some programs and opportunities. It is clear, and we so find, that juveniles held at the two adult institutions receive no training and participate in no educational, recreational or rehabilitative programs of any sort. Their conditions of confinement are no better, and may even be worse, than those of adult prisoners.

La Princesa, built in 1847, was described as completely obsolete, and suffering from general overcrowding. It has only the most limited and cramped accommodations for juveniles, who are housed in a dormitory, sixteen or seventeen to a small room. Contrary to the provision in § 2007(c), mingling with the adult population is, in fact, permitted. Anexo is similarly overcrowded; in a typical juvenile dormitory, there may be thirty beds in a 25 × 40 foot room. The juveniles are again not completely separated from the adults. Dr. Santiago described the crowding within this limited space as reaching dangerous levels. To compound the problem, there are no athletic or recreational programs to speak of at either institution, so the juveniles must spend most of their time in their crowded dormitories. At La Princesa, there is one basketball court, available to the entire inmate population for a total of two hours per day, and one patio, to which the entire population, including the juveniles, has access for two hours per day. At Anexo, there are no sports at all for the juveniles. There are no radios or television sets in the juveniles' dormitories at La Princesa, and only one television set for all the juveniles at Anexo.

At both institutions, the medical facilities are minimal. La Princesa employs, for all the inmates, one doctor two hours per day and one dentist eight hours per week. A doctor visits Anexo three times per week, with no medicines or equipment available.

At La Princesa, juveniles who present discipline problems are put in 4 × 8 foot cells located in the basement of the jail, with sometimes as many as three inmates occupying the same cell because of overcrowding. At Anexo, those juveniles who are sexually intimidated by the adult inmates often request to be sent to solitary confinement for protection. On one visit Dr. Santiago found that all the solitary cells were occupied by minors for that reason.

Judge Gladys Lasa testified, and we so find, that only a small percentage of juvenile offenders, around 3%, were ever confined in adult jails; and she pointed to guidelines designed to guard against abuse of the statute. The guidelines are not, however, binding on individual judges.

The law of Puerto Rico, like that of most jurisdictions,¹ classifies accused persons under the age of 18 differently from adults. Act of June 23, 1955; 34 L.P.R.A. §§ 2001 et seq. Adult criminal jurisdiction attaches in such cases only if the judge, after hearing, expressly waives juvenile jurisdiction, which may be done only if the child is over 16 and under 18. § 2004. Juvenile jurisdiction has not been waived over the individual plaintiffs. They are therefore subject to juvenile jurisdiction only; they are not deemed to be criminals or convicts; and the judicial proceedings which take place concerning them are not of a criminal character. § 2011. Fingerprints or photographs are not to be taken and records are to be kept separate from those of adults; juveniles have no right to bail. § 2007(d), (e) & (f).

The philosophy of Puerto Rico's juvenile laws is summarized in the so-called statement of motives accompanying the Act of June 23, 1955, No. 97, p. 504, which includes the following:

"But, aside from other means which, in terms of social prophylaxis, may be resorted to in tackling and solving this problem, it also calls for some legal device which will enable the judicial authority to exercise, in relation with maladjusted and neglected children and with their parents or persons in charge of their care and support, those functions inherent in its condition of `parens patriae', without its having to consider the child as a delinquent, save in those exceptional cases in which the welfare of the community or of the child may call for the treatment of a child over 16 and under 18 years of age as an adult."

Plaintiffs complain of being jailed with adults notwithstanding the noncriminal nature of juvenile jurisdiction. They argue as follows: (1) That "treatment" is the quid pro quo for a juvenile's loss of the fundamental rights afforded adults such as a jury trial; hence when attempts to treat are abandoned, as by placing the juvenile in an adult jail offering no rehabilitative programs, the informal juvenile procedures no longer provide due process under the fourteenth amendment. (2) That § 2007(c) does not afford even rudimentary due process since a juvenile may be confined without notice and hearing. (3) That by confining the juvenile as an adult, but denying him the same procedures that Puerto Rico affords to all adults such as a preliminary hearing and bail, Puerto Rico is denying the juvenile equal protection of the law in violation of the fourteenth amendment. (4) That confining juveniles in adult jails amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the eighth amendment.

Before turning to these matters,² we note that § 2007(c) is being interpreted in practice to allow confinement with adults at any time while the juvenile remains under the supervision of the court. § 2003. This is so even though the statutory language permitting the jailing of a juvenile over 16 "whose behavior or condition is such as to endanger his safety or welfare or that of other inmates in the custody center for children", appears in a portion of the juvenile law that deals with the child's custody before his case is heard on the merits. A latter section, § 2010, entitled "Resolution", does not authorize imprisoning a child in an adult institution: rather, it provides for commitment to "an institution suitable for the treatment of children". One might assume, therefore, that § 2007(c) contemplates adult confinement only as a temporary expedient before resolution of the case — in other words, that it authorizes only brief "pre-trial" confinement.

However, the evidence before us indicates that courts acting under § 2007(c) indiscriminately commit juveniles to adult institutions after as well as before resolution. Judges apparently interpret the statute as empowering imprisonment whenever deemed necessary.³ For example, plaintiff de Jesus Osorio, following revocation of his probation, was held in adult jails for the better part of a year, and was transferred to a juvenile facility only upon intervention...