Rutherford v. Pitchess, 81-5461
| Decision Date | 14 July 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 81-5461,81-5461 |
| Citation | 710 F.2d 572 |
| Parties | Dennis RUTHERFORD, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Peter J. PITCHESS, et al., Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Terry Smerling, American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Los Angeles, Cal., for plaintiffs-appellees.
Frederick R. Bennett, Deputy County Counsel, Los Angeles, Cal., for defendants-appellants.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
Before TANG, SCHROEDER, and POOLE, Circuit Judges.
This is a class action against Los Angeles County officials 1 on behalf of pretrial detainees in the Los Angeles County Central Jail. After trial the district court ordered twelve different changes in jail conditions. The county accepted nine of those changes which covered a variety of problems, including overcrowding, inadequate exercise, lack of clean clothing and telephone access, and insufficient time to eat meals. It appealed the remaining three.
In an earlier unpublished memorandum decision, we remanded the case to allow the district court to reconsider the three challenged orders in the light of the intervening Supreme Court decision in Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979) (Wolfish ). On remand, the district court acknowledged that Wolfish required some differences in analysis, but concluded that it required no difference in result. The court reaffirmed its previous order with respect to all three conditions. The county again appeals.
The challenged orders, which have been stayed pending appeal, require that the jail administrators: (1) allow low-risk detainees who are imprisoned for more than one month to receive one contact visit per week, up to a maximum of 1,500 such visits per week; (2) permit inmates to observe searches of their cells; and (3) reinstall transparent windows in the cells. 2 We reverse the order requiring reinstallation of windows and affirm the other two.
The district court's original orders were entered in 1979 after a seventeen-day court trial and two personal inspections of the jail. Judge Gray explained his rulings in two memoranda of decision, both of which reflected the court's consideration of relevant aspects of the detainees' confinement, including whether the challenged restrictions were reasonably necessary to the maintenance of security, order, and safety in the institution.
In our decision remanding the case in light of Wolfish, we summarized the standards which the district court should apply:
Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 [99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447] (1979), ... set forth two tests for evaluating constitutional attacks by pretrial detainees on conditions and restrictions during their confinement. Where a condition implicates the fourteenth amendment's protection against deprivation of liberty without due process, the proper inquiry is whether the condition amounts to punishment. Id. at 538 . A condition is punitive if there is a showing of express intent to punish. Otherwise, if a particular condition is reasonably related to a legitimate nonpunitive objective, it does not, without more, amount to punishment. Id. Legitimate objectives include both insuring the detainee's presence at trial and facilitating the effective management of the facility. Id. at 539-40 .
Where a restriction implicates another constitutional right as well, a court must assess whether the condition or restriction impermissibly infringes that right. In making that assessment, however, the court must recognize that the essential goals of maintaining security and preserving internal order and discipline may require some limitation on the constitutional rights of detainees, id. at 546 , and must grant wide-ranging deference to prison administrators in the adoption of policies to serve these goals. Id. at 547-58 .
Rutherford v. Pitchess, 626 F.2d 866, slip op. at 2-3 (9th Cir.1980) (mem.). We commented upon the relationship between the analysis used by the district court in this case and the Supreme Court in Wolfish as follows:
The district court here articulated standards that track closely those the Supreme Court subsequently laid down in Wolfish. Relying on case law to the date of its decision, however, the district court also observed that proof of the availability of less restrictive means demonstrated that prison officials had exaggerated their response to security concerns. Wolfish rejected this mode of analysis. Id.
Id. at 3. On remand, Judge Gray reaffirmed his prior orders, stating that the county's actions "exceeded the reasonable requirements of security."
We review the district court's decision upon remand in light of the controlling authority and our earlier mandate. In doing so, we recognize that the authority to make policy choices concerning prisons is not a proper judicial function. Wolfish, supra, 441 U.S. at 562, 99 S.Ct. at 1886. Nevertheless, we also are conscious of the fact that pre-trial detainees, who have not been convicted of any crime, retain important constitutional rights which must be protected.
A court confronted with challenges to prison practices therefore faces an important and difficult task. To fulfill the Supreme Court's mandate under Wolfish, it must explore and analyze two ofttimes competing sets of needs and objectives--the penal institution's interest in institutional administration and security and the detainee's interest in protecting and exercising his retained constitutional rights. Only after such a thorough review can a court decide whether or not a particular prison condition is an unreasonable, exaggerated response to the legitimate nonpunitive objectives of a detention facility.
Here, the trial court's factual findings are for the most part not challenged by the county and we defer to those findings as they have not been shown to be clearly erroneous. Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a). The county assails the court's application of the appropriate legal standards to the conditions existing at the prison. These legal conclusions are, of course, subject to de novo review. Hoptowit v. Ray, 682 F.2d 1237, 1245 (9th Cir.1982). We consider, in turn, each challenged order.
The district court found that the county denies all detainees the opportunity for physical contact with their visitors. The inmates are separated from their visitors by transparent glass and must use a "telephone" for voice communication.
In considering the appellees' challenge to this practice, the district court rejected any contention that unlimited contact visits should be provided, concluding that if contact were permitted in all visits, an enormous security burden would result and the total number of visits, given the physical limitations of L.A. County Jail, would have to be reduced. At the same time, the court was concerned with the adverse psychological effects caused by the lack of physical contact with family members over a prolonged period of time. Such effects are supported by the evidence in this record and have been noted by other district courts confronting similar challenges. See, e.g., Rhem v. Malcolm, 371 F.Supp. 594, 601-07 (S.D.N.Y.), aff'd, 507 F.2d 333 (2d Cir.1974).
The court carefully reviewed the particular security problems that contact visitation engenders, including the risks of physical harm and escape, as well as of the importation of contraband such as drugs and weapons. It also considered the short length of time that most detainees spend at this particular facility. After this thorough analysis, the court concluded that the loss of contact over a prolonged period was an unreasonable and exaggerated response by the county for those detainees who spend more than thirty days in the facility and who can be identified as low-risk detainees. The court therefore entered a narrow order providing for one contact visit per week for such detainees and for a maximum number of contact visits per week in the institution. The court found that only modest physical alterations would be necessary to permit this small number of visits. 3
The county argues in this appeal that the contact visitation order is improper because the district court relied on evidence of visitation practices in other county institutions in order to arrive at a "lowest common denominator." The Supreme Court in Wolfish stated that the Due Process Clause does not require such a security standard, "whereby a practice permitted at one penal institution must be permitted at all institutions." 441 U.S. at 554, 99 S.Ct. at 1882.
Our review of the district court's opinion, however, convinces us that Judge Gray fashioned a narrowly drawn order based upon the capacities, limitations, and security risks of this particular jail. In reaffirming his order on remand, Judge Gray noted that he had tried "to find the 'mutual accommodation between institutional needs and objectives and the provisions of the constitution that are of general application,' to which Justice Rehnquist referred in his opinion (441 U.S. at 546 ." He concluded that the "categorical rejection of all proposals involving [contact] visits" is not consistent with this approach. We agree with Judge Gray in this regard.
The district court's analysis in this case is fully consistent with the approach approved by the Fifth Circuit in Jones v. Diamond, 636 F.2d 1364, 1377-78 (5th Cir.) (en banc), cert. dismissed, 453 U.S. 950, 102 S.Ct. 27, 69 L.Ed.2d 1033 (1981). In Diamond the Fifth Circuit held that the determination of whether contact visitation may be denied for legitimate security reasons is a decision peculiar to each penal institution: "Whether or not contact visitation rights should be accorded pretrial detainees in the Jackson County jail can be decided only after a full hearing on the facilities available in both jails and the security requirements in...
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