Opinion ID: 415359
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exposure to Violence as a Form of Punishment

Text: 57 Possibly because of the weak underpinnings of its variant of the totality of the circumstances standard, the Concurring Opinion does not place all of its weight on that stanchion. The opinion goes on to sketch the state of the law regarding permissible levels of inmate violence under the Eighth Amendment. The thrust of the analysis appears to be that, even if we consider only the violence issue, the appellees have failed to show that they were exposed to a sufficiently serious risk of harm to satisfy the stringent requirements for making out a constitutional violation. 58 The Concurring Opinion does not purport to state any clear legal standard concerning how prevalent prison violence must be before the Constitution is offended. However, various comments in the opinion--regarding the unavoidability of frequent assaults, the congenital viciousness of maximum-security inmates, and the legitimacy of prison officials taking calculated risks--give the general impression that nothing short of open warfare among the prisoners, countenanced by the guards and administrators, will state a claim under the Eighth Amendment. 59 To expose the fallacy inherent in this conception of the state of the law, one needs only to quote a few of the leading opinions in the field. The central norm in this area is that, 60 [a] prisoner has a right, secured by the eighth and fourteenth amendments, to be reasonably protected from constant threat of violence and sexual assault by his fellow inmates, and he need not wait until he is actually assaulted to obtain relief. 61 Woodhous v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 487 F.2d 889, 890 (4th Cir.1973) (per curiam) (citation omitted). Accord Ramos v. Lamm, 639 F.2d 559, 572 (10th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 1041, 101 S.Ct. 1759, 68 L.Ed.2d 239 (1981); Withers v. Levine, 615 F.2d 158, 161 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 849, 101 S.Ct. 136, 66 L.Ed.2d 59 (1980); Little v. Walker, 552 F.2d 193, 197 (7th Cir.1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 932, 98 S.Ct. 1507, 55 L.Ed.2d 530 (1978); Doe v. Lally, 467 F.Supp. 1339, 1348, 1354 (D.Md.1979). Prison officials have a corresponding duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent prisoners from intentionally inflicting harm or creating unreasonable risks of harm to other prisoners. Withers v. Levine, 615 F.2d at 161. Accord Woodhous v. Virginia, 487 F.2d at 890; Doe v. Lally, 467 F.Supp. at 1354. Or, as the Ninth Circuit has recently put it, [p]rison officials have a duty to take reasonable steps to protect inmates from physical abuse. Hoptowit v. Ray, 682 F.2d 1237, 1250 (9th Cir.1982) (citation omitted). 62 The opinion of the Fourth Circuit in Withers v. Levine persuasively elaborates these general principles. The Court of Appeals was concerned that a phrase used in its prior decision in Woodhous to describe conditions at the prison in question 16 had been improperly construed as a statement of the threshold of liability. The court corrected the misinterpretation in the following terms: 63 A pervasive risk of harm may not ordinarily be shown by pointing to a single incident or isolated incidents, but it may be established by much less than proof of a reign of violence and terror in the particular institution. The defendants seized upon that explanatory phrase from Woodhous to contend that something approaching anarchy must be proven before a cause of action under Woodhous may be made out, but conditions need not deteriorate to that extent before the constitutional right to protection arises. It is enough that violence and sexual assaults occur on the idle tier at MHC with sufficient frequency that the younger prisoners, particularly those slightly built, are put in reasonable fear for their safety and to reasonably apprise prison officials of the existence of the problem and the need for protective measures. 64 615 F.2d at 161. 65 In sum, the Concurring Opinion holds appellees to an unduly high standard of liability concerning impermissible levels of violence. To be entitled to relief under the Eighth Amendment, appellees need only have shown that violence and sexual assaults occurred at Maximum sufficiently often to induce prisoners reasonably to fear for their safety and to make the prison officials aware of the problem, and that those officials failed to take reasonable steps to protect the inmates.