Opinion ID: 449695
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the commonwealth's justifications for directive 807

Text: 8 At trial, the Commonwealth offered (and supported by evidence) five discrete bases to justify the directive. We turn now to a description of these justifications and the evidence offered in their support. In the course of our discussion, we will also relate Cole's contentions addressed to each justification and the district court's response.
9 According to Dr. Mazurkiewicz, a fundamental purpose of the grooming standards in Directive 807 is to promote prison security through the quick identification of prisoners within the institution and to facilitate the recapture of escaped felons. The Commonwealth's primary concern in this regard relates to the radical changes in appearance that can be accomplished by simply varying hair length. In the view of the Commonwealth's (expert) witnesses, once an inmate is permitted to have hair longer than the length outlined in the directive, his ability to alter his appearance by cutting his hair greatly increases, thus aiding an inmate who escapes. The experts also testified that longer hair impairs the ability of prison officials to identify prisoners within the institution for such activities as roll call, mail call, purchases at the commissary, and the issuance of visiting room passes. 10 Cole responded principally by developing on cross examination and by documentary proffers the fact that there were inmates at Huntingdon with file photographs depicting them with long hair and full beards. Cole was able, however, to demonstrate that only three or four inmates out of over 1500 at Huntingdon had hair longer than regulations allow. One of these was Cole himself and another was Stephen R. Wilson, a follower of the Rastafarian religion, who is the beneficiary of similar declaratory and injunctive relief by order of the district court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. 5 Moreover, the Commonwealth introduced evidence that the hair length directive was strictly enforced at other Pennsylvania correctional institutions. 11 The district court rejected the identification justification, stating: 12 We find it incredible that prison officials cannot readily identify inmates with long hair and require them to cut it prior to being photographed, either upon entry into the correctional system or at any time during the term of the prisoners' incarceration. Consequently, we find incredible Fulcomer's assertion that enforcement of Administrative Directive 807 is a reasonable response to prison officials' goal of prohibiting inmates from having long hair in connection with a system of photographic identification of prisoners. The haphazard operation of the photographic identification system at least at the Huntingdon prison belies Fulcomer's claim. 13 Cole, 588 F.Supp. at 776.
14 The Commonwealth contends that Directive 807 is a reasonable response to prison officials' security concerns because restriction of hair length prevents inmates from concealing contraband, such as weapons or controlled substances, in their hair. It offered evidence through its experts that inmates with long hair will better be able to conceal contraband introduced into the prison by visitors and transferred to the prisoner during the contact visits allowed between inmates and visitors at Huntingdon. 15 The district court conceded the legitimacy of the Superintendent's concern about contraband, but concluded that the additional opportunity for inmates with long hair to receive contraband was minimal and, in light of existing procedures for the detection of contraband, unlikely to pose any significant risk to institutional security. 588 F.Supp. at 777. The court also noted that, in accordance with the provisions of Administrative Directive 203, inmates are strip-searched subsequent to contact visits; that, in order to detect contraband concealed in an inmate's hair, a guard may run his finger or a comb through the inmate's hair; and that Fulcomer did not present any evidence that it would be substantially more burdensome to search an inmate with long hair than to search an inmate with short hair. Consequently the court concluded that enforcement of Administrative Directive 807 against Cole is an exaggerated response to the defendants' concern with preventing concealment of contraband. 16 The Commonwealth argues on appeal that the district court took too narrow a view of the issue. According to the Commonwealth's witnesses, searching hair as part of a strip-search is dangerous since the inmates, because they are naked, may act out or assault a guard when touched by the guard about the head and hair. They asserted that guards have been assaulted while trying to search hair. Therefore, the prison officials stated, one objective during strip-searching is to minimize the need for the guard to touch the inmate. Long hair, especially if it is in a ponytail or is braided, increases the time and contact needed for a thorough search. Finally, the Commonwealth contends that, as its experts testified, since contraband is a problem inside the prison, separate and apart from the visiting room, long hair would have to be checked periodically, and there are not enough guards to do this.
17 The Commonwealth maintains that Directive 807 promotes institutional security by reducing the incidence of assaults on other prisoners by predatory homosexuals and by generally reducing the security problems alleged to result from prison homosexuality. The Commonwealth's experts testified to a belief that a correlation exists between security problems resulting from prison homosexuality and long hair, and that predatory homosexuals are more likely to attack or become involved in a fight over a long-haired inmate than a short-haired one. 6 They also testified that prison officials in other states recognize this problem. 18 The district court found that predatory homosexuals present a serious security problem at state correctional facilities, and that many fights between inmates result from one inmate seeking sexual favors from another. However, while conceding the sincerity of Fulcomer's belief that a correlation exists between homosexuality related security problems and long hair, the court also found Fulcomer's belief unreasonable because the Commonwealth's witnesses could point to no documentary evidence of the claimed correlation.
19 The Commonwealth offered evidence that allowing an inmate to wear his hair long involves a substantial risk to safety and sanitation when an inmate works around machinery and food service. The Commonwealth's testimony on this issue was that hair nets, hats and caps, Cole's proffered alternatives, could not be a total solution to this problem because, even when an inmate's hair length is within the guidelines of Directive 807, his hair still comes out of the nets on occasion. According to the Commonwealth's witnesses, hats and nets simply could not control hair that is longer than permitted by the directive. 20 The district court found this testimony incredible and viewed Directive 807 to be an exaggerated response to the Commonwealth's concerns of safety and sanitation in the prison. 21
22 Finally, the Commonwealth's witnesses testified that institutional security is threatened by selective enforcement of Bureau of Correction directives according special privileges for particular inmates. The problems are said to include inmates gaining positions of leadership or control, a general lessening of respect for authority and for the rules, inmates acting out against those who have gained the exception, and the lessening of staff and inmate morale. 23 Cole argues that this justification, though sincerely advanced, is unreasonable. He points to satisfactory experience with the granting of special exceptions to other inmate groups, for example, to Muslims who are served special diets without pork. Although it did not deal with this justification in terms, the district court's judgment in Cole's favor indicates that it implicitly rejected it, as it did all the other proffered justifications, as exaggerated or unreasonable.