Opinion ID: 623834
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Duty to Protect Prisoners

Text: The law imposes a statutory duty to protect prisoners from violence from other prisoners. 18 U.S.C. § 4042(a)(3) (2011) (“The Bureau of Prisons, under the direction of the Attorney General shall . . . provide for the protection, instruction, and discipline of all persons charged with or convicted of offenses 2 In its entirety, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 states: Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia. 8 Case: 10-40843 Document: 00511770597 Page: 9 Date Filed: 02/28/2012 against the United States.”). The United States Supreme Court, in a seminal case, definitively held “that a prison official may be held liable under the Eighth Amendment for denying humane conditions of confinement only if he knows that inmates face a substantial risk of serious harm and disregards that risk by failing to take reasonable measures to abate it.” Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 847 (1994). Even prior to Farmer, the Court proclaimed that there is a right to safety in prison. See Davidson v. Cannon, 474 U.S. 344, 352 (1986) (“In particular, it includes a prisoner's right to safe conditions and to security from attack by other inmates.”). Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote: [W]hen the State by the affirmative exercise of its power so restrains an individual’s liberty that it renders him unable to care for himself, and at the same time fails to provide for his basic human needs -- e.g., food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and reasonable safety -- it transgresses the substantive limits on state action set by the Eighth Amendment and the Due Process Clause. DeShaney v. Winnebago Cnty. Dept. of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 200 (1989) (emphasis in original); see also Bowers v. DeVito, 686 F.2d 616, 618 (7th Cir. 1982) (Judge Richard A. Posner observed: “[i]f the state puts a man in a position of danger from private persons and then fails to protect him, it will not be heard to say that its role was merely passive; it is as much an active [role] as if it had thrown him into a snake pit.”); Leonardo v. Moran, 611 F.2d 397, 398-99 (1st Cir. 1979) (“prison officials have a duty to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners”); Butler v. Dowd, 979 F.2d 661, 675 (8th Cir. 1992) (“This Court has clearly held that prisoners have a constitutional right to be free from . . . attacks by other inmates.”); McGill v. Duckworth, 944 F.2d 344, 347 (7th Cir. 1991); Hendricks v. Coughlin, 942 F.2d 109 (2d Cir. 1991); Vosburg v. Solem, 845 F.2d 763 (8th Cir. 1988). 9 Case: 10-40843 Document: 00511770597 Page: 10 Date Filed: 02/28/2012