Opinion ID: 3208802
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Prisoner Safety

Text: “Prison and jail officials, as well as the municipal entities that employ them, cannot absolutely guarantee the safety of their prisoners. Nonetheless, they have a constitutional duty to take reasonable steps to protect the prisoners’ safety and bodily integrity.” Cox, 800 F.3d at 1247-48 (citation, brackets, and internal quotation marks omitted). Mr. Wright’s claims are governed by the Due Process Clause rather than the Eighth Amendment because Mr. Wright was a pretrial detainee. See Lopez v. LeMaster, 172 F.3d 756, 759 n.2 (10th Cir. 1999). Even so, to determine whether Mr. Wright’s constitutional rights were violated, “we apply an analysis identical to that applied in Eighth Amendment cases brought pursuant to § 1983.” Id. “To establish a cognizable Eighth Amendment claim for failure to protect an inmate from harm by other inmates, the plaintiff must show that he [was] incarcerated under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm, the objective component, and that the prison official was deliberately indifferent to his safety, the subjective component.” Smith v. Cummings, 445 F.3d 1254, 1258 (10th Cir. 2006) (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). Regarding the subjective component, the plaintiff bears the burden to show that the defendants -6- responded in an “objectively unreasonable manner”—that is, they “knew of ways to reduce the harm but knowingly or recklessly declined to act.” Howard v. Waide, 534 F.3d 1227, 1239 (10th Cir. 2008) (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted).