Opinion ID: 349561
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Detainees.

Text: 37 The issue of the right of pretrial detainees to outdoor recreation pits the paramount need for jail security against the principle found in the procedural branch of the fourteenth amendment's due process clause that citizens may not be punished without proof. We hold that presumably innocent pretrial detainees who are not classified as security risks and who have not been shown to have violated the disciplinary rules of the jail have a fourteenth amendment and 1983 right to regular access to the outdoors. 38 The reason for which presumably innocent detainees are incarcerated is to assure their attendance at trial. Any incarceration or detention might be deemed punitive, because it is a deprivation of liberty. But pretrial detention only becomes punishment violative of the fourteenth amendment due process clause when the conditions placed on the detainee are more restrictive than are necessary to assure his presence at trial or to preserve security. Duran v. Elrod, 7 Cir. 1976, 542 F.2d 998, 999; Rhem v. Malcolm, 2 Cir. 1974, 507 F.2d 333, 336-37. (W)here a person has not been convicted of a crime, any deprivation of his liberty by the state must be the least restrictive means of achieving the purpose of the deprivation. Note, Constitutional Limitations on the Conditions of Pretrial Detention, 79 Yale L.J. 941, 949 (1970), quoted in Hamilton v. Love, 1971, E.D.Ark., 328 F.Supp. 1182, 1192. 39 We agree with the trial court that conditions at the Duval County Jail were unnecessarily restrictive. Presumably innocent detainees were literally stored in a building designed as a maximum security penal institution a building designed to punish as well as to hold. At the time of the trial of this case, at least 90 percent of the inmates in the jail never left their cellblocks, even for meals. 401 F.Supp. at 893. Inmates presumed innocent by the law were often kept for months in these cellblocks while waiting for trial. The trial court considered the continuous confinement of the inmates at the Duval County Jail and found that such uninterrupted incarceration was unnecessary for the purpose of maintaining their presence at that institution. We agree with that finding. The trial judge also surveyed the areas available for outdoor recreation at the municipal complex of which the jail is a part and found that there were adequate facilities for that purpose without a large expenditure of funds. 401 F.Supp. at 893. We find that the continuous incarceration of presumably innocent persons in an institution designed to punish, where outdoor recreation is reasonably possible, is unnecessarily restrictive and therefore punishes the innocent in violation of procedural due process. See Rhem v. Malcolm, 2 Cir. 1974, 507 F.2d 333; Duran v. Elrod, 7 Cir. 1976, 542 F.2d 998, 999; Haggy v. Solem, 8 Cir. 1977, 547 F.2d 1363 (per curiam); Hamilton v. Landrieu, E.D.La.1972, 351 F.Supp. 549, 550; Taylor v. Sterrett, N.D.Tex.1972, 344 F.Supp. 411, 422, aff'd, 5 Cir. 1974, 499 F.2d 367, 368; Brenneman v. Madigan, N.D.Cal.1972, 343 F.Supp. 128, 140; Conklin v. Hancock, D.N.H.1971, 334 F.Supp. 1119, 1122; Jones v. Wittenberg, N.D.Ohio 1971, 330 F.Supp. 707, 717, aff'd, 6 Cir. 1972, 456 F.2d 854. 40