Court Opinion

ID: 9553847
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:36:03.174023+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:32:22.644056
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting):
Appeal from a judgment directing the zoning authority to grant a permit to allow a “school” for boys, — described in a predecessor decision of ours, of similar import,1 as a “detention place” for 26 wayward boys, including drug addicts from ages 12 through 17, and to afford them such training and “schooling” as “would be proper,” — basing our decision apparently on a technical procedural rule, but obviously because the people of Mapleton did not feel safe to have a “school,” as' we said, inhabited by wayward boys, — drug addicts and otherwise.
The main opinion completely has ignored private property rights. It says, in effect, that you may put a “school” for incorrigi-bles or those having violent or homicidal tendencies next door to an erstwhile law-abiding citizen who certainly would not have purchased his property had he anticipated the action of not the zoning authorities that turned it down, but the courts that overruled them, or by the interpretation this court would place on the word “school,” in the common connotation.
It seems to me that this is no “school” in its commonly employed sense, but a “correctional institution for actual or potential criminals,” who, even if rehabilitated, will be replaced by the same type of actual or potential criminals, ad infinitum. One wonders how the members of this court would react by way of fear for themselves or their children, if the institution, subject of this litigation, were established near their homes, or what kind of equitable reaction they would enjoy, if by such establishment, of such institution, where the main opinion concedes there is the use of chains, shackles and maximum security measures by isolation in locked rooms to restrain these unfortunate but nonetheless dangerous misfits, — where the net result obviously would be to depreciate the value of such homes to a figure much less than previous sales value, and possibly to utter worthlessness to such members.
I am of the opinion that the revocation of the plaintiffs’ permit by the Planning Board, better equipped than the District, or this Court, to determine whether admitted conditions of danger, detention of incor-rigibles, the use of chains and locked rooms therefor, is a “school” in the commonly accepted meaning thereof, — particularly when such conditions and facts do not relate at all to a “school,” but perfectly describe and justify need for a “jail” instead.
*200Everyone concedes that one of the state prison’s primary purposes is to rehabilitate, but I would venture the speculation that not even the wildest of social softies would dub that institution a “school.” The main opinion’s logic and conclusion would seem to justify the removal of the Utah State Prison from the Point of the Mountain to Penrose Drive or in between the Governor’s Mansion and the nearby church house.
I am of the opinion this case should be reversed with instructions to re-instate the Planning Board’s rejection of the permit.

. Crist v. Mapleton City, 28 Utah 2d 7, 497 P.2d 633.