Court Opinion

ID: 9427565
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:12.166723+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:08.075791
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
dissenting.
The Court holds that the Government may burden pretrial detainees with almost any restriction, provided detention officials do not proclaim a punitive intent or impose conditions that are “arbitrary or purposeless.” Ante, at 539. As if this standard were not sufficiently ineffectual, the Court dilutes it further by according virtually unlimited deference to detention officials’ justifications for particular impositions. Conspicuously lacking from this analysis is any meaningful consideration of the most relevant factor, the impact that restrictions may have on inmates. Such an approach is unsupportable, given that all of these detainees are presumptively innocent and many are confined solely because they cannot afford bail.1
*564In my view, the Court’s holding departs from the precedent it purports to follow and precludes effective judicial review of the conditions of pretrial confinement. More fundamentally, I believe the proper inquiry in this context is not whether a particular restraint can be labeled “punishment.” Rather, as with other due process challenges, the inquiry should be whether the governmental interests served by any given restriction outweigh the individual deprivations suffered.
I
The premise of the Court’s anlaysis is that detainees, unlike prisoners, may not be “punished.” To determine when a particular disability imposed during pretrial detention is punishment, the Court invokes the factors enunciated in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U. S. 144, 168-169 (1963), quoted ante, at 537-538 (footnotes omitted) :
“Whether the sanction involves an affirmative disability or restraint, whether it has historically been regarded as a punishment, whether it comes into play only on a finding of scienter, whether its operation will promote the traditional aims of punishment — retribution and deterrence, whether the behavior to which it applies is already a crime, whether an alternative purpose to which it may rationally be connected is assignable for it, and whether it appears excessive in relation to the alternative purpose assigned are all relevant to the inquiry, and may often point in differing directions.”
A number of the factors enunciated above focus on the nature and severity of the impositions at issue. Thus, if weight were given to all its elements, I believe the Mendoza-Martinez inquiry could be responsive to the impact of the *565deprivations imposed on detainees. However, within a few lines after quoting Mendoza-Martinez, the Court restates the standard as whether there is an expressed punitive intent on the part of detention officials, and, if not, whether the restriction is rationally related to some nonpunitive purpose or appears excessive in relation to that purpose. Ante, at 538-539. Absent from the reformulation is any appraisal of whether the sanction constitutes an affirmative disability or restraint and whether it has historically been regarded as punishment. Moreover, when the Court applies this standard, it loses interest in the inquiry concerning excessiveness, and, indeed, eschews consideration of less restrictive alternatives, practices in other detention facilities, and the recommendations of the Justice Department and professional organizations. See ante, at 542-543, n. 25, 543-544, n. 27, 554. By this process of elimination, the Court contracts a broad standard, sensitive to the deprivations imposed on detainees, into one that seeks merely to sanitize official motives and prohibit irrational behavior. As thus reformulated, the test lacks any real content.
A
To make detention officials’ intent the critical factor in assessing the constitutionality of impositions on detainees is unrealistic in the extreme. The cases on which the Court relies to justify this narrow focus all involve legislative Acts, not day-to-day administrative decisions. See Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, supra (Nationality Act of 1940 and Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952); Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S. 603 (1960) (Social Security Act); De Veau v. Braisted, 363 U. S. 144 (1960) (New York Waterfront Commission Act). In discerning the intent behind a statutory enactment, courts engage in a familiar judicial function, usually with the benefit of a legislative history that preceded passage of the statute. The motivation for policies in detention facilities, however, will frequently not be a matter of pub-*566lie record. Detainees challenging these policies will therefore bear the substantial burden of establishing punitive intent on the basis of circumstantial evidence or retrospective explanations by detention officials, which frequently may be self-serving. Particularly since the Court seems unwilling to look behind any justification based on security,2 that burden will usually prove insurmountable.
In any event, it will often be the case that officials believe, erroneously but in good faith, that a specific restriction is necessary for institutional security. As the District Court noted, “zeal for security is among the most common varieties of official excess,” United States ex rel. Wolfish v. Levi, 439 F. Supp. 114, 141 (SDNY 1977), and the litigation in this area corroborates that conclusion.3 A standard that focuses *567on punitive intent cannot effectively eliminate this excess. Indeed, the Court does not even attempt to “detail the precise extent of the legitimate governmental interests that may justify conditions or restrictions of pretrial detention.” Ante, at 540. Rather, it is content merely to recognize that “the effective management of the detention facility ... is a valid objective that may justify imposition of conditions and restrictions of pretrial detention and dispel any inference that such restrictions are intended as punishment.” Ibid.
Moreover, even if the inquiry the Court pursues were more productive, it simply is not the one the Constitution mandates here. By its terms, the Due Process Clause focuses on the nature of deprivations, not on the persons inflicting them. If this concern is to be vindicated, it is the effect of conditions of confinement, not the intent behind them, that must be the focal point of constitutional analysis.
B
Although the Court professes to go beyond the direct inquiry regarding intent and to determine whether a particular imposition is rationally related to a nonpunitive purpose, this exercise is at best a formality. Almost any restriction on detainees, including, as the Court concedes, chains and shackles, ante, at 539 n. 20, can be found to have some rational relation to institutional security, or more broadly, to “the effective management of the detention facility.” Ante, at 540. See Feeley v. Sampson, 570 F. 2d 364, 380 (CA1 1977) (Coffin, C. J., dissenting). Yet this toothless standard applies irrespective of the excessiveness of the restraint or the nature of the rights infringed.4
*568Moreover, the Court has not in fact reviewed the rationality of detention officials’ decisions, as Mendoza-Martinez requires. Instead, the majority affords “wide-ranging” deference to those officials “in the adoption and execution of policies and practices that in their judgment are needed to preserve internal order and discipline and to maintain institutional security.” Ante, at 547.5 Reasoning that security considerations in jails are little different than in prisons, the Court concludes that cases requiring substantial deference to prison administrators’ determinations on security-related issues are equally applicable in the present context. Ante, at 546-547, nn. 28, 29.
Yet as the Court implicitly acknowledges, ante, at 545, the rights of detainees, who have not been adjudicated guilty of a crime, are necessarily more extensive than those of prisoners “who have been found to have violated one or more of the criminal laws established by society for its orderly governance.” Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Union, 433 U. S. 119, 129 (1977). See Campbell v. McGruder, 188 U. S. App. D. C. 258, 264 n. 9, 580 F. 2d 521, 527 n. 9 (1978). Judicial tolerance of substantial impositions on detainees must be concomitantly less. However, by blindly deferring to administrative judgments on the rational basis for particular restrictions, the Court effectively delegates to detention officials the decision whether pretrial detainees have been punished. This, in my view, is an abdication of an unquestionably judicial function.
II
Even had the Court properly applied the punishment test, I could not agree to its use in this context. It simply does *569not advance analysis to determine whether a given deprivation imposed on detainees constitutes “punishment.” For in terms of the nature of the imposition and the impact on detainees, pretrial incarceration, although necessary to secure defendants' presence at trial, is essentially indistinguishable from punishment.6 The detainee is involuntarily confined and deprived of the freedom “to be with his family and friends and to form the other enduring attachments of normal life,” Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, 482 (1972). Indeed, this Court has previously recognized that incarceration is an “infamous punishment.” Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S., at 617; see also Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U. S. 228, 233-234 (1896); Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U. S. 651, 669 (1977). And if the effect of incarceration itself is inevitably punitive, so too must be the cumulative impact of those restraints incident to that restraint.7
A test that balances the deprivations involved against the state interests assertedly served8 would be more consistent *570with the import of the Due Process Clause. Such an approach would be sensitive to the tangible physical and psychological harm that a particular disability inflicts on detainees and to the nature of the less tangible, but significant, individual interests at stake. The greater the imposition on detainees, the heavier the burden of justification the Government would bear. See Bates v. Little Rock, 361 U. S. 516, 524 (1960); Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618, 634 (1969); Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U. S. 51, 58-59 (1973).
When assessing the restrictions on detainees, we must consider the cumulative impact of restraints imposed during confinement. Incarceration of itself clearly represents a profound infringement of liberty, and each additional imposition increases the severity of that initial deprivation. Since any restraint thus has a serious effect on detainees, I believe the Government must bear a more rigorous burden of justification than the rational-basis standard mandates. See supra, at 567. At a minimum, I would require a showing that a restriction is substantially necessary to jail administration. WThere the imposition is of particular gravity, that is, where it implicates interests of fundamental importance9 or inflicts significant harms, the Government should demonstrate that the restriction serves a compelling necessity of jail administration.10
In presenting its justifications, the Government could adduce evidence of the security and administrative needs of *571the institution as well as the fiscal constraints under which it operates. And, of course, considerations of competence and comity require some measure of deference to the judgments of detention officials. Their estimation of institutional needs and the administrative consequences of particular acts is entitled to weight. But as the Court has repeatedly held in the prison context, judicial restraint “cannot encompass any failure to take cognizance of valid constitutional claims.” Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U. S. 396, 405 (1974); Bounds v. Smith, 430 U. S. 817, 832 (1977). Even more so here, with the rights of presumptively innocent individuals at stake, we cannot abdicate our judicial responsibility to evaluate independently the Government’s asserted justifications for particular deprivations. In undertaking this evaluation, courts should thus examine evidence of practices in other detention and penal facilities. To be sure, conditions of detention should not survive constitutional challenge merely because they are no worse than circumstances in prisons. But this evidence can assist courts in evaluating justifications based on security, administrative convenience, and fiscal constraints.
Simply stated, the approach I advocate here weighs the detainees’ interests implicated by a particular restriction against the governmental interests the restriction serves. As the substantiality of the intrusion on detainees’ rights increases, so must the significance of the countervailing governmental objectives.
Ill
A
Applying this standard to the facts of this case, I believe a remand is necessary on the issue of double-bunking at the MCC. The courts below determined only whether double-bunking was justified by a compelling necessity, excluding fiscal and administrative considerations. Since it was readily ascertainable that the Government could not prevail under that test, detailed inquiry was unnecessary. Thus, the Dis*572trict Court granted summary judgment, without a full record on the psychological and physical harms caused by overcrowding.11 To conclude, as the Court does here, that double-bunking has not inflicted “genuine privations and hardship over an extended period of time,” ante, at 542, is inappropriate where respondents have not had an adequate opportunity to produce evidence suggesting otherwise. Moreover, that the District Court discerned no disputed issues of material fact, see ante, at 541 n. 24, is no justification for avoiding a remand, since what is material necessarily varies with the standard applied. Rather than pronouncing overbroad aphorisms about the principles “lurking in the Due Process Clause,” ante, at 542, I would leave to the District Court in the first instance the sensitive balancing inquiry that the Due Process Clause dictates.12
B
Although the constitutionality of the MCC’s rule limiting the sources of hardback books was also decided on summary judgment, I believe a remand is unnecessary.13 That *573individuals have a fundamental First Amendment right to receive information and ideas is beyond dispute. See Martin v. Struthers, 319 U. S. 141, 143 (1943); Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U. S. 557, 565 (1969); Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U. S. 367, 390 (1969); see also Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U. S. 444, 448 (1969). Under the balancing test elaborated above, the Government must therefore demonstrate that its rule infringing on that interest serves a compelling necessity. As the courts below found, the Government failed to make such a showing.14
In support of its restriction, the Government presented the affidavit of the MCC warden, who averred without elaboration that a proper and thorough search of incoming hardback books might require removal of the covers. Further, the warden asserted, “in the case of all books and magazines,” it would *574be necessary to leaf through every page to ascertain that there was no contraband. App. 24. The warden offered no reasons why the institution could not place reasonable limitations on the number of books inmates could receive or use electronic devices and fluoroscopes to detect contraband rather than requiring inmates to purchase hardback books directly from publishers or stores.15 As the Court of Appeals noted, “other institutions have not recorded untoward experiences with far less restrictive rules.” Wolfish v. Levi, 573 F. 2d 118, 130 (1978).
The limitation on receipt of hardback books may well be one rational response to the legitimate security concerns of the institution, concerns which I in no way intend to deprecate. But our precedents, as the courts below apparently recognized, United States ex rel. Wolfish v. United States, 428 F. Supp. 333, 341 (SDNY 1977); 573 F. 2d, at 130, require some consideration of less restrictive alternatives, see, e. g., Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U. S. 479, 488-490 (1960); Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U. S. 589, 602-604 (1967). There is no basis for relaxing this requirement when the rights of presumptively innocent detainees are implicated.
C
The District Court did conduct a trial on the constitutionality of the MCC package rule and room-search practices. Although the courts below applied a different standard, the record is sufficient to permit resolution of these issues here. And since this Court decides the questions, I think it appropriate to suggest the results that would obtain on this record under my standard.
Denial of the right to possess property is surely of heightened concern when viewed with the other indignities of detainment. See App. 73. As the District Court observed, it is a *575severe discomfort to do without personal items such as a watch or cosmetics, and things to eat, smoke, or chew. Indeed, the court noted, “ [t]he strong dependence upon material things . . . gives rise to one of the deepest miseries of incarceration — the deprivation of familiar possessions.” 439 F. Supp., at 150. Given this impact on detainees, the appropriate inquiry is whether‘the package restriction is substantially necessary to prison administration.
The Government's justification for such a broad rule cannot meet this burden. The asserted interest in ameliorating sanitation and storage problems and avoiding thefts, gambling, and inmaté conflicts over personal property is belied, as the Court seems to recognize, ante, at 553, by the policy of permitting inmate purchases of up to $15 a week from the prison commissary. Detention officials doubtless have a legitimate interest in preventing introduction of drugs or weapons into the facility. But as both the District Court and the Court of Appeals observed, other detention institutions have adopted much less restrictive regulations than the MCC’s governing receipt of packages. See, e. g., Miller v. Carson, 401 F. Supp. 835, 885 (MD Fla. 1975), aff’d, 563 F. 2d 741 (CA5 1977); Giampetruzzi v. Malcolm, 406 F. Supp. 836, 842 (SDNY 1975). Inmates in New York state institutions, for example, may receive a 35-pound package each month, as well as clothing and magazines. See 439 F. Supp., at 152.16
To be sure, practices in other institutions do not necessarily demarcate the constitutional minimum. See ante, at 554. But such evidence does cast doubt upon the Government’s justifications based on institutional security and administrative convenience. The District Court held that the Government was obligated to dispel these doubts. The court thus *576required a reasoned showing why “there must be deprivations at the MCC so much harsher than deemed necessary in other institutions.” 439 F. Supp., at 152. Absent such a showing, the court concluded that the MCC’s rule swept too broadly and ordered detention officials to formulate a suitable alternative, at least with respect to items available from the commissary. Id., at 153. This holding seems an appropriate accommodation of the competing interests and a minimal intrusion on administrative prerogatives.
I would also affirm the ruling of the courts below that inmates must be permitted to observe searches of their cells. Routine searches such as those at issue here may be an unavoidable incident of incarceration. Nonetheless, the protections of the Fourth Amendment do not lapse at the jailhouse door, Bonner v. Coughlin, 517 F. 2d 1311, 1316-1317 (CA7 1975) (Stevens, J.); United States v. Lilly, 576 F. 2d 1240, 1244-1245 (CA5 1978). Detention officials must therefore conduct such searches in a reasonable manner, avoiding needless intrusions on inmates’ privacy. Because unobserved searches may invite official disrespect for detainees’ few possessions and generate fears that guards will steal personal property or plant contraband, see 439 F. Supp., at 148-149, the inmates’ interests are significant.
The Government argues that allowing detainees to observe official searches would lead to violent confrontations and enable inmates to remove or conceal contraband. However, the District Court found that the Government had not substantiated these security concerns and that there were less intrusive means available to accomplish the institution’s objectives. Ibid. Thus, this record does not establish that unobserved searches are substantially necessary to jail administration.
D
In my view, the body-cavity searches of MCC inmates represent one of the most grievous offenses against personal *577dignity and common decency. After every contact visit with someone from outside the facility, including defense attorneys, an inmate must remove all of his or her clothing, bend over, spread the buttocks, and display the anal cavity for inspection by a correctional officer. Women inmates must assume a suitable posture for vaginal inspection, while men must raise their genitals. And, as the Court neglects to note, because of time pressures, this humiliating spectacle is frequently conducted in the presence of other inmates. App. 77.
The District Court found that the stripping was “unpleasant, embarrassing, and humiliating.” 439 F. Supp., at 146. A psychiatrist testified that the practice placed inmates in the most degrading position possible, App. 48, a conclusion amply corroborated by the testimony of the inmates themselves. Id., at 36-37, 41.17 There was evidence, moreover, that these searches engendered among detainees fears of sexual assault, id., at 49, were the occasion for actual threats of physical abuse by guards, and caused some inmates to forgo personal visits. 439 F. Supp., at 147.
Not surprisingly, the Government asserts a security justification for such inspections. These searches are necessary, it argues, to prevent inmates from smuggling contraband into the facility. In crediting this justification despite the contrary findings of the two courts below, the Court overlooks the critical facts. As respondents point out, inmates are required to wear one-piece jumpsuits with zippers in the front. To insert an object into the vaginal or anal cavity, an inmate would have to remove the jumpsuit, at least from the upper torso. App. 45; Joint App. in Nos. 77-2035, 77-2135 (CA2), *578p. 925 (hereinafter Joint App.). Since contact visits occur in a glass-enclosed room and are continuously monitored by corrections officers, see 439 F. Supp., at 140, 147; Joint App. 144, 1208-1209,18 such a feat would seem extraordinarily difficult. There was medical testimony, moreover, that inserting an object into the rectum is painful and “would require time and opportunity which is not available in the visiting areas,” App. 49-50, and that visual inspection would probably not detect an object once inserted. Id., at 50. Additionally, before entering the visiting room, visitors and their packages are searched thoroughly by a metal detector, fluoroscope, and by hand. Id., at 93; Joint App. 601, 1077. Correction officers may require that visitors leave packages or handbags with guards until the visit is over. Joint App. 1077-1078. Only by blinding itself to the facts presented on this record can the Court accept the Government’s security rationale.
Without question, these searches are an imposition of sufficient gravity to invoke the compelling-necessity standard. It is equally indisputable that they cannot meet that standard. Indeed, the procedure is so unnecessarily degrading that it “shocks the conscience.” Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165, 172 (1952). Even in Rochin, the police had reason to believe that the petitioner had swallowed contraband. Here, the searches are employed absent any suspicion of wrongdoing. It was this aspect of the MCC practice that the Court of Appeals redressed, requiring that searches be conducted only when there is probable cause to believe that the inmate is concealing contraband. The Due Process Clause, on any principled reading, dictates no less.
*579That the Court can uphold these indiscriminate searches highlights the bankruptcy of its basic analysis. Under the test adopted today, the rights of detainees apparently extend only so far as detention officials decide that cost and security will permit. Such unthinking deference to administrative convenience cannot be justified where the interests at stake are those of presumptively innocent individuals, many of whose only proven offense is the inability to afford bail. I dissent.

 The Bail Reform Act, 18 U. S. C. § 3146, to which the Court adverts ante, at 524, provides that bail be set in an amount that will “reasonably assure” the defendant's presence at trial. In fact, studies indicate that bail determinations frequently do not focus on the individual defendant but only on the nature of the crime charged and that, as administered, the system penalizes indigent defendants. See, e. g., ABA Project on Standards for Criminal Justice, Pretrial Release 1-2 (1968); W. Thomas, *564Bail Reform in America 11-19 (1976). See also National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, Corrections 102-103 (1973); National Association of Pretrial Service Agencies, Performance Standards and Goals for Pretrial Release and Diversion 1-3 (1978).

 Indeed, the Court glosses over the Government’s statement in its post-trial memorandum that for inmates serving sentences, “the restrictions on the possession of personal property also serve the legitimate purpose of punishment.” United States ex rel. Wolfish v. Levi, 439 F. Supp. 114, 153 (SDNY 1977); Post-trial Memorandum for Respondents in No. 75 Civ. 6000 (SDNY) 212 n., quoted ante, at 561 n. 43. This statement provides at least some indication that a similar motive may underlie application of the same rules to detainees. The Court’s treatment of this point illustrates the indifference with which it pursues the intent inquiry.

 Thus, for example, lower courts have held a variety of security restrictions unconstitutional. E. g., Collins v. Schoonfield, 344 F. Supp. 257, 283 (Md. 1972) (warden censored newspaper articles critical of his administration of jail); id., at 278 (mentally disturbed detainees shacHed in jail infirmary); Inmates of Milwaukee County Jail v. Petersen, 353 F. Supp. 1157, 1164 (ED Wis. 1973) (detainees limited to two pages per letter; notice to relatives and friends of the time and place of detainee’s next court appearance deleted on security grounds); United States ex rel. Manicone v. Corso, 365 F. Supp. 576 (EDNY 1973) (newspapers banned because they might disrupt prisoners and create a fire hazard); Miller v. Carson, 401 F. Supp. 835, 878 (MD Fla. 1975), aff’d, 563 F. 2d 741 (CA5 1977) (detainees in hospital kept continuously chained to bed); O’Bryan v. County of Saginaw, 437 F. Supp. 582 (ED Mich. 1977) (detainees with bail of more than $500 prevented from attending religious services); Vest v. Lubbock County Commissioners Court, 444 F. Supp. 824 (ND Tex. *5671977) (detainees limited to three pages per letter and six incoming and outgoing letters per week to facilitate censorship; guards authorized to refuse to mail or deliver letters containing “abusive” language).

 The Court does concede that “loading a detainee -with chains and shackles and throwing him in a dungeon,” ante, at 539 n. 20, would create *568an inference of punitive intent and hence would be impermissible. I am indeed heartened by this concession, but I do not think it sufficient to give force to the Court’s standard.

 Indeed, lest the point escape the reader, the majority reiterates it 12 times in the course of the opinion. Ante, at 531, 540-541, n. 23, 544, 546-548, and nn. 29 and 30,551, 554, 557 n. 38,562.

 As Chief Judge Coffin has stated, “[i]t would be impossible, without playing fast and loose with the English language, for a court to examine the conditions of confinement under which detainees are incarcerated . . . and conclude that their custody was not punitive in effect if not in intent.” Feeley v. Sampson, 570 F. 2d 364, 380 (CA1 1978) (dissenting opinion). Accord, Campbell v. McGruder, 188 U. S. App. D. C. 258, 267, 580 F. 2d 521, 530 (1978).

 If a particular imposition could be termed “punishment” under the Mendoza-Martinez criteria, I would, of course, agree that it violates the Due Process Clause. My criticism is that, in this context, determining whether a given restraint constitutes punishment is an empty semantic exercise. For pretrial incarceration is in many respects no different from the sanctions society imposes on convicted criminals. To argue over a question of characterization can only obscure what is in fact the appropriate inquiry, the actual nature of the impositions balanced against the Government’s justifications.

 See New Motor Vehicle Board v. Orrin W. Fox Co., 439 U. S. 96, 112—113 (1978) (Marshall, J., concurring); Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S. 497, 542 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting); Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U. S. 494, 499 (1977); Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, 115 (1973).

 See, e. g., Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U. S. 444, 448 (1969) (free speech); Bounds v. Smith, 430 U. S. 817 (1977) (access to the courts).

 Blackstone observed over 200 years ago:
“Upon the whole, if the offence be not bailable, or the party cannot find bail, be is to be committed to the county gaol by the mittimus of the justice . . . ; there to abide till delivered by due course of law. . . . But this imprisonment, as has been said, is only for safe custody, and not for punishment: therefore, in his dubious interval between the commitment and trial, a prisoner ought to be used with the utmost humanity; and neither be loaded with needless fetters, or subjected to other hardships than such as are absolutely requisite for the purpose of confinement only . . . 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *300.

 Other courts have found that in the circumstances before them overcrowding inflicted mental and physical damage on inmates. See, e. g., Detainees of Brooklyn House of Detention v. Malcolm,, 520 F. 2d 392, 396, and n. 4 (CA2 1975) (testimony of correctional experts that double-bunking is “psychologically destructive and increases homosexual impulses, tensions and aggressive tendencies”); Battle v. Anderson, 564 F. 2d 388, 398 (CA10 1977); Campbell v. McGruder, 188 U. S. App. D. C., at 273, 580 F. 2d, at 536 (overcrowding likely “to impair the mental and physical health” of detainees); Chapman v. Rhodes, 434 F. Supp. 1007, 1020 (SD Ohio 1977).

 The MCC has a single-bed capacity of 449 inmates. Under the Court’s analysis, what is to be done if the inmate population grows suddenly to 600, or 900? The Court simply ignores the rated capacity of the institution. Yet this figure is surely relevant in assessing whether overcrowding inflicts harms of constitutional magnitude.

 The Court of Appeals’ rulings on what this Court broadly designates “security restrictions” applied both to detainees and convicted prisoners. I believe impositions on these groups must be measured under different standards. See supra, at 568-571. I would remand to the District Court *573for a determination whether there is a continuing controversy with respect to convicted inmates. If the issues were contested, the body-cavity searches, at the least, would presumably be invalid. Cf. infra, at 576-578, and United States v. Lilly, 576 F. 2d 1240 (CA5 1978).

 Nor can the Court’s attempt to denominate the publisher-only rule as a reasonable “time, place and manner regulatio[n],” ante, at 552, substitute for such a showing. In each of the cases cited by the Court for this proposition, the private individuals had the ability to alter the time, place, or manner of exercising their First Amendment rights. Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U. S. 104 (1972) (ordinance prohibiting demonstration within 150 feet of a school at certain times of the day); Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U. S. 569 (1941) (permissible to require license for parade); Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 536, 554-555 (1965) (city could prohibit parades during rush hour); Adderley v. Florida, 385 U. S. 39 (1966) (public demonstration on premises of county jail). It is not clear that the detainees here possess the same freedom to alter the time, place, or manner of exercising their First Amendment rights. Indeed, as the Government acknowledges, Tr. of Oral Arg. 18, an unspecified number of detainees at the MCC are incarcerated because they cannot afford bail. For these persons, the option of purchasing hardback books from publishers or bookstores will frequently be unavailable. And it is hardly consistent with established First Amendment precepts to restrict inmates to library selections made by detention officials.

 The MCC already uses such electronic equipment to search packages carried by visitors. See infra, at 578.

 In addition, the Justice Department’s Draft Federal Standards for Corrections discourage limitations on the volume or content of inmate mail, including packages. Dept, of Justice, Federal Corrections Policy Task Force, Federal Standards for Corrections 63 (Draft, June 1978).

 While the Government presented psychiatric testimony that the procedures were not likely to create lasting emotional trauma, the District Court intimated some doubt as to the credibility of this testimony, and found that the injury was of constitutional dimension even if it did not require psychiatric treatment or leave permanent psychological scars. 439 F. Supp., at 150.

 To facilitate this monitoring, MCC officials limited to 25 the number of people in the visiting room at one time. Joint App. 1208. Inmates were forbidden to use the locked lavatories, and visitors could use them only by requesting a key from a correctional officer. App. 93; see Wolfish v. Levi, 573 F. 2d 118, 125 (1978). The lavatories, as well, contain a built-in window for observation. Brief for Respondents 57.