Court Opinion

ID: 9456862
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:04:26.755355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:07.525846
License: Public Domain

LAY, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I fully concur. I sincerely hope it is not wasted rhetoric to express additional judicial condemnation of the conditions and practices carried out by the State of Arkansas in operating its system of “correction.” Contemporary conditions in Arkansas do not vary greatly from those condemned in England in the 1700’s.1 The Eighth Amendment prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishment” relates to “evolving standards of decency *310that mark the progress of a maturing society.” See Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101, 78 S.Ct. 590, 598, 2 L.Ed.2d 630 (1958). The present record reflects the prison system at Cummins Prison Farm to be not only shocking to “standards of decency,” but immoral and criminal as well.
New buildings and additional guards, although essential for compliance with the court’s decree, fall far short of remedying the defilement of individuals and the inhumane treatment of prisoners practiced in the name of the state. Imprisonment in buildings of newly laid brick with the most rigid security will not alleviate the depravity and criminality which are fostered by the Arkansas prison system. The district court recognized this when it stated: and rehabilitation.” 309 F.Supp. at 379.
“The absence of an affirmative program of training and rehabilitation may have constitutional significance where in the absence of such a program conditions and practices exist which actually militate against reform
Until immediate and continued emphasis is given to an affirmative program of rehabilitation the district court should retain jurisdiction.2

. Toward tlie end of the 18th Century John Howard was Sheriff of Bedfordshire. Because of the deplorable conditions in London prisons he resigned to spend the remainder of his life working for prison reform in England. He found that prisons were not sanitary or secure; there was no effective supervision of prisoners; there existed “physical and moral corruption of the com-*310moil wards and yards”; there were no separate cells for safe sleeping; there was no useful work jierformed by the prisoners, no educational efforts made on tlieir behalf, and no moral or religious instruction to restore them as useful members of society. C. B. Beccaria, On Crimes & Punishments (1764); J. Howard, The State of the Prisons, etc. (1777), as found in Encyclopedia Britannica, “Prison,” Vol. 18, pp. 514-515 (1956).

. As far back as 1870 the American Prison Association recognized rehabilitation and moral regeneration, rather than vindictive retribution, to be the fundamental aims of correction. See paper given to American Correctional Ass’n by Robert. Kutak, Omaha, Nebraska, Oct. 15, 1970. Monograph, Outside Looking In (LEAA 1970).
Several states have recognized the need for implementation of correctional treatment. See e. g. N.Y. Correc.Law § 136 (McKinney’s Consol.Laws, c. 43, 1968):
"The objective of prison education in its broadest, sense should be the socialization of the inmates through varied improssional and expressional activities, with emphasis on individual inmate needs. The objective of this program shall be the return of these inmates to society with a more wholesome attitude toward living, with a desire to conduct themselves as good citizens and with the skill and knowledge which will give them a reasonable chance to maintain themselves and their dependents through honest labor. To this end each prisoner shall be given a program of education which, on the basis of available data, seems most likely to further the process of socialization and rehabilitation. The time daily devoted to such education shall be such as is required for meeting the above objectives. The director of education, subject to the direction of the commissioner of correction and after consultation by such commissioner with the state commissioner of education, shall develop the curricula and the education programs that are required to meet the special needs of each prison and reformatory in' the department.”
Mo.Ann.Stat. § 216.090(1) (1962) reads: “[I]n the correctional treatment applied to each inmate, reformation of the inmate, his social and moral improvement, and his rehabilitation toward useful, productive and law-abiding citizenship shall be guiding factors and aims.”