Court Opinion

ID: 9429743
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:27:46.473472+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:21.247792
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the Court that neither the contact-visitation policy nor the cell-search policy at issue in this case violates respondents’ due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. I write separately, however, because I do not believe that the Court adequately has addressed the gravamen of respondents’ constitutional claims.
1. I disagree with the Court’s treatment of the contact-visitation issue chiefly because, in my view, the Court has invoked principles of judicial deference to administrative judgment that have no place in the present litigation. As the Court made clear in Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S. 520 (1979), and as it reaffirms here, a pretrial detainee who challenges conditions of confinement on the ground that they amount to punishment in violation of the Due Process Clause must show that the conditions are the product of punitive intent. See id., at 538-539, and nn. 19 and 20, and ante, at 584. When a detainee attempts to demonstrate the existence of punitive intent, either through direct proof of motive or through a demonstration that the challenged conditions are not “reasonably related to a legitimate governmental objective,” 441 U. S., at 539, he necessarily is calling into question the good faith of prison administrators. Under those circumstances, it seems to me to be somewhat perverse to insist that a court assessing the rationality of a particular administrative prac*593tice must accord prison administrators “ ‘wide-ranging deference 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 585, quoting Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S., at 547. Such a requirement boils down to a command that when a court is confronted with a charge of administrative bad faith, it must evaluate the charge by assuming administrative good faith.
When a constitutional challenge to prison conditions necessarily places the good faith of prison administrators at issue, I regard it as improper to make the plaintiff prove his case twice by requiring a court to defer to administrators’ putative professional judgment. Instead, I think it sufficient to rest on the substantive due process standard announced in Bell v. Wolfish itself: absent direct proof of punitive intent, “a court permissibly may infer that the purpose of [a challenged] governmental action is punishment” if, but only if, the action “is not reasonably related to a legitimate goal.” Id., at 539. The requirement that prison policies be reasonably related to a legitimate goal is hardly a stringent one, and, for many of the reasons given by the Court, ante, at 586-587, I have no doubt that the requirement has been met on the record presented here. I therefore am mystified by the Court’s insistence on invoking principles of judicial deference, since those principles are not only inappropriate but entirely unnecessary to the result in this case.
More generally, I am concerned about the Court’s apparent willingness to substitute the rhetoric of judicial deference for meaningful scrutiny of constitutional claims in the prison setting. See Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U. S. 337, 369 (1981) (opinion concurring in judgment). Courts unquestionably should be reluctant to second-guess prison administrators’ opinions about the need for security measures; when constitutional standards look in whole or in part to the effectiveness of administrative practices, good-faith administrative *594judgments are entitled to substantial weight. The fact that particular measures advance prison security, however, does not make them ipso facto constitutional. Cf. Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S., at 539, n. 20. I recognize that constitutional challenges to prison conditions, like similarly expansive challenges to the workings of other institutions, pose a danger of excessive judicial intervention. At the same time, however, careless invocations of “deference” run the risk of returning us to the passivity of several decades ago, when the then-prevailing barbarism and squalor of many prisons were met with a judicial blind eye and a “hands off” approach. As we recognized in Bell v. Wolfish, the fact that initial responsibility for the Nation’s prisons is vested in prison administrators “does not mean that constitutional rights are not to be scrupulously observed.” Id., at 562. It is only because I am satisfied that the contact-visitation policy satisfies this standard under the Due Process Clause that I join the Court’s judgment.
2. The Court’s treatment of the cell-search policy misconstrues respondents’ claim. The Court assumes that respondents are challenging their exclusion from cell searches on substantive due process grounds and hence that the decision in Bell v. Wolfish is dispositive. Ante, at 590-591. It is quite clear, however, that respondents are challenging the cell-search policy on procedural due process grounds. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 38 (“[Tjhis is a procedural due process issue . . . rather than [an issue of] freedom from punishment as a matter of substantive due process”); Brief for Respondents 33-36. In essence, respondents are arguing that cell searches result in the deprivation of their personal property and that the process due them under the Fourteenth Amendment includes an opportunity to observe cell searches in order to minimize erroneous deprivations. Because the Court did not address a procedural due process claim in Bell v. Wolfish, something more must be said to support the judgment in this case.
*595Under Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319 (1976), the adequacy of governmental procedures that accompany deprivations of property normally depends on a balance of three factors: the private interest that will be affected by the official action, the risk that the existing procedures will result in an erroneous deprivation and the probable value of additional procedural safeguards, and the governmental interest in relying on the challenged procedures. Id., at 335. Here, I do not dispute that the private interests at stake in cell searches are potentially significant. See Hudson v. Palmer, ante, at 521, 524-525 (opinion of the Court), 553-554 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Nor is it possible to maintain that a pretrial detainee’s presence never would contribute to the avoidance of erroneous deprivations. We noted in Bell v. Wolfish that the “prevention of] theft or misuse by those conducting the search” was a “conceivable beneficial effect” of allowing detainees to observe cell searches, 441 U. S., at 557, and the District Judge in this case witnessed a search in which a prisoner was able to prevent the mistaken seizure of two magazines from his cell by explaining why they complied with prison regulations. App. to Pet. for Cert. 36.
The countervailing governmental interests in conducting cell searches outside the presence of pretrial detainees, however, are substantial enough to persuade me that the Court of Appeals erred in its due process determination. First, there is no reason to think that “friction between the inmates and security guards,” Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S., at 555, is any less likely to result from the presence of detainees here than it was in Bell v. Wolfish itself. Second, and more significant, detainees may well learn where to hide contraband if they are allowed to watch searches of their cells. As a result, although the requirement of a detainee’s presence during the course of a search may not prevent the seizure of contraband during the search itself, cf. Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U. S. 663, 679 (1974), it may *596frustrate future searches of the same detainee’s cell. Quite apart from security concerns, moreover, there undoubtedly are “administrative burdens [entailed by] the additional or substitute procedural requirement.” Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S., at 335. For example, as petitioners point out, the jail now would be required to dedicate an increased number of guards to the task of accompanying each detainee from a holding area to his cell while the search is being conducted. Just as different exigencies have excused the requirement of predeprivation hearings in other contexts, see, e. g., Commissioner v. Shapiro, 424 U. S. 614, 629-630, and n. 12 (1976); Calero-Toledo, 416 U. S., at 676-680; Phillips v. Commissioner, 283 U. S. 589, 596-597 (1931); North American Cold Storage Co. v. Chicago, 211 U. S. 306, 315-316 (1908), so do these considerations tip the balance against a defacto predeprivation “hearing” for pretrial detainees here. It is for this reason that I join the judgment of the Court.