What are the commonly accepted rights of prisoners in the United States today? Where do these rights come from? What U.S. Supreme Court cases are especially significant in the area of prisoners’ rights?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Due process entitlements extend to all people within the jurisdiction of the United States or of the individual states. Those rights are constitutionally mandated and protected. Further, the U.S. Supreme Court enforces them in its interpretation of those constitutional mandates.

Some of the many important Supreme Court cases in this area include:

• Monroe v. Pape: Inmates have the right to bring action in federal court when deprived of their rights by state officers acting under color of state law.
• Cruz v. Beto: Inmates must be given a “reasonable opportunity” to pursue their religious faith even if it differs from traditional forms of worship.
• Pell v. Procunier: Established inmates’ retention of all First Amendment rights that are not inconsistent with their status as prisoners or the legitimate penological objectives of the correctional system.
• Estelle v. Gamble: Requires prison officials to provide for inmates’ medical care and established the concept of “deliberate indifference” in determining whether prison administrators are meeting the medical needs of prisoners.
• Bounds v. Smith: Not only confirmed the right of prisoners to have access to the courts and to legal assistance, but also required states to assist inmates in the preparation and filing of legal papers. This assistance can be given through trained personnel or through the creation and availability of a law library for inmates.
• Wolff v. McDonnell: Sanctions cannot be levied against inmates without appropriate due process—the beginning of the concept of “state-created liberty interests.”
• Cooper v. Morin: Female inmate must receive the same treatment as male inmates.
• Hudson v. Palmer: The need for prison officials to conduct thorough and unannounced searches precludes inmates’ right to privacy in personal possessions.
• Johnson v. Avery: Inmates have a right to consult “jailhouse lawyers” for advice if assistance from trained legal professionals is not available.
• Pell v. Procunier: Supreme Court established a “balancing test” to guide prison authorities in determining what rights an inmate should have. Inmates should have the same rights as nonincarcerated citizens, provided that the legitimate needs of the prison for security, custody, and safety are not compromised.
• Helling v. McKinney: Required prisons to correct environmental conditions that pose a threat to inmate health, such as secondhand cigarette smoke.
• Wilson v. Seiter: Clarified the concept of the totality of conditions and stated that some conditions of confinement taken in combination may violate inmates’ rights even though each condition alone would not do so.
• Johnson v. California: Prohibited racial segregation in prisons.
Some argue that inmates should have no rights because they should forfeit them as a consequence of their criminal convictions. Courts in this country, however, have consistently opposed that notion. The rights prisoners do have, however, are constitutionally provided. Since constitutional provisions are open to court interpretation, and since political considerations frequently play a role in court appointments, the extent to which inmates’ rights are recognized tends to vary over time. Whereas federal courts followed a hands-off doctrine of nonintervention in the running of state prisons until 1969, federal court intervention in prison administration has greatly increased during the past four decades. Some people suggest that, as a consequence, prisoners now have too many court-created “rights” and that those rights are merely court-authored fictions with no bases in constitutional mandates.