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| Supreme Court to weigh segregation of inmates |
| By Boston Globe |
| Published: 03/02/2004 |
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The Supreme Court yesterday reopened, after setting a legal precedent more than three decades ago, the constitutional question of whether prison officials can segregate inmates in an effort to prevent racial violence behind the walls. In a brief order, the justices agreed to hear a challenge by a California inmate to a state prison policy of initially assigning every new prisoner only to a cell occupied by another member of the same race. A key issue is whether the justices will judge such segregation under a constitutional standard that almost never tolerates public policy that is based on race or under a more relaxed approach that gives wide discretion to wardens to manage their prison populations. In 1968, at a time when the court was energetically striking down racial segregation in a wide array of government programs, the justices ruled unanimously that it was unconstitutional to racially segregate prisons. It said, though, that wardens may make "allowance for the necessities of prison security and discipline." It has never spelled out that exception. California's policy, in effect for the past quarter-century, imposes racial segregation of inmates for their first 60 days behind bars. The policy is designed to give officials time to evaluate whether the inmate would be a threat to other prisoners. After that, segregation of the inmate is no longer required. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, ruled a year ago that the Supreme Court no longer requires prison officials to provide strong justification for their day-to-day decisions about inmates, even about race, but instead now requires lower courts to defer to prison officials' management of inmates, as long as the policy is "reasonable." It is reasonable, the appeals court concluded, for officials to use race as the dominant factor in selecting cellmates for newly arriving prisoners because of the "common sense" view, borne out by experience, that racial violence is a fact of life behind prison walls. The appeals court said it was up to prisoners challenging such segregation to prove why it is not needed, rather than for prison officials to justify the policy, the appeals court said. The constitutional challenge before the Supreme Court is being made by Garrison S. Johnson, a black inmate who has been assigned to what he calls a "black cell" each time he has been transferred among prisons in California. He has been pursuing his challenge since 1995, so far unsuccessfully. |
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