the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas

“ The Court realizes that escapes and recaptures can be and frequently are irritating and exasperating to prison administrators and lesser personnel, particularly where as occasionally happens the escape involves a breach of trust reposed in an inmate, as where he does not return to the prison at the expiration of a furlough. And the Court realizes that at times inmates resist recapture and have to be subdued forcibly. But, people who are engaged in custodial work must learn to take such episodes in stride and must learn to control themselves. ”

“ The Court recognizes at the outset that at times force has to be used by prison personnel on recalcitrant inmates, and that an inmate who has been the subject of force is not likely to concede that its use was necessary or that the amount used was reasonable. The Court also recognizes that an employee charged with improper use of force is not to be judged by hindsight but in the light of facts and circumstances as they reasonably appeared to him to exist at the time.
Force is used from time to time at both Cummins and Tucker, as it is in prisons all over the United States. ”

“ The requirement that an adult give his consent to be included on an inmate's mailing list is obviously designed to protect the former from unwanted mail communications. There are many reasons why a person in the outside world may not want to receive letters from a convict, even though he may be a close relative, spouse, or former spouse. Such a person may welcome a prison rule or policy which will insulate him or her from such correspondence. And the willingness of prison administrators to provide such insulation in the interest of public relations or for other reasons is understandable. ”

“ And the Court thinks that it is safe to say that if an inmate, whether white or black, of either institution behaves himself and does the work assigned to him to the best of his ability, he will be able to do his time without serious difficulties as far as prison personnel are concerned.
However, the prison staff is required to deal constitutionally not only with tractable inmates but also with inmates who are not so tractable, and there are many inmates who fall within the latter category. Those inmates make a great deal of trouble for themselves. ”

“ When those things are borne in mind, the Court cannot find that blacks, as a class, are intentionally assigned to menial or disagreeable jobs while whites are intentionally assigned to "better" jobs. And if one looks at what is probably the lowest prison job, namely, manual agricultural labor as a member of a "hoe squad", the Court concludes that about as many white inmates as blacks are assigned to such jobs. ”

“ In this overall problem area, as in other areas of prison life, the ultimate answer may lie more in the upgrading of prison personnel than in anything else.
At one time or another inmates of the respective units have charged those in authority over them with every kind of abuse that the inmate mind can imagine. No effort will be made to list, let alone discuss, all of the charges. The Court will confine itself to the principal ones and will start with complaints about working conditions. ”

“ That black inmates may receive more severe sentences than white inmates does not necessarily justify the inference that white members of Disciplinary Committees are intentionally discriminating against blacks in the area of prison discipline. As has been suggested, black inmates in the environment of Cummins and Tucker may as a class present more serious disciplinary problems [p205] than do whites as a class and may deserve more severe penalties, although the Court does not so find. ”

“ There are very few black employees, and with one or two exceptions there are no blacks in positions of any real authority at either institution. Important as the Classification Committees and Disciplinary Committees at both institutions are, there has been, except for perhaps a few isolated instances, no black representation on those Committees.
A prison staff and the population of the prison naturally react on each other. Ignoring distinctions between Cummins and Tucker, inmates of the Department are not only racially mixed ”

“ It is now thoroughly established by judicial opinions too numerous to mention that the Black Muslims confined in prisons in this country constitute a religious sect and are entitled, within reasonable limitations dictated by the conditions of prison life, to the protection of the First Amendment as carried over into the Fourteenth and by the Fourteenth Amendment itself. ”

“ One serious problem is that a number of inmates are mentally ill or emotionally disturbed and probably should not be in a penal institution at all. Unfortunately, a viable alternative to their confinement in the Department does not exist in Arkansas today since the Arkansas State Hospital for Nervous Diseases in Little Rock will not care for them except when they are violent. Some of these people are extremely dangerous to themselves and to their keepers and other inmates and tend to keep other inmates in states of unrest and excitement. ”

“ Those employees have in general been recruited locally; they are poorly paid by modern standards; they have had little training or experience; many of them are uncultured and poorly educated; some of them are quite young, perhaps too young to be in position of authority over convicts; some of them are quick tempered. If one adjective is to be used to describe them, it would be "unprofessional."
From top to bottom the personnel of the Department are predominantly white notwithstanding the fact that the inmate population of both institutions is approximately 50 percent black. ”

“ However, the Court is not willing to leave this subject without some suggestions to respondents as to what can and should be done to alleviate the racial situation in the Department.
To start with, existing prison rules about employee language should be enforced rigorously and higher echelon personnel should set an example to their subordinates.
Second, positive rules prohibiting racial discrimination should be formulated and published. Employees at all levels must be made familiar with those rules, and must be made to realize that if they want to keep their jobs, they must abide by the rules. ”

“ The Court suspects that many complaints of inmates about language are afterthoughts, and that some of the words involved may have been used, if at all, in jest or flippantly and without realization that they might give offense. Employees of the Department today simply cannot afford to joke or jest coarsely with inmates, particularly black inmates who, whether rightly or wrongly, are obviously "up tight" and prone to take offense. ”

“ The Court is under the impression that disciplinary hearings frequently are held at night, and if the Court is correct in that impression, the night sessions may be part of the trouble with the administration of the procedures. Some or perhaps all of the members of the disciplinary panel probably have been working all day, and they want to go home. That is understandable, but it does not contribute to the proper administration of prison justice. ”

“ The Court realizes that qualified blacks who are willing to fill positions of responsibility and authority in prison administration may be in short supply. Other more appealing positions are open to them in today's society. But, the difficulty of hiring qualified blacks should certainly not deter respondents from trying to do so. [p206]
III. The Court considers next the question of the constitutional acceptability of the disciplinary procedures employed in the Department with respect to inmates who violate prison rules, or who refuse to work, or who loiter at their tasks. ”

“ With particular regard to the black inmates as a group, it is probably safe to say that they are drawn from the lower strata of the black population. As a class, they are neither well educated nor industrious; and they appear to be highly suspicious of those in authority over them. Some have difficulty in communicating intelligently, particularly under conditions of stress.
The personnel that have been described and the inmate population that has been described are in day to day contact within the abrasive atmosphere of penal institutions. ”

“ On the other hand, the Court is not persuaded that the white members of Classification Committees are doing as much as they could and should to classify inmates and to assign them to work on the basis of qualifications. It would appear to the Court that Negroes should occupy some job slots that they are not now occupying, and that certain categories of jobs should have more than their present number of' lack assignees. ”

“ This litigation today stands in a posture quite different from that in which it stood in 1969 and 1970. In those years the Court was dealing with officially prescribed or sanctioned conditions and practices which were claimed to be unconstitutional, and the controlling facts were essentially undisputed. ”

“ Today, most of the practices and conditions alleged by petitioners to exist and of which they complain are not officially approved or sanctioned, and a number of them are specifically prohibited by rules and regulations of the Department which appear in the Department's Inmate Handbook and Employee Handbook, copies of which are in the record. Additionally, controlling facts are sharply disputed in many areas. ”

“ Second, from an inmate's standpoint a comparatively low status job may be easier than a job of higher status or may have some fringe benefits not attached to a more highly rated job and thus more desirable than some other task which the inmate might be capable of performing. ”

“ Moreover, in view of long held and deep seated racial attitudes, words or acts, if said or done by blacks, may be simply more offensive to some white members of disciplinary panels than are similar words or acts of white convicts. ”

“ Lower ranking employees grade down through tables of organization to the lowest grade of ordinary guard.
With some reservations as to particular individuals, the Court finds that Messrs. Hutto, Lockhart, Britton, and Boren are qualified for their jobs, and the Court thinks that up to a point at least they are trying to do good jobs and to run an efficient, reasonably humane, and constitutional prison system.
The Court cannot say as much for lower echelon personnel as a class. ”

“ That means that Black Muslims may not be discriminated against on account of their religion, that they are not to be unreasonably restricted in the exercise or practice thereof, and that at least some accommodations must be made by prison authorities to some requirements and taboos of their professed religious belief. ”

“ Most of them, indeed the great majority of them, had extremely poor work records in the outside world. And, they have carried into the prisons with them the same weaknesses and deficiencies that they had in the outside world and that got them into prison in the first place. ”

“ Respondents may appeal, or the inmates as a class may appeal, or individual inmates may appeal from the decree to the extent that it dismisses their individual cases or fails to award them specific individual relief. The Court thinks it safe to assume that any inmates desiring to appeal will wish to do so in forma pauperis. Notices of appeal should be lodged with the Clerk of this Court not later than 30 days after the decree is filed, and the Court will not be inclined to allow belated appeals. ”

“ Compliance with this requirement should not be unduly burdensome.
The Court finds it unnecessary to describe all of the Department's rules dealing with general correspondence. They are doubtless stricter than those that prevail in some jurisdictions and doubtless more liberal than those that prevail in others. In general, they closely track the recommendations of the Association of State Correctional Administrators which appear in a bulletin or handbook entitled "Uniform Correctional Policies [p211] & Procedures." The Court observes that Commissioner Hutto is a member of that Association. ”

“ Respondents naturally deny that that claim has any basis, and point out the fact that in instances where employees have been found to have used unnecessary or excessive force they have been discharged or otherwise disciplined. ”

“ The Court does find that there have been instances in which unnecessary and unreasonable force has been used on escapees after their recapture and after they ceased to be a source of any real danger to their captors. And Superintendent Britton was involved personally in two of such incidents. ”

“ Third, and this is extremely important, more black employees should be recruited, and blacks should be assigned to meaningful positions of authority, including assignments to Classification and Disciplinary Committees. ”

“ There are no separate cells in the barracks where inmates in general population reside.
↑ Such a handbook may be of little or no value to an illiterate inmate or to one with a limited ability to read. ”