the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas

“ The peril and the degradation to which Arkansas convicts are subjected daily are aggravated by the fact that the treatment which a convict may expect to receive depends not at all upon the gravity of his offense or the length of his term. In point of fact, a man sentenced to life imprisonment for first degree murder and who has a long criminal record may expect to fare better than a country boy with no serious record who is sentenced to a term of two years for stealing a pig.
It is one thing for the State to send a man to the Penitentiary as a punishment for crime. ”

“ Living as he must under the conditions that have been described, with no legitimate rewards or incentives, in fear and apprehension, in degrading surroundings, and with no help from the State, an Arkansas convict will hardly be able to reform himself, and his experience in the Penitentiary is apt to do nothing but instill in him a deep or deeper hatred for and alienation from the society that put him there. ”

“ A man who gets only one toothbrush and one tube of toothpaste, who is supplied with no towels, and with insufficient socks and underclothing, and who is required to sleep night after night on filthy bedding is certainly not stimulated to take any pride in himself or to try to be a good inmate of the Penitentiary to say nothing of being a good citizen in the free world when he is released. ”

“ For the ordinary convict a sentence to the Arkansas Penitentiary today amounts to a banishment from civilized society to a dark and evil world completely alien to the free world, a world that is administered by criminals under unwritten rules and customs completely foreign to free world culture. ”

“ The Court heard much testimony about homosexuality in the barracks and elsewhere at Cummins. Homosexuality probably is practiced in all prisons in the United States, and there is a great deal of it practiced at Cummins, some consensual, a great deal nonconsensual. An inmate who is physically attractive to other men may be, and frequently is, raped in the barracks by other inmates. No one comes to his assistance; the floor walkers do not interfere; the trusties look on with indifference or satisfaction; the two free world people on duty appear to be helpless. ”

“ While it can hardly be said that the trusty system in Arkansas is a "free" enterprise system, it is certainly a capitalistic system with some of the worst features commonly attributed to "Mafia" techniques in organized crime.
One of the worst features of the system is that the trusties form a living barrier between ordinary inmates and institutional facilities and services that are available and to which an inmate ought to be able to have access as a matter of course. If a ranker can pay or is on good terms with the trusties, he can get what he needs when he needs it ”

“ The distinguishing aspects of Arkansas penitentiary life must be considered together. One cannot consider separately a trusty system, a system in which men are confined together in large numbers in open barracks, bad conditions in the isolation cells, or an absence of a meaningful program of rehabilitation. All of those things exist in combination; each affects the other; and taken together they have a cumulative impact on the inmates regardless of their status. ”

“ Apart from the use of trusties as guards, they can be given too much authority in other areas of prison life. When that is done, various abuses come into existence. When all is said and done, the fact remains that a trusty is a convict, and many trusties will on occasions act like felons and thieves. They will take bribes, they will engage in extortion, they will smuggle contraband, and they will connive at violations of prison rules. Opportunity for abuse is particularly present where, as in Arkansas, trusties have access to prison records pertaining to themselves and to other inmates. ”

“ Actually, few, if any, objective criteria are used in selecting trusties; that a man is a bad man, or a dangerous man, or that he has a bad criminal record is by no means a disqualification; on the contrary, it may be a recommendation. In the case of a trusty guard probably the principal criterion of promotion is his willingness to prevent escapes and support the free world people vis a vis the general inmate population, shooting to kill if necessary to achieve those objectives. ”

“ No regard is paid to the tests and their results in assigning prisoners to barracks or to work. As far as the inmates are concerned, the tests are of no benefit whatever.
A large proportion, perhaps a majority, of the inmates of the Penitentiary are ignorant and unskilled. Many are illiterate. The contribution of ignorance and lack of skills and specialization to crime today is well known. If a man who is ignorant and unskilled when he goes into prison can come out with some education and some usable skill, he has an improved chance of staying out of prison in the future. ”

“ As stated, the men are paid nothing for their work. If an inmate wants to earn money legitimately in his spare time while in the Penitentiary, there are only two ways in which he can do it. The inmates as a class are permitted to have an Inmate Welfare Fund which operates a commissary type store and which also operates a blood bank. Profits from the store and the blood bank inure to the Fund which, parenthetically, appears as of this moment to have more money available to it than Respondents have available to them to run the Penitentiary. ”

“ But the trusty system as it exists in Arkansas is sui generis. The trusties run the prison. They not only guard other inmates; they also perform many administrative tasks normally performed by free world people, and their authority over other convicts of lesser rank is great. Commissioner Sarver testified without contradiction that more than 90 percent of prison functions relating to inmates are performed by trusties. The few free world people are only nominally in command of the situation at Cummins, and the trusties could take it over in a moment. ”

“ It is not uncommon for many, if not all, of the inmates of a particular barracks to become intoxicated by drugs and alcohol all at the same time. The resulting commotion, violence, and confusion are quite imaginable. The free world people cannot control the situation; the trusties will not and are not supposed to; [*378] and the floor walkers frequently participate in the orgies.
All of this is not to say that a barracks system of confinement properly regulated and limited may not have a place in a well run penal institution. ”

“ The Court thinks that that is a good recommendation, but the trusty guard system itself, bad as it is, does not give the Court as much trouble as do other facets of the overall trusty system.
By virtue of their positions of authority and the functions they perform trusties can make or break rankers and "do pops." They can make prison life tolerable or they can make it unbearably hard. They can and do sell favors, easy jobs, and coveted positions; they can and do extort money from inmates on any and all pretexts. ”

“ It may be necessary to proceed with the construction of more isolation cells at Cummins to take care of men who simply should not be assigned to barracks.
Apart from the foregoing Respondents are going to have to do more than they have done in the past about keeping order in the barracks at night and about protecting inmates from violent assaults of whatever kind.
As to the isolation cells, while the plight of the inmates is largely of their own doing, they are suffering seriously from neglect. Free world people may no longer leave those inmates to the mercies of trusty guards ”

“ It will be observed that the Thirteenth Amendment, unlike the Fourteenth and certain other Amendments, is more than a prohibition upon the States. [*370] The Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, everywhere in the United States, its Territories, and possessions. ”

“ The system of field guards and the system of using trusty long line riders and inmate pushers go hand in hand, and the combination of the two is one of the things that makes the field guard system so dangerous to rankers. Field guards are much less likely to fire on a ranker or on a group of rankers in the immediate presence of a civilian long line supervisor than they are in a situation where the rankers are actually being worked by other inmates. ”

“ They lend money to rankers and then use force or threats of force to collect the debts.
Controlling the slaughter house, the kitchen, and the prison stores, trusties steal food and other commodities from the institution and then sell them to other inmates. An inmate can eat well at the Penitentiary if he can pay for what he gets; if he cannot pay, he eats as regular issue what the trusties have seen fit to leave.
Trusties have rather broad privileges about leaving the farms. Coming back they bring with them weapons, liquor, and drugs which they sell to less privileged inmates. ”

“ Director Bennett testified that inmates of federal prisons and of many State prisons can earn legitimate although usually very low wages while confined. He thinks that such wage payments are desirable for several reasons: they give a man an incentive to work; they improve his morale; they enable him to be of some assistance to his dependents; and they perhaps enable him to build up a small stake for himself against the day on which he is to be released from prison. Mr. Bennett conceded, however, that there are still some [*372] ' States, like Arkansas, that pay their convicts nothing. ”

“ In the instant case Petitioners contend that overall conditions in the Arkansas penal system, including but not limited to those relating to inmate safety, may be so bad that it amounts to an unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment to expose men to those conditions, regardless of how those conditions may operate fortuitously on particular individuals. ”

“ Inmates who are passively homosexual are called "punks." There are varieties of "punks," including the "pressure punks" who will engage in homosexual acts if more or less pressure is put upon them to induce or compel them to do so.
In an effort to protect young men from sexual assaults, they are generally assigned to the two rows of cots nearest the front bars of the barracks, which portion of the barracks is called "punk row." It appears, however, that if would-be assailants really want a young man, his being assigned to the "row" is no real protection to him. ”

“ Before leaving its description of the trusty system, the Court will say that it has not overlooked the fact that many of the abuses practiced by trusties could also be practiced by free world personnel, but the Court thinks that free world people, carefully selected and properly paid, would be far less likely to commit such abuses than are the felons now holding positions of authority. ”

“ While there are 12 cells in the isolation unit, one of them has been fitted up as a shower room so that actually there are only 11 cells for the confinement of prisoners.
The isolation unit is guarded by trusties, and free world people seldom come around it. That situation is a source of constant trouble. The trusties threaten and harass the prisoners, and the prisoners probably reciprocate in kind. The isolation diet is carelessly served to the inmates of the cells and at times is permitted to become cold and wet. ”

“ When a new inmate arrives at the Penitentiary, about the first person to interview him is a trusty who frequently starts out to relieve him by threats or promises of what money and property he may possess.
An enterprising trusty who makes the most of his opportunities can do quite well for himself. Some do so well that they do not want to leave the institution. ”

“ To the extent that consensual homosexual acts take place in the barracks, they are not carried out in any kind of privacy but in the full sight and hearing of all of the other inmates.
Sexual assaults, fights, and stabbings in the barracks put some inmates in such fear that it is not unusual for them to come to the front of the barracks and cling to the bars all night. That practice, which is of doubtful value is called "coming to the bars" or "grabbing the bars." Clearly, a man who has clung to the bars all night is in poor condition to work the next day. ”

“ The lives, safety, and health of human beings, to say nothing of their dignity, are at stake. The start must be prompt, and the prosecution must be vigorous. The handwriting is on the wall, and it ought not to require a Daniel to read it. Unless conditions at the Penitentiary farms are brought up to a level of constitutional tolerability, the farms can no longer be used for the confinement of convicts.
The questions that trouble the Court at this juncture are: What must be done within the immediate future, and how long should Respondents be allowed to achieve their ultimate objective? ”