Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/530

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RUFO v. INMATES OF SUFFOLK COUNTY JAIL Opinion of the Court

decree entered to correct unconstitutional conditions at the Suffolk County Jail. The Court of Appeals affirmed. The issue before us is whether the courts below applied the correct standard in denying the motion. We hold that they did not and remand these cases for further proceedings. I This litigation began in 1971 when inmates sued the Suffolk County sheriff, the Commissioner of Correction for the State of Massachusetts, the mayor of Boston, and nine city councilors, claiming that inmates not yet convicted of the crimes charged against them were being held under unconstitutional conditions at what was then the Suffolk County Jail. The facility, known as the Charles Street Jail, had been constructed in 1848 with large tiers of barred cells. The numerous deficiencies of the jail, which had been treated with what a state court described as “malignant neglect,” Attorney General v. Sheriff of Suffolk County, 394 Mass. 624, 625, 477 N. E. 2d 361, 362 (1985), are documented in the decision of the District Court. See Inmates of Suffolk County Jail v. Eisenstadt, 360 F. Supp. 676, 679–684 (Mass. 1973). The court held that conditions at the jail were constitutionally deficient: “As a facility for the pretrial detention of presumptively innocent citizens, Charles Street Jail unnecessarily and unreasonably infringes upon their most basic liberties, among them the rights to reasonable freedom of Reinstein, Elizabeth Alexander, Alexa P. Freeman, and Alvin J. Bronstein; for the Center for Dispute Settlement by C. Lani Guinier; for the Inmates of the Lorton Central Facility by Peter J. Nickles, Bruce N. Kuhlik, and Alan A. Pemberton; for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of the Boston Bar Association by John C. Englander; and for Allen F. Breed et al. by Sheldon Krantz. Solicitor General Starr, Assistant Attorney General Gerson, Deputy Solicitor General Shapiro, Harriet S. Shapiro, Robert E. Kopp, and Thomas M. Bondy filed a brief for the United States as amicus curiae.