Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/545

 502us2$26D 01-22-99 08:32:58 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 502 U. S. 367 (1992)

387

Opinion of the Court

that the decree, as originally issued and modified, called for a facility with single cells. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail v. Kearney, Civ. Action No. 71–162–G (Mass., Apr. 11, 1985), App. 110.11 It is apparent, however, that the decree itself nowhere expressly orders or reflects an agreement by petitioners to provide jail facilities having single cells sufficient to accommodate all future pretrial detainees, however large the number of such detainees might be. Petitioners’ agreement and the decree appear to have bound them only to provide the specified number of single cells. If petitioners were to build a second new facility providing double cells that would meet constitutional standards, it is doubtful that they would have violated the consent decree. Even if the decree is construed as an undertaking by petitioners to provide single cells for pretrial detainees, to relieve petitioners from that promise based on changed conditions does not necessarily violate the basic purpose of the decree. That purpose was to provide a remedy for what had been found, based on a variety of factors, including double celling, to be unconstitutional conditions obtaining in the Charles Street Jail. If modification of one term of a consent decree defeats the purpose of the decree, obviously modification would be all but impossible. That cannot be the rule. The District Court was thus in error in holding that even under a more flexible standard than its version of Swift required, modification of the single cell requirement was necessarily forbidden. a fully developed record, this Court should impose that burden on a local government by assuming that a change in circumstances was “reasonably foreseeable” and that anticipating and responding to such a change was the sole responsibility of petitioners. 11 One of the conditions of the modification ordered in 1985 was that “single-cell occupancy is maintained under the design for the facility.” App. 111.