Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/566

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RUFO v. INMATES OF SUFFOLK COUNTY JAIL Stevens, J., dissenting

It is particularly important to apply a strict standard when considering modification requests that undermine the central purpose of a consent decree. In his opinion in New York State Assn. for Retarded Children, Inc. v. Carey, 706 F. 2d 956 (CA2 1983), Judge Friendly analyzed the requested modifications in the light of the central purpose “of transferring the population of Willowbrook, whose squalid living conditions this court has already recited, to facilities of more human dimension as quickly as possible.” Id., at 967. The changes that were approved were found to be consistent with that central purpose. In this action, the entire history of the litigation demonstrates that the prohibition against double celling was a central purpose of the relief ordered by the District Court in 1973, of the bargain negotiated in 1979 and embodied in the original consent decree, and of the order entered in 1985 that petitioners now seek to modify. Moreover, as the District Court found, during the history of the litigation, petitioners have been able to resort to various measures such as “transfers to state prisons, bail reviews by the Superior Court, and a pretrial controlled release program” to respond to the overcrowding problem. 734 F. Supp., at 565. The fact that double celling affords petitioners the easiest and least expensive method of responding to a reasonably foreseeable problem is not an adequate justification for compromising a central purpose of the decree. In this regard, the Court misses the point in its observation that “[i]f modification of one term of a consent decree defeats the purpose of the decree, obviously modification would be all but impossible.” Ante, at 387. It is certainly true that modification of a consent decree would be impossible if the modification of any one term were deemed to defeat the purpose of the decree. However, to recognize that some terms are so critical that their modification would thwart the central purpose of the decree does not render the decree immutable, but rather assures that a modification will frustrate