Chapter 2
Conditions of Confinement
This Chapter introduces the foundational cases governing the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment requirements of safe and humane incarceration conditions, including the Constitution’s ban on excessive force. It considers both post-conviction incarceration and pretrial detention, and presents and analyzes both subjective and objective liability standards.
Featured Opinions
- Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 (1979)
- Castro v. County of Los Angeles, 833 F.3d 1060 (9th Cir. 2016) (en banc)
- Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976)
- Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994)
- Helling v. McKinney, 509 U.S. 25 (1993)
- Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730 (2002)
- Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1 (1992)
- Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678 (1978)
- Jackson v. Bishop, 404 F.2d 571 (8th Cir. 1968)
- Kingsley v. Hendrickson, ___ U.S. ___, 135 S.Ct. 2466 (2015)
- Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337 (1981)
- Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312 (1986)
- Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U.S. 294 (1991)
- Wilson v. Williams, 961 F.3d 829 (6th Cir. 2020) (in the 2022 supplement)
Featured, Cited, and Supplemental Litigation Documents
- Farmer v. Brennan, 92–7247 (U.S.)
- Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 14–6368 (U.S.)
Non-case Excerpts and Supplemental Documents
- Sharon Dolovich, Cruelty, Prison Conditions, and the Eighth Amendment, 84 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 881 (2009)
- Margo Schlanger, The Constitutional Law of Incarceration, Reconfigured, 103 Cornell L. Rev. 357 (2018)
- John Stinneford, The Original Meaning of Cruel, 105 Geo L.J. 441 (2017)
Additional Reading
Other Cited Sources
- Margo Schlanger, Civil Rights Injunctions Over Time: A Case Study of Jail and Prison Court Orders, 81 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 550 (2006).
- Margo Schlanger, Restoring Objectivity to the Constitutional Law of Incarceration, ACS Issue Brief (Sept. 2018)
For More Information
- Heather Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (2017)
- Homer Venters, Life and Death in Rikers Island (2019)
- COVID-19 behind bars
- Sharon Dolovich, Mass Incarceration, Meet COVID-19, U.Chi. L. Rev. Online (Nov. 16, 2020)