Discipline System

Development of Formal Disciplinary Systems

The use of a dark and isolated cell as a method of punishing violations of prison rules dates back to the earliest prisons in the United States. To enforce the rule of silence in the congregate prison system, inmates were placed in “the hole.” These cells were often bare, unlit, and poorly ventilated. Those confined to them were served a diet of bread and water. The duration of their confinement ranged from days to years. Inmates were often placed in solitary confinement arbitrarily and were subject to verbal humiliation, physical beatings, and torture.

At this time, disciplinary procedures were exercised without challenge since inmates were legally considered slaves of the state. Although the case was at no time a legal base point upon which the courts could rely on for doctrine, it seems that many were influenced by the Ruffin v. Commonwealth (1871) [Page 245]decision that “the prisoner has, as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights except which the law in its humanity accords to him.” Indeed, most courts maintained their “hands-off” policy about conditions of confinement well into the 20th century. Thus, it was not until the 1960s that federal and state courts began regularly to consider inmate appeals about correctional practices regarding their treatment and violation of their constitutional rights.

The 1941 case of Ex parte Hull is generally considered to mark the beginning of the court's intervention in inmates' allegations of mistreatment. In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that inmates have the unrestricted right to the federal court system. Later, in Coffin v. Reichard (1944) the court extended federal habeas corpus to include conditions of confinement, stating that inmates retain all the rights of ordinary citizens except those expressly or by necessary implication that are taken from the inmate by the law. This decision, marking the first time in which a federal appellate court ruled that inmates do not lose all their civil rights as a condition of confinement, modified the longstanding interpretation of Ruffin v. Commonwealth.

The ruling in Monroe v. Pape (1961) permitted access to the federal courts to litigate inmate rights without first exhausting state judicial remedies. Later, in Cooper v. Pate (1964), the court ruled that state inmates could sue prison staff for depriving them of their constitutional rights. Hence, both the Monroe v. Pape and Cooper v. Pate court decisions signaled the end of the hands-off doctrine, and consequently served as the catalyst for an explosion of inmate lawsuits against prison authorities. In response, the rampant physical brutality, rigid authoritarian discipline, and repulsive conditions that had previously characterized disciplinary segregation were dramatically reduced.

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