Prison Rights

Doubling up is O.K.

In 1975 Kelly Chapman, an armed robber, and Richard Jaworski, who was serving out a narcotics conviction, were forced to share a 10 1/2-ft. by 6 1/2-ft. cell at Ohio's maximum-security prison in Lucasville. Citing the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishments," the bunkmates filed a class-action lawsuit that sought a "one man, one cell" policy. A federal judge granted their request and was upheld on appeal. Last week, in a decision of major significance for the nation's overcrowded prisons, the Supreme Court ruled, 8 to 1, that "double celling" was not necessarily unconstitutional.

Wrote Justice Lewis Powell for the majority: "To the extent that [prison] conditions are restrictive and even harsh, they are part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses against society." Such conditions would be cruel and unusual, Powell went on, only if they inflicted "unnecessary or wanton pain" or were "grossly disproportionate" to the severity of the inmates' crimes.

The decision will have immediate impact in Maryland and Oregon, where double celling has been barred by federal courts. Less clear is the probable effect in 25 other states, where prisons are under court orders to improve conditions, and in an additional ten states, where similar cases are pending. The court stressed that state legislators and administrators were better suited than judges to decide how to run their penitentiaries. But, said Justices William Brennan, Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens in a concurring opinion, "today's decision should in no way be construed as a retreat from careful judicial scrutiny of prison conditions.''

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