NCJ Number
84764
Date Published
1981
Length
20 pages
Annotation
Supreme Court decisions bearing upon due process requirements in inmate disciplinary and quasi-disciplinary procedures are reviewed.
Abstract
Relatively formal procedures for inmate discipline are consistent with the goal of new administrators in bureaucratizing and standardizing institutional procedures. On the other hand, the new administrators also want the flexibility to act summarily when necessary to enforce the depoliticization of the prison and to break up organized group protest, although they prefer not to use the traditional range of punitive measures for those ends. The decisions of the Burger Court in the due process area closely correspond to these perceived needs of the new administrators. Between the first major prison discipline case, Wolff v. McDonnell, and the Court's later pronouncements in Meachum v. Fano and Montanye v. Haymes, the Court changed its mode of analysis of due process claims. Montanye and Meachum are fundamentally inconsistent with Wolff. The tension between the 'hands off' doctrine, revived by Justice Rehnquist's theory of the nature of due process and his general approach to the scope of review appropriate for decisions by prison administrators, and the majority's ambiguous moderate approach suggests that Wolff and Montanye-Meachum will continue their uneasy coexistence. The Court endorses the requirement of due process when segregated confinement or the loss of good time is at stake, yet is not swayed by policy arguments for interposing due process in institutional transfers. Litigators before the lower Federal courts should try to distinguish their cases from Montange and Meachum and argue that a Wolff analysis is appropriate. A total of 149 notes is listed.