Redefining Cruel & Unusual Punishment

Professor Volokh points to a recent federal court decision that held that requiring Los Angeles County jail inmates to sleep on mattresses on the floor violates the cruel and unusual punishment prohibition of the Eighth Amendment:

Interestingly, though, the finding wasn't based on a conclusion that such a practice caused unacceptable physical discomfort, or hygiene problems. Rather, it seems that the court thought that requiring people to sleep on mattresses (presumably with adequate other bedding) rather than on bunks was just an unacceptable indignity....

Hmmm. I'm sleeping on a mattress on the floor right now, mostly because we just have never gotten around to replacing the bedframe that we scrapped when we moved up here.

To be fair, some of the comments point out that the mattresses used in many jails are closer to wrestling mats than regular mattresses, and at least one person suggests that the decision is using the mattress on the floor indignity as a proxy for something else:

I think the point is more about packing prisoners together rather than the presence or absence of bunks. Putting prisoners, often violent people made more so by being locked with a bunch of other violent people in too small a place, together, is just a recipe for violence and all kinds of abuses, physical, sexual, psychological... This is particularly true in California, and especially in LA, where prison overcrowding has become a sickening disgrace.

The problem really isn't that the mattresses are on the floor. If the real issue is overcrowding, the judge needed to say that.

I would agree that at a certain level of overcrowding, a jail (which remember includes a lot of people who have been convicted of nothing, and may never be convicted) does qualify as "cruel and unusual punishment." But at what level a jail crosses the line from "unpleasantly crowded" to "cruel and unusual punishment" isn't a bright line decision, where "mattress on the floor" is.

Everyone has a solution to jail overcrowding. The drug legalization crowd wants all the drug laws repealed, which would certainly reduce the number of drug offenders in jail...but likely with some increase in the number of people in jail for driving under the influence, murder, rape, child abuse. We might have a net decline in the jail populations, but I wouldn't bet that the reduction is going to suddenly fix jail overcrowding, nor would I bet much money that the net reduction would last more than a few months. If there are no serious consequences to meth addiction, at least some small percentage of the population that might stay away from it will start using it, become addicted, and become next year's murder suspect.

I would like to see a lot more use of house arrest for first offender, non-violent offenses. It was rather sad to be living in California and discover that my state was falling behind the compassionate and progressive states on this matter...like Georgia.