Highest Court Cost

IN TWO landmark days, first the U.S. Justice Department and then the Supreme Court jerked on the reins of federal judges, curbing their penchant for jumping into prison management. On January 14 Attorney General William Barr announced that federal lawyers will help states challenge caps on prison inmate populations negotiated under threat of a federal judge’s takeover. And on January 15 the Supreme Court, in a 6 to 2 decision, ordered judges to reconsider such decrees when “a significant change in factual conditions” makes compliance “substantially more onerous”—for example, when street crime soars and more criminals need to be locked away for public safety.

Until two decades ago federal judges kept their hands off state prison sys-terns. Then in 1969 the Warren Court held, in Johnson v. Avery, that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments” could cover a wide array of prisoner complaints. Federal judges lost no time in jumping into this new imperial domain, babbling about “evolving standards of decency.” The 1969 case involved floggings with a leather strap in the Arkansas prisons, but soon county commissioners in Crisp County, Georgia were compelled to provide prisoners with air conditioning and television under threat of having their jail held “unconstitutional.” “It’s gotten to the point that criminals ask us for prison time instead of probation,” declares Texas Judge Michael McSpadden.

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Eugene H. Methvin

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Supreme Court

William Barr

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IN TWO landmark days, first the U.S. Justice Department and then the Supreme Court jerked on the reins of federal judges, curbing their penchant for jumping into prison management. On January 14 Attorney General William Barr announced that federal lawyers will help states challenge caps on prison inmate populations negotiated under threat of a federal judge’s takeover. And on January 15 the Supreme Court, in a 6 to 2 decision, ordered judges to reconsider such decrees when “a significant change in factual conditions” makes compliance “substantially more onerous”—for example, when street crime soars and more criminals need to be locked away for public safety.

Until two decades ago federal judges kept their hands off state prison sys-terns. Then in 1969 the Warren Court held, in Johnson v. Avery, that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments” could cover a wide array of prisoner complaints. Federal judges lost no time in jumping into this new imperial domain, babbling about “evolving standards of decency.” The 1969 case involved floggings with a leather strap in the Arkansas prisons, but soon county commissioners in Crisp County, Georgia were compelled to provide prisoners with air conditioning and television under threat of having their jail held “unconstitutional.” “It’s gotten to the point that criminals ask us for prison time instead of probation,” declares Texas Judge Michael McSpadden.