Law Commons^™

Introduction: The conditions in America's correctional facilities have long been cause for concern. Even those who do not advocate a comfortable quality of life for inmates recognize that basic problems such as overcrowding, inmate violence,' inadequate staffing,2 and increasing costs of building and maintaining prisons have approached crisis levels. Meanwhile, the prison population continues to swell. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the United States Department of Justice, the number of prisoners incarcerated at state and federal prisons annually has grown at a rate of 8.4% in recent years.'

Introduction: Riots are a recurrent phenomenon in American prisons. In the 1950s and the early 1970s, major riots erupted in prisons across the country, and many have occurred in the past several years.' Riots will continue to occur as long as the dominant function of prisons is the custodial confinement of inmates. As one commentator explains, "The way to make a strong bomb is to build a strong perimeter and generate pressure inside. Similarly, riots occur where ... pressures and demands are generated in the presence of strong custodial confinement."

When such a bomb detonates and a prison riot erupts, …