Request By:
Mr. David H. Bland
Executive Director
Route #2, McCowans Ferry Road
Versailles, Kentucky 40383
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
A question has been raised concerning a jailer's purchasing of jumpsuits for prisoners. Specifically you ask these questions:
1. Is not the provision of prisoner clothing within the scope of the jailer's trust to provide for the care and custody of the prisoner?
2. Is not the provision of such clothing an appropriate expense from the jail budget?
This seems to be a small matter, but I assure you in terms of internal security and personnel safety it is not.
Elsewhere in your letter you gave us your observations from your experience as a Corrections Commissioner:
"Related to institutional security and prisoner control, I have long urged county jails to implement the practice of issuing prisoner clothing in lieu of permitting the prisoner to use their personal apparel. Such a practice is recognized as basic to sound prison and jail administration. The reason, of course, is to reduce contraband from entering the facility. Jail type clothing is constructed to reduce the number of places where drugs and weapons can be secreted. For example, pant cuffs and the inner belt lining or the interface of a shirt collar make excellent little compartments. Just as most jails refuse to permit any food stuffs to be brought to the prisoner because of the near impossibility to monitor them, they also provide institutional clothing. "
The basic custodial responsibilities of the jailer are set forth in KRS 71.020, 71.030 and 71.040.
In City of Bowling Green v. Rogers, 142 Ky. 558, 134 S.W. 921 (1911), the court wrote that "It is the duty of the keeper of the prison to use ordinary care to keep it clean and sanitary, to maintain order, and to see that the prisoners conduct themselves in a decent and orderly manner." (Emphasis added).
In addition, the law imposes a duty on the jailer to exercise reasonable and ordinary care and diligence to prevent unlawful injury to a prisoner placed in his custody. Ratliff v. Stanley, 224 Ky. 819, 7 S.W.2d 230 (1928) 232. Thus it is well settled law that the keeper of the prison must exercise ordinary care for the protection of his prisoners if there is reasonable ground to apprehend the danger to the prisoner (Bartlett v. Commonwealth, Ky., 418 S.W.2d 225 (1967) 228); although the jailer is not the insurer of the safety of prisoners under his control. City of Lexington v. Greenhow, Ky., 451 S.W.2d 424 (1970). See also Sudderth v. White, Ky.App., 621 S.W.2d 33 (1981), relating to the jailer's duty of exercising reasonable care that harm does not come to his prisoners; and Lamb v. Clark, 282 Ky. 167, 138 S.W.2d 350 (1940).
The federal courts have established the principle that one who has committed a violation of law and is thus incarcerated must expect to submit to reasonable discipline. While it is true that the prisoner does not lose all of his civil rights when he is placed in prison, yet unless the discipline administered constitutes cruel and inhuman treatment within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, the court should not interfere nor attempt to superintend the treatment and discipline of prisoners. Blake v. Pryse, (U.S. D. Ct. D. Minn. - 5, 1970) 315 F.Supp. 625, 626; and Glenn v. Ciccone, (U.S.C.A. -8, 1966) 370 F.2d 361, 363.
The Supreme Court of the United States, in Price v. Johnston, 334 U.S. 266, 285, 68 S. Ct. 1049, 1060, 92 L. Ed. 1356 (1948), took note of the principle that "Lawful incarceration brings about the necessary withdrawal or limitation of many privileges and rights, a retraction justified by the considerations underlying our penal system." (Emphasis added).
Justice White, for the court, in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 41 L. Ed. 2d 935, 94 S. Ct. 2963 (1974), wrote this:
"Prison disciplinary proceedings are not part of a criminal prosecution, and the full panoply of rights due a defendant in such proceedings does not apply. . . . In sum, there must be mutual accommodation between institutional needs and objectives and the provisions of the constitution that are of general application."
The court, in Wolff v. McDonnell, was in accord with the principle expressed in Price v. Johnston, above, i.e., that lawful imprisonment necessarily makes unavailable many rights and privileges of the ordinary citizen.
Thus from the above authorities it can be carefully gleaned that a jailer may use his reasonable discretion in connection with disciplinary measures calculated to promote the safekeeping of the prisoners, good order and security and discipline of the prisoners. 72 C.J.S., Prisons, § 18, p. 872. In exercising such discretion the jailer must carefully weigh and place in balance the needs of the jail and the constitutional rights of prisoners in general.
CONCLUSION
1. It is our opinion that a jailer may require his prisoners to wear some reasonable type of prisoner uniform calculated to subserve the necessary disciplinary system of the jail, as discussed above.
2. Such appropriate prisoner uniforms would constitute a legitimate item of expense, which may be provided for in the jail budget. See KRS 441.008.