Louis Wolfish v. Honorable Edward Levi

IRVING R. KAUFMAN, Chief Judge:

When the history of our criminal justice system is chronicled, no doubt one of its most sobering pages will describe the sad state of this nation’s prisons and jails. Whether it be in filthy, narrow cells of an Alabama penitentiary or in overcrowded dormitories in a Bronx house of detention, we have quartered individuals, both convicted or merely accused of crimes, major and minor, under conditions that shock the conscience of civilized men. To redress these glaring deficiencies, courts have often been summoned to insure that, at the least, minimum standards of…