ABSTRACT
Even as public sentiments regarding crime and offenders were hardening in the ’70s, federal courts were becoming more deeply involved in protecting the rights of inmates. The earliest cases had involved specific correctional practices and conditions; by the late 1960s, however, courts were faced with a new wave of suits in which the plaintiff inmates alleged that the cumulative impact of a multiplicity of conditions constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The first such case, Holt v.Sarver, concerned conditions at the two major prisons in Arkansas. In deciding that case, Judge J.Smith Henley held that in determining whether conditions violated the Eighth Amendment, the various conditions “must be considered together” as they “exist in combination; each affects the other; and taken together they have a cumulative impact on the inmates.”1 Thus even though no single condition is so deficient as to be unconstitutional in itself, the cumulative impact of the totality of conditions may be so severe as to constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In Arkansas, for example, the poor medical care and unsanitary living conditions were exacerbated by the fact that the prisons were for the most part operated by inmate “trusties” with little supervision.
