ABSTRACT
On August 10, 1977, in what was the first major “totality of conditions” case outside the South (Palmigiano v.Garrahy), the Honorable Raymond J.Pettine, then Chief Judge of the Federal District Court for Rhode Island, found that the conditions in Rhode Island’s prisons “do not provide [a] tolerable living environment” and “would shock the conscience of any reasonable citizen who had a first hand opportunity to view them.”1 Judge Pettine ordered remedial action in virtually all aspects of the prison system’s facilities and operations including the closure of the state’s only maximum security prison and appointed a special master to monitor the implementation of the decree. Eighteen years later the case was finally dismissed and the court terminated its jurisdiction. In that time conditions in the prisons had undergone such a remarkable transformation that Alvin Bronstein, then director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project which has handled much of the nation’s prison litigation including this case, considered it the Project’s biggest success.2
