Dred Scott in Private Prisons
Kianna Victor | Columbia College
Edited by: DeVon Chance Thompson
Abstract:
This article draws comparisons between the historical civil rights case that denied Black slaves rights as American citizens and a 2019 court case that challenged a for-profit prison for neglecting prisoners’ health and well-being. By examining the interrelation between Dockery v. Hall and Scott v. Sandford, this article displays the evolution of slavery into the modern-day prison plantation. For-profit prison cases like Dockery v. Hall prove not only the systemic racism within the judicial system, but their mass ignorance of enslavement and the deprivation of minorities’ rights in similar ways to Dred Scott v. Sandford. At large, this article inspects the legal critiques of the Dred Scott case to determine if a constitutional challenge against private prisons can ever be successful.
—————————————————————————————————————————-
Institutionalized neglect often escapes the scrutiny that typical cases receive. On April 4, 2016, Prisoner T.H. at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility died after being found unresponsive in his cell; he had severe mental illness and had previously attempted suicide. Hours before his death, a lieutenant noticed him with a bloody arm but failed to offer assistance and left the area. Despite observing T.H., the lieutenant did not respond and simply walked away. Such stories of inadequate medical and mental health care, solitary confinement, and violence at the facility prompted the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Law Offices of Elizabeth Alexander, and Covington & Burling LLP to file a federal lawsuit on behalf of the prisoners: Dockery v. Hall. This article examines the parallels between the historic denial of citizenship and rights to Black slaves in Dred Scott v. Sandford and the neglect of prisoners' health and well-being in modern for-profit prisons as seen in Dockery v. Hall. Analyzing these cases demonstrates how the judicial system perpetuates systemic racism and overlooks the ongoing enslavement-like conditions in private prisons, raising crucial questions about the potential for successful constitutional challenges against such facilities.
Dockery v. Hall, was argued under the Eighth Amendment, referencing prior rulings from Rhodes v. Chapman (1981), Farmer v. Brennan (1994), and Helling v. McKinney (1993). The plaintiffs argued that the facility's use of excessive physical force, inhumane living conditions, and deprivation of necessary medical treatment should be prevented. However, in August 2018, U.S. District Judge William H. Barbour dismissed the case following a re-examination of the prison and promises from the state of Mississippi to improve facilities made during the week-long trial. Judge Barbour stated, "While Plaintiffs and their expert witnesses argue that the environment and healthcare services at the prison could and should be better, these arguments do not prove that the conditions under which they are currently housed, as a class, are cruel and unusual…" [1].
If inhumane living conditions and excessive physical force against prisoners do not constitute cruel and unusual punishments, then what does? Bryan A. Stevenson and John F. Stinneford at the Constitution Center suggest that "modern methods of punishment may violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause only if they are deliberately designed to inflict pain for the sake of pain, and are objectively harsher than the punishments permissible in 1791…" [2]. Using this interpretation since it was not determined that the prisoners at East Mississippi Correctional Facility were subjected to these conditions as part of their punishment, the case lacks merit by this logic.
While the case at East Mississippi Correctional Facility may not have met the criteria for cruel and unusual punishment as defined by contemporary standards, the historical legal context, particularly regarding the rights of individuals, casts a long shadow over such decisions. The legal precedents and challenges leading up to the ratification of the 13th Amendment are relevant to Dockery v. Hall. Specifically, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court ruled that African Americans, even if free, were not citizens and thus were ineligible for government or court protection. Scott, a slave from Illinois who moved to Missouri—a state where slavery had been made illegal by the Missouri Compromise of 1820—argued in court that he was a free man because he resided in a free territory; however his legal challenge failed in both Missouri and Federal Court. The most notable reasoning for this decision, which correlates with Dockery v. Hall, was the use of the citizen's right to "private property" to justify depriving slaves of rights.
In his opinion, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney asserted that Congress could not "deny to the people the right to keep and bear arms, nor the right to trial by jury, nor compel anyone to be a witness against himself ” [3]. Consequently, Taney argued that the same consideration must be given when dealing with private property rights, with the government specifically responsible only for "protecting private property against government encroachments," not for taking or managing ownership without compensation (5th Amendment). This perspective not only impacted the government's ability to outlaw slavery and grant citizenship rights to African Americans before the Civil War and the ratification of the 13th Amendment, as they were seen as property, but it also influenced current prison rights cases like Dockery v. Hall–where the concept of 'property' (in this context the prison and its administration) may override the constitutional rights of prisoners, reflecting a legacy of prioritizing property interests in American jurisprudence.
Looking at Dockery v. Hall as a matter of private property rather than cruel punishment, through Taney's logic, the judge's stance is strongly supported as he would not have authority over how a private prison manages its property. However, what the government can do is impose standards. In Rhodes v. Chapman, a prior U.S. Supreme Court case that influenced Dockery v. Hall, the Supreme Court recognized that while the Constitution "does not mandate comfortable prisons," it "does not permit the existence of those that are inhumane" [4]. Thus, while the East Mississippi Correctional Facility is not obligated to manage or surrender to U.S. government control as private property, as long as the conditions are not inhumane, it will always be protected under private property rights as property of U.S. citizens.
Who, then, is considered to be the property? While in Dred v. Sandford, the property was considered to be Dred Scott, in Dockery v. Hall, the private property in question is the prison itself. Therefore, one might argue the case is not about slavery but about privatization. However, if the prisoners weren't included in the property classification, I contend there would be a different narrative in the case. The prevailing conditions would have never reached a court setting under the logic of private property and the 5th Amendment. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the governance of private property unless compensated when seized for public use. Initially, this interpretation covered complete takings but has since expanded to include public purposes that can benefit private properties and parties involved. Thus, private prisons would fall under this definition of properties used for public purposes. Unless they take private properties for public use, the government is prohibited from conducting searches on private property. Using a common example, trash inside one's home is protected from unreasonable searches, while trash on the road is not. If the property is used for public purposes, then the government would have expanded access to control the property.
However, there are investigations and actions by the commissioners of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. There were no official state-sanctioned standards on the treatment of prisoners, only on the treatment and efficiency of the prison as a property overall. The Mississippi Department of Corrections has emphasized its "aggressive effort to achieve American Correctional Association Accreditation" [5]. The American Correctional Association (ACA) is a private nonprofit organization that reviews and creates standards for correctional facilities to maintain efficiency and enhance prison practices [6]. Yet, while claiming to benefit inmates, they also actively fight allegations of mistreatment by prisoners and undermine claims of abuse. In 2024, three Democratic senators even requested that federal prisons not renew contracts with American Correctional Associations due to the lack of protections for prisoners in federal correctional facilities [7].
Why, then, are state and private prisoners not included in this request? It is because the consideration of privatization undermines and perpetuates the rights of private prisoners, as it actively protects private prisons from being held accountable by the government. Even though the Fifth Amendment was expanded to include public usage of a private facility, the preliminary language still applies to the term of governance when considering private properties. In the Dockery v. Hall case, the court dismissed the case because the prison improved its living conditions—not because it sought justice for the harm done to the prisoners [8]. If the prisoners were considered under the 14th Amendment, this would be a violation of the prisoners' right to due process. However, under the Fifth Amendment, the prisoners could be seen as part of the property. Trash inside private property cannot be governed unless "reasonable," until it is outside. Granted, this does not prove that private prisoners are established to be slaves, but it does provide substantial evidence that carceral logic, when considering private prisons, parallels slave cases. Therefore, for there to be a successful challenge to private prisoners' rights, similar critiques need to be made to those who challenged the institution of slavery. For example, before the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, American lawyer Lysander Spooner, in "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery," argued that the Constitution was established under the assumption of natural rights [9]. However, slaves did not consent to be governed, they could not be slaves as they were forcefully brought into this government. While this would be more of an issue when considering private prisons, as prisoners are institutionalized because of a crime, you could use the same logic as Spooner—by arguing that private prisoners did not consent not to be governed. The jurisdiction chooses what prison one ends up in, not the prisoner. Thus, the court chooses whether you are institutionalized under federal/state property (government-owned) or private property (non-government-owned).
Thus, by using the logic of Spooner, private prisoners are being deprived of their natural rights to choose when treating them not as citizens. However, that would be unnecessary, because the constitution in the 14th Amendment protects individuals from the deprivation of “any person of life, liberty, or property without due process.” In Dockery v. Hall, the court determined that “the alleged constitutional violations that may have existed at the time this lawsuit was filed no longer exist…” (10). Therefore, the court ignored the right of the prisoners to undergo due process. Even if someone argues that it is a statute of limitation, there is no statute of limitation on constitutionality and only on the introduction of a case. Therefore, the Mississippi court deprived prisoners of equal protection of the laws, and, at large, a successful challenge could be made under the Eighth Amendment or any amendment that protects citizens.
—————————————————————————————————————————-
Bibliography
[1] Dockery v. Hall, No. 3:13-cv-00326-CWR-FKB (S.D. Miss. filed 2013),
[2] Bryan A. Stevenson and John F. Stinneford, "The Eighth Amendment," National Constitution Center n.d
[3] Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)
[4] Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337 (1981)
[5] Mississippi Department of Corrections, “Emphasizing their ‘aggressive effort to achieve”, n.d [6] id at 4
[7] M. Rhodes. “Nonprofit Prison Accreditor Perpetuates Abuse and Neglect, Senators Say” n.d [8] Takei, Carl. “The East Mississippi Correctional Facility Is ‘Hell on Earth’: ACLU” n.d
[9] Spooner, Lysander. “The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1860).”
[10] American Civil Liberties Union, “Dockery v. Hall.”
