Heard in the U.S. Supreme Court --

¶ … heard in the U.S. Supreme Court -- Washington v. Harper -- will be the focus of the first part of this paper. The second part reviews prison conditions in Texas.

Washington v. Harper -- Part One

This was a case resulting from the unstable mental condition of Walter Harper, who has been incarcerated in the Washington state prison system since a robbery conviction in 1976. Harper has been administered antipsychotic drugs for years because of his psychiatric condition; when he does not take his medication his condition worsens, and he becomes violent, according to Justia.com, the U.S. Supreme Court Center for public information. On occasion Harper has become violently out of control in prison and as a result has been transferred to the Special Offender Center (SOC).

While at the SOC (a facility for inmates with "serious mental illness") Harper was required to take the drugs "against his will." He was diagnosed with manic-depressive disorder and according to the SOC policy if a psychiatrist prescribes medication (like antipsychotic drugs), the inmate must agree to take the medication or it will be administered "involuntarily" (Justia.com). It was administered involuntarily to Harper, but meantime Harper filed suit in a Washington state court (under 42 U.S.C. § 1983) claiming that the failure to offer a "judicial hearing before the involuntary administration of antipsychotic medication" had violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Justia.com).

The U.S. Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause does permit the state to treat a person "with a serious mental illness…against his will…if he is dangerous to himself or others and the treatment is in medical interest" (Justia.com).

Part Two -- Prison Conditions in Texas

The reality of prisons in Texas is not necessarily the stereotypical image seen in movies, as described in the assignment for this paper. Certainly there are prisons in Texas (as elsewhere) that are over-crowded, where there have been problems. In particular, only 21 of the 111 prisons in Texas are fully air-conditioned, according to an article in The New York Times (Fernandez, 2012). In fact, four prisoners in Texas died last year from head induced seizures, and prisoners in some Texas prisons have suffered with temperatures over 100 degrees for many days in a row. There is a pending lawsuit against the Texas prison system related to deaths from heat; the suit claims that the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that "cruel and unusual punishments" are not legal. The plaintiffs claim making prisoners suffer through Texas summers without air conditioning is cruel and unusual punishment (Michaels, 2012).

That said, the Mountain View Unit Prison near Gatesville, Texas, a 610-inmate maximum security prison (and the home of death row for females), has progressive programs for rehabilitating prisoners. The opportunity is there at Mountain View for prisoners to learn how to translate ordinary materials into Braille (Turner, 2012). Prisoners also train service dogs for handicapped people. The women inmates working on the Braille project are translating great literature into Braille; books by Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Louisa May Alcott and others, are being made into Braille. Also books in math, geometry, geography and other fields are being made into Braille. There are no reports of prison riots at Mountain View, and no reports of escapes or other problems related to security.