Citation

Tartaro C. Prison J. 2015; 95(1): 23-42.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0032885514563269

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The Supreme Court ruling on Farmer v. Brennan established the federal court standard for determining when corrections staff members should be held legally responsible for inmates' injuries resulting from inmate-inmate violence or self-harm. Legal scholars lamented that requiring plaintiffs to prove deliberate indifference placed a heavy burden on plaintiffs. Two slightly encouraging signs appeared to be Farmer's end to the "individual-specific" rule and the decision that courts had the option of ruling that the threat of harm was too obvious for the defendants to ignore. This article involves a review of post-Farmer custodial suicide cases and the impact that these two aspects of the Farmer decision has had on these cases.

Language: en