502us2$26D 01-22-99 08:32:58 PAGES OPINPGT
Cite as: 502 U. S. 367 (1992)
387
Opinion of the Court
that the decree, as originally issued and modified, called for
a facility with single cells. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail
v. Kearney, Civ. Action No. 71–162–G (Mass., Apr. 11, 1985),
App. 110.11 It is apparent, however, that the decree itself
nowhere expressly orders or reflects an agreement by petitioners to provide jail facilities having single cells sufficient
to accommodate all future pretrial detainees, however large
the number of such detainees might be. Petitioners’ agreement and the decree appear to have bound them only to provide the specified number of single cells. If petitioners were
to build a second new facility providing double cells that
would meet constitutional standards, it is doubtful that they
would have violated the consent decree.
Even if the decree is construed as an undertaking by petitioners to provide single cells for pretrial detainees, to relieve petitioners from that promise based on changed conditions does not necessarily violate the basic purpose of the
decree. That purpose was to provide a remedy for what had
been found, based on a variety of factors, including double
celling, to be unconstitutional conditions obtaining in the
Charles Street Jail. If modification of one term of a consent
decree defeats the purpose of the decree, obviously modification would be all but impossible. That cannot be the rule.
The District Court was thus in error in holding that even
under a more flexible standard than its version of Swift required, modification of the single cell requirement was necessarily forbidden.
a fully developed record, this Court should impose that burden on a local
government by assuming that a change in circumstances was “reasonably
foreseeable” and that anticipating and responding to such a change was
the sole responsibility of petitioners.
11
One of the conditions of the modification ordered in 1985 was that
“single-cell occupancy is maintained under the design for the facility.”
App. 111.
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