No Right Without Legal Remedy: State Prisoners Barred from Recovery on Conditions of Confinement Claims Post-Natural Disaster

The American carceral system imprisons nearly 2,000,000 individuals in jails and prisons throughout the country. As the climate crisis worsens and the number of natural disasters continues to rise, those individuals are in mortal peril. What happens to incarcerated people when treacherous winds and unprecedented floods hit? Due to non-existent and ineffective prison evacuation procedures, incarcerated individuals are left to drown behind the bars of their cells. Whether this systemic problem constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment remains unclear. Supreme Court jurisprudence over the last seventy-five years surrounding such claims has evolved, but the Court-implemented subjective deliberate indifference standard has only increased ambiguity as to what constitutes that type of punishment. With the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, prisoners and pretrial detainees face increased obstacles to bringing constitutional violation claims. This Note reviews the legal framework within which prisoners and pretrial detainees bring claims of cruel and unusual punishment against officials within the carceral system. This Note argues that the subjective deliberate indifference standard bars recovery for state prisoner-plaintiffs on claims of unconstitutional conditions of confinement post-natural disaster and thus should be abandoned. In abandoning the subjective prong of the standard, justice for prisoners experiencing constitutional violations would no longer be illusory. This Note further argues that the abandonment of the subjective component would incentivize officials to create and execute evacuation plans for their prisons in the face of a natural disaster.