“Alaska Supreme Court says state has duty to protect inmates from one another”

The Anchorage Daily News has this article reporting on a ruling that the Supreme Court of Alaska issued recently:

A former inmate in Alaska’s only maximum security prison can go ahead with his claim that he warned correctional officers of trouble with “cocky, young” inmates in his prison block only to suffer serious injuries after another prisoner punched him.

In a decision released Friday, the Alaska Supreme Court said a lawsuit by the injured man, Richard Mattox, can go forward against the Department of Corrections. Bones in Mattox’s face were shattered in the incident, the opinion said.

Alaska’s prison system has a duty to protect the lives and health of inmates in its custody, the opinion, written by Chief Justice Dana Fabe, said.

“We have not previously considered whether assaults by other inmates fall within the scope of a jailer’s duty to protect, but our precedents point in that direction, permitting liability even for intentional harmful acts, including assault by prison staff as well as suicide,” the opinion says.

There is no reason inmate-on-inmate violence should be treated any differently, the justices said, pointing to prisoner assault cases from New York and Kansas.

Read more here.