NCJ Number
150684
Journal
Detention Reporter Issue: 125 Dated: (March 1994) Pages: 3-10
Date Published
1994
Length
8 pages
Annotation
Several judicial decisions have focused on legal issues related to the duty of State and local governments to protect victims from the criminal actions of offenders who have been released into the community through supervised probation, work release, or other less restrictive alternatives to incarceration.
Abstract
In DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services in 1989, the Supreme Court held that the State owed no constitutional duty, under the due process clause, to protect a child from the violent actions of the father. However, an increasing number of courts are demonstrating an increased willingness to recognize the existence of a special relationship that would justify a claim. Using the special relationship analysis, the Court in Cornelius v. Town of Highland Lake, Alabama held that the town and prison officials were aware that the abducted town clerk faced a special danger from inmates in a community work squad. In L.W. v. Grubbs, the Ninth Circuit held that as a general rule, members of the public have no constitutional right to sue State employees who fail to protect them against harm inflicted by third parties, but that this general rule is modified where there exists a special relationship or an affirmatively created danger. Excerpts of judicial decisions and address from which to obtain further information