The prisoners sue to bring about constitutional conditions at the prison. Almost inevitably, however, this objective becomes a colloquialism for "prison reform" in the minds of the inmates and the free citizens interested in the result.20 Once that change in terminology takes hold, a wide array of expectations arises, and the objectives of the suit become confused with other objectives that do not have a constitutional basis and that instead are matters of public policy.
This proliferation of nonspecific goals has obvious consequences. Public expectations about civic institutions are notoriously fragile, and in the area of prisons, they are remarkably contradictory. As a simple illustration, the prevalence of the concept of law and order has produced a fevered rush toward ill-considered, punitive criminal justice policies-such as determinate sentencing (which fix terms without parole), revocation of prison good-time statutes (which allow sentence reduction for good behavior), retreat from community consensual settlement of a federal court case, and a pronounced dedication toward improving conditions in the state's prisons. That story, although heightened because of the peculiar dynamics of the New Mexico situation, is not unique. When roving grand juries commission themselves to investigate prison affairs, their formal reports, which are powerful evidence of the values of a community, almost uniformly condemn conditions and practices inside the institutions. Nonetheless, public opinion on this issue, as on virtually any other, will tilt and waver. These vacillations are not capricious; they are the substance of democracy, and it is not irresponsible for politicians to heed them. The point here is that the special master is affected by these tides, and in the end, as the political process lurches toward resolution, he or she may in turn affect that resolution. With or without that participation, however, the political process will have an impact, ultimately and immediately, on the objectives that the special master is expected to achieve.
The sheriff, also a named defendant, is an elected official and is a separate constitutional officer in the jurisdiction. The sheriff's constituency may be different from any one group represented on the board, and his or her political aspirations may be such that it would be advantageous to take public positions at odds with the policies chosen by the majority faction on the board. Although the chief jailer typically is a subordinate of the sheriff and serves at his or her pleasure, the goals of these two persons may be quite distinct. If the chief jailer has risen through the ranks at the jail to achieve that position, he or she may feel deep attachment to the facility and its staff. In cases where the sheriff is a politician rather than a professional jailer, the potential conflicts are readily apparent.
The maintenance of adequate constitutional conditions at a jail is a costly endeavor. The sheriff, as an elected official, may be more concerned about the costs and benefits of certain policies at the jail than the chief jailer may be. One can anticipate, then, that there might be significant disputes between the sheriff and the chief jailer over the priority to be given to certain measures that the chief jailer advocates.
In addition to the difficulties of achieving consensus among actors with very different objectives, a special master is also required to fashion agreement among actors who are not formally part of the process but whose views and decisions are critical to the operation of a local community criminal-justice system. For example, in a jail plagued with overcrowding, the discretion of prosecuting attorneys-about whom they should prosecute and for what crimes, the structuring of plea bargaining, and the imposition of sentences-has a dramatic effect on the jail population. These fundamental policy decisions are far beyond the charter of the special master, but they directly affect his or her ability to deal with the jail and its problems. If the solution is to be negotiated, these actors, and the processes by which they make their decisions, must be accounted for. Yet only by overreaching the original mandate can the special master bring them into the process. In the background also are the state court judges, who are not accustomed to the rough barter of negotiation; they pronounce sentences with the legitimate expectation that they will be served under the terms established by them and by statutory law.
Even if the master ignores the complexity of the interests that actually compose "the defendants," he or she can be overwhelmed by simply identifying the direct constituencies that must be served. The master's primary relationship at the prison is with the administration. Administrators and line staff have broad discretion in the day-to-day operation of the institution. The decisions these people make have a profound impact on whether or not the court's order is implemented. Moreover, the quality of life in the prison is formed by the infinite, minute daily decisions of staff in their relations with inmates, and the inmates' perceptions of progress are molded by these decisions. The court's order can be effectively sabotaged by line staff in a thousand ways, many of which will escape detection.
Consequently, the special master's relationship with line staff is critical. From the start, however, this relationship is victimized by ideology and mutually held caricatures. The special master may see line staff as the avatars of an unconstitutional system; conversely, line staff may view the master as an embodiment of an ignorant but judgmental federal court. Until these stereotypes dissolve, the master's job will be impossible.
Certainly the special master must work from the assumption that something is wrong at the prison. Otherwise, the existence of the court's order would be inexplicable. In fact, in most cases the master's appointment is the result not only of unconstitutional conditions but also of prolonged noncompliance. This failure may be the product of intransigence, incompetence, or more complex forces. The problem is the master's to solve, and so he or she enters the prison as the interloper, a natural adversary of the besieged administrator.
The tension between them is layered with stereotypes. Virtually anyone familiar with prisons and their lore recognizes the classic image of the hard-nosed corrections professionals, who stake their future on obdurate defiance of lawful court orders. This depiction may have been valid sometime in the past, but it is now mostly obsolete. For at least a decade, those within the field of corrections have devoted considerable time to the development of professional standards and a self-policing mechanism of accreditation.
Special masters struggle through stereotypes of their own, of course. Within corrections there is an enduring dichotomy between the line officer and the theoretician, which is felt with particular force by people who have risen through the ranks to positions in the administration. One cannot gainsay the actual difficulties involved in the job of supervising a correctional institution. Those who bear the responsibilities acutely, day to day, cannot be blamed for believing that a federal judge is not particularly well acquainted with those difficulties and is probably poorly positioned to correct them. The special master necessarily labors in the pejorative fallout of that belief. This distrust is further sharpened by the administrator's natural defensiveness against being second-guessed, particularly when the intruder can also condemn and reform.
These feelings are thick in the air when the special master starts his or her job. Unless the experience is extraordinary, emotions will intensify during the initial stages of the mastership. Typically, the master's first official act is to prepare findings that describe to the court and to the parties the extent of noncompliance. This task fulfills the worst fears of the administration and almost inevitably leaves line-staff administrators believing they are censured and misunderstood. Any trust the master has developed with administrators and staff is replaced by feelings of condemnation and personal betrayal. Running a prison is intensely personal work, and there is very little distance between the views of the administrator and their reification in the practices inside the facility. The reports of noncompliance, then, become highly personal.
