Cite as: 511 U. S. 825 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
at 31-32; Washington v. Harper, 494 U. S. 210, 225 (1990); Estelle, 429 U. S., at 103. Cf. DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Servs., 489 U. S. 189, 198-199 (1989).
In particular, as the lower courts have uniformly held, and as we have assumed, "prison officials have a duty . . . to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners." Cortes-Quinones v. Jimenez-Nettleship, 842 F. 2d 556, 558 (CA1) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted), cert. denied, 488 U. S. 823 (1988); 2 see also Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U. S., at 303 (describing "the protection [an inmate] is afforded against other inmates" as a "conditio[n] of confinement" subject to the strictures of the Eighth Amendment). Having incarcerated "persons [with] demonstrated proclivit[ies] for antisocial criminal, and often violent, conduct," Hudson v. Palmer, supra, at 526, having stripped them of virtually every means of self-protection and foreclosed their access to outside aid, the government and its officials are not free to let the state of nature take its course. Cf. DeShaney, supra, at 199-200; Estelle, supra, at 103-104. Prison conditions may be "restrictive and even harsh," Rhodes, supra, at 347, but gratuitously allowing the beating or rape of one prisoner by another serves no "legitimate penological objectiv[e]," Hudson v. Palmer, supra, at 548 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), any more than it squares with " 'evolving standards of decency,' " Estelle,
2 Other Court of Appeals decisions to the same effect include Villante v. Department of Corrections, 786 F. 2d 516, 519 (CA2 1986); Young v. Quinlan, 960 F. 2d 351, 361-362 (CA3 1992); Pressly v. Hutto, 816 F. 2d 977, 979 (CA4 1987); Alberti v. Klevenhagen, 790 F. 2d 1220, 1224 (CA5 1986); Roland v. Johnson, 856 F. 2d 764, 769 (CA6 1988); Goka v. Bobbitt, 862 F. 2d 646, 649-650 (CA7 1988); Martin v. White, 742 F. 2d 469, 474 (CA8 1984); Berg v. Kincheloe, 794 F. 2d 457, 459 (CA9 1986); Ramos v. Lamm, 639 F. 2d 559, 572 (CA10 1980); LaMarca v. Turner, 995 F. 2d 1526, 1535 (CA11 1993); and Morgan v. District of Columbia, 824 F. 2d 1049, 1057 (CADC 1987).
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