Cite as: 511 U. S. 825 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
per, 494 U. S., at 225; Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U. S., at 526- 527, a standard that incorporates due regard for prison officials' "unenviable task of keeping dangerous men in safe custody under humane conditions," Spain v. Procunier, 600 F. 2d 189, 193 (CA9 1979) (Kennedy, J.); see also Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S. 520, 547-548, 562 (1979). Whether one puts it in terms of duty or deliberate indifference, prison officials who act reasonably cannot be found liable under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause.
We address, finally, petitioner's argument that a subjective deliberate indifference test will unjustly require prisoners to suffer physical injury before obtaining court-ordered correction of objectively inhumane prison conditions. "It would," indeed, "be odd to deny an injunction to inmates who plainly proved an unsafe, life-threatening condition in their prison on the ground that nothing yet had happened to them." Helling, supra, at 33. But nothing in the test we adopt today clashes with that common sense. Petitioner's argument is flawed for the simple reason that "[o]ne does not have to await the consummation of threatened injury to obtain preventive relief." Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, 262 U. S. 553, 593 (1923). Consistently with this principle, a subjective approach to deliberate indifference does not require a prisoner seeking "a remedy for unsafe conditions [to] await a tragic event [such as an] actua[l] assaul[t] before obtaining relief." Helling, supra, at 33-34.
In a suit such as petitioner's, insofar as it seeks injunctive relief to prevent a substantial risk of serious injury from ripening into actual harm, "the subjective factor, deliberate indifference, should be determined in light of the prison authorities' current attitudes and conduct," Helling, supra, at 36: their attitudes and conduct at the time suit is brought and persisting thereafter. An inmate seeking an injunction on the ground that there is "a contemporary violation of a nature likely to continue," United States v. Oregon State Medical Soc., 343 U. S. 326, 333 (1952), must adequately
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