852
Blackmun, J., concurring
(1976) (Stevens, J., dissenting). Wilson v. Seiter should be overruled.
Although I do not go along with the Court's reliance on Wilson in defining the "deliberate indifference" standard, I join the Court's opinion, because it creates no new obstacles for prison inmates to overcome, and it sends a clear message to prison officials that their affirmative duty under the Constitution to provide for the safety of inmates is not to be taken lightly. Under the Court's decision today, prison officials may be held liable for failure to remedy a risk so obvious and substantial that the officials must have known about it, see ante, at 842-843, and prisoners need not " 'await a tragic event [such as an] actua[l] assaul[t] before obtaining relief,' " ante, at 845.
I
Petitioner is a transsexual who is currently serving a 20-year sentence in an all-male federal prison for credit card fraud. Although a biological male, petitioner has undergone treatment for silicone breast implants and unsuccessful surgery to have his testicles removed. Despite his overtly feminine characteristics, and his previous segregation at a different federal prison because of safety concerns, see Farmer v. Carlson, 685 F. Supp. 1335, 1342 (MD Pa. 1988), prison officials at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, housed him in the general population of that maximum-security prison. Less than two weeks later, petitioner was brutally beaten and raped by another inmate in petitioner's cell.
Homosexual rape or other violence among prison inmates serves absolutely no penological purpose. See Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U. S. 337, 345-346 (1981), citing Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 183 (1976) ( joint opinion) (the Eighth Amendment prohibits all punishment, physical and mental, which is "totally without penological justification"). "Such brutality is the equivalent of torture, and is offensive to any modern standard of human dignity." United States v. Bai-
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