Cite as: 523 U. S. 833 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
bility as any mark of sufficiently shocking conduct, and have held that the Constitution does not guarantee due care on the part of state officials; liability for negligently inflicted harm is categorically beneath the threshold of constitutional due process. See id., at 328; see also Davidson v. Cannon, 474 U. S., at 348 (clarifying that Daniels applies to substantive, as well as procedural, due process). It is, on the contrary, behavior at the other end of the culpability spectrum that would most probably support a substantive due process claim; conduct intended to injure in some way unjustifiable by any government interest is the sort of official action most likely to rise to the conscience-shocking level. See Daniels v. Williams, 474 U. S., at 331 ("Historically, this guarantee of due process has been applied to deliberate decisions of government officials to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property" (emphasis in original)).
Whether the point of the conscience shocking is reached when injuries are produced with culpability falling within the middle range, following from something more than negligence but "less than intentional conduct, such as recklessness or 'gross negligence,' " id., at 334, n. 3, is a matter for closer calls.9 To be sure, we have expressly recognized the possibility that some official acts in this range may be actionable under the Fourteenth Amendment, ibid., and our cases have compelled recognition that such conduct is egregious enough to state a substantive due process claim in at least one instance. We held in City of Revere v. Massachusetts Gen. Hospital, 463 U. S. 239 (1983), that "the due process rights of a [pretrial detainee] are at least as great as the
9 In Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165 (1952), the case in which we formulated and first applied the shocks-the-conscience test, it was not the ultimate purpose of the government actors to harm the plaintiff, but they apparently acted with full appreciation of what the Court described as the brutality of their acts. Rochin, of course, was decided long before Graham v. Connor (and Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961)), and today would be treated under the Fourth Amendment, albeit with the same result.
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