Cite as: 530 U. S. 327 (2000)
Breyer, J., dissenting
I
At the outset, one must understand why a more flexible interpretation of the statute might be needed. To do so, one must keep in mind the extreme circumstances that at least some prison litigation originally sought to correct, the complexity of the resulting judicial decrees, and the potential difficulties arising out of the subsequent need to review those decrees in order to make certain they follow Congress' PLRA directives. A hypothetical example based on actual circumstances may help.
In January 1979, a Federal District Court made 81 factual findings describing extremely poor—indeed "barbaric and shocking"—prison conditions in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Morales Feliciano v. Romero Barcelo, 497 F. Supp. 14, 32 (PR 1979). These conditions included prisons typically operating with twice the number of prisoners they were designed to hold; inmates living in 16 square feet of space (i. e., only 4 feet by 4 feet); inmates without medical care, without psychiatric care, without beds, without mattresses, without hot water, without soap or towels or toothbrushes or underwear; food prepared on a budget of $1.50 per day and "tons of food . . . destroyed because of . . . rats, vermin, worms, and spoilage"; "no working toilets or showers," "urinals [that] flush into the sinks," "plumbing systems . . . in a state of collapse," and a "stench" that was "omnipresent"; "exposed wiring . . . no fire extinguisher, . . . [and] poor ventilation"; "calabozos," or dungeons, "like cages with bars on the top" or with two slits in a steel door opening onto a central corridor, the floors of which were "covered with raw sewage" and which contained prisoners with severe mental illnesses, "caged like wild animals," sometimes for months; areas of a prison where mentally ill inmates were "kept in cells naked, without beds, without mattresses, without any private possessions, and most of them without toilets that work and without drinking water." Id., at 20-23, 26-
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