Violation Of Due Process Essay

One of the main principles of the United States is that there are basic rights of which any person, regardless of the citizenship, cannot be deprived. This tenant applies also to those individuals who have committed crimes punished by detention. In fact, even if prisoners are not afforded all the guarantees of a free citizen, in any case they are granted specific minimal rights by the U. S. Constitution. These rights are the object of the majority of prisoners’ complaints.

Inmates retain basic First Amendment rights, like freedom of speech, religion and association, and they can exercise them as far as they do not interfere with their prisoners’ status (U.S. Const. amend. I). The restriction of these privileges is justified by the necessity

Const. amend. XIV). In reference to inmates, this Clause implies that the prison must provide prisoners with the proper protection in the form of a hearing or a notice before proceeding to anything that could interfere with the prisoner’ s life, liberty or property. Transfers, segregation, or disciplinary actions are all examples of potential violation of due process when enacted without process. In Sandin v. Conner (515 U. S. 472, 1995) DeMont Conner, inmate of Halawa Correction, was sentenced to 30 days of segregation after a misconduct during a strip search. The committee denied Conner’s request to call witnesses to prove his innocence and found him guilty, and therefore he filed a civil action arguing a violation of his constitutional right to due process during the hearing. However, the Supreme Court ruled that without an atypical and significantly hardship on the inmate in comparison to the ordinary incidents of prison life, an inmate do not have the right to the procedures established in the previous case Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539 (1974) for any violation of due process rights (Ciszak,