Indiana Prisoners Lack Property Right in Recreation Fund

In an opinion handed down on February 9, 2012, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's determination that Indiana state prisoners had no property interest in a prison's recreation fund and therefore could not sue in federal court over how prison officials used the fund.

Sammie L. Booker-El is incarcerated at the Indiana State Prison. He filed a pro se civil rights complaint in Indiana federal court, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that, without due process, prison officials were misusing the prisoners' recreation fund. The district court found that Booker-El had no federally-protected property interest in the money in the fund and dismissed the complaint. Booker-El appealed.

The Seventh Circuit noted that Ind. Code § 4-24-6-6 requires the prison to maintain a prisoner recreation fund with monies from gifts to the fund, commissary profits, interest on trust funds, sales of items produced in occupational therapy programs and similar sources. The statute also states that the monies in the fund "shall be used, at the discretion of the superintendent or warden ... for the direct benefit of ... inmates ... and shall not be used for any purposes which are covered by state appropriations." Booker-El alleged that prison officials had been diverting monies from the fund for their own personal use and to pay for prison security items already covered under existing state allocations.

The Seventh Circuit first addressed whether Booker-El had standing to bring suit. It found that Booker-El had a high probability of benefiting from the fund and therefore would face a substantial risk of losing benefits should fund monies be misappropriated. This gave him standing to file suit.

However, when the Seventh Circuit turned to the issue of whether Booker-El had a property interest in the fund, its analysis was not so favorable. The statute did not require prison officials to ever actually spend the money in the funds and allowed for it to be transferred to another prison's recreation fund without any input from prisoners. "Thus, prison officials were under no obligation to ever use the money in the inmates' recreation fund for the benefit of Booker-El or any other inmate in Indiana State Prison." Therefore, "Booker-El has no legitimate expectation to any benefit derived from the inmates' recreation fund, and thus no protected property interest" requiring due process. The judgment of the district court was affirmed. See: Booker-El v. Superintendent, Indiana State Prison, 668 F.3d 896 (7th Cir. 2012).

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