Danny O. v. Bowman Judgment

Danny O. v. Bowman was a federal class action suit on behalf of all youth who are currently or in the future will be incarcerated at the State Youth Services Center in St. Anthony, Idaho. The suit challenged the defendants’ use of solitary confinement and restraints; education, medical, psychiatric and rehabilitative treatment and services and disciplinary due process procedures. This case went to trial on May 20, 1985. At the conclusion of the trial, the judge ruled that defendants’ use of the practices of long-term isolation, restraining children to stationary objects, and standing wall and sitting chair violated the children’s constitutional rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.