 The Alabama Department of Corrections's regulation specifically authorized guards to use the restraining bar when inmates were disruptive to the work squad.The fact that the guards did not comply with the recordkeeping requirement of the regulation was beside the point, Justice Thomas believed, because Hope never alleged that the guards' failure to do so caused the Eighth Amendment violation.Thomas also read binding Fifth and Eleventh Circuit precedent merely to prohibit "malicious and sadistic" conduct by guards.