Mr. Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question here is whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment entitles a state prisoner to a hearing when he is transferred to a prison the conditions of which are substantially less favorable to the prisoner, absent a state law or practice conditioning such transfers on proof of serious misconduct or the occurrence of other events. We hold that it does not.
I
During a 2%-month period in 1974, there were nine serious fires at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk — a medium-security institution. Based primarily on reports from informants, the six respondent inmates were removed from the general prison population and placed in the Receiving Building, an administrative detention area used to process new inmates. Proceedings were then had before the Norfolk prison [217]*217Classification Board with respect to whether respondents were to be transferred to another institution — possibly a maximum-security institution, the living conditions at which are substantially less favorable than those at Norfolk. Each respondent was notified of the classification hearing and was informed that the authorities had information indicating that he had engaged in criminal conduct.1
Individual classification hearings were held, each respondent being represented by counsel. Each hearing began by the reading of a prepared statement by the Classification Board. The Board then heard, in camera and out of the respondents’ presence, the testimony of petitioner Meachum, the Norfolk prison superintendent, [218]*218who repeated the information that had been received from informants. Each respondent was then told that the evidence supported the allegations contained in the notice but was not then — or ever — given transcripts or summaries of Meaehum’s testimony before the Board. Each respondent was allowed to present evidence in his own behalf; and each denied involvement in the particular infraction being investigated. Some respondents submitted supportive testimony or written statements from correction officers. A social worker also testified in the presence of each respondent, furnishing the respondent's criminal and custodial record, including prior rule infractions, if any, and other aspects of his performance and “general adjustment” at Norfolk.
The Board recommended that Boyce be placed in administrative segregation for 30 days; that Fano, Dus-sault, and McPhearson be transferred to Walpole, a maximum-security institution where the living conditions are substantially less favorable to the prisoners than those at Norfolk, and that DeBrosky and Hathaway be transferred to Bridgewater which has both maximum- and medium-security facilities. The reasons for its actions were stated in the Board's reports,2 which, however, [219]*219were not then available to respondents. Although respondents were aware of the general import of the informants’ allegations and were told that the recommen[220]*220dations drew upon informant sources, the details of this information were not revealed to respondents and are not included in the Board's reports which are part of the record before us.
[221]*221The Board’s recommendations were reviewed by the Acting Deputy Commissioner for Classification and Treatment and by the Commissioner of Corrections on the basis of the written report prepared by the Board. They accepted the recommendations of the Board with respect to Fano, Dussault, Hathaway, and McPhearson. DeBrosky and Royce were ordered transferred to Walpole.3 The transfers were carried out, with two exceptions.4 No respondent was subjected to disciplinary [222]*222punishment upon arrival at the transfer prison. None of the transfers ordered entailed loss of good time or disciplinary confinement.5
Meanwhile respondents had brought this action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 against petitioners Meachum, the prison superintendent; Hall, the State Commissioner of Corrections; and Dawber, the Acting Deputy for Classification and Treatment, alleging that respondents were being deprived of liberty without due process of law in that petitioners had ordered them transferred to a less favorable institution without an adequate factfinding hearing. They sought an injunction setting aside the ordered transfer, declaratory relief, and damages.
The District Court understood Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539 (1974), to entitle respondents to notice and hearing and held both constitutionally inadequate in this case. Respondents were ordered returned to the general prison population at Norfolk until transferred after proper notice and hearing. Petitioners were also ordered to promulgate regulations to establish procedures governing future transfer hearings involving informant testimony. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed, 520 F. 2d 374, holding that the transfers from Norfolk to maximum-security institutions involved “a significant modification of the overall conditions of confinement” and that this change in circumstances was “serious enough to trigger the application of due process protections.” Id., at 377-378.6
[223]*223We granted the prison officials’ petition for writ of certiorari, 423 U. S. 1013 (1975), in order to determine whether the Constitution required petitioners to conduct a factfinding hearing in connection with the transfers in this case where state law does not condition the authority to transfer on the occurrence of specific acts of misconduct or other events and, if so, whether the hearings granted in this case were adequate. In light of our resolution of the first issue, we do not reach the second.
II
The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits any State from depriving a person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The initial inquiry is whether the transfer of respondents from Norfolk to Walpole and Bridgewater infringed or implicated a “liberty” interest [224]*224of respondents within the meaning of the Due Process Clause. Contrary to the Court of Appeals, we hold that it did not. We reject at the outset the notion that any grievous loss visited upon a person by the State is sufficient to invoke the procedural protections of the Due Process Clause. In Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564 (1972), a university professor was deprived of his job, a loss which was surely a matter of great substance, but because the professor had no property interest in his position, due process procedures were not required in connection with his dismissal. We there held that the determining factor is the nature of the interest involved rather than its weight. Id., at 570-571.
Similarly, we cannot agree that any change in the conditions of confinement having a substantial adverse impact on the prisoner involved is sufficient to invoke the protections of the Due Process Clause.
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Mr. Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question here is whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment entitles a state prisoner to a hearing when he is transferred to a prison the conditions of which are substantially less favorable to the prisoner, absent a state law or practice conditioning such transfers on proof of serious misconduct or the occurrence of other events. We hold that it does not.
I
During a 2%-month period in 1974, there were nine serious fires at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk — a medium-security institution. Based primarily on reports from informants, the six respondent inmates were removed from the general prison population and placed in the Receiving Building, an administrative detention area used to process new inmates. Proceedings were then had before the Norfolk prison [217]*217Classification Board with respect to whether respondents were to be transferred to another institution — possibly a maximum-security institution, the living conditions at which are substantially less favorable than those at Norfolk. Each respondent was notified of the classification hearing and was informed that the authorities had information indicating that he had engaged in criminal conduct.1
Individual classification hearings were held, each respondent being represented by counsel. Each hearing began by the reading of a prepared statement by the Classification Board. The Board then heard, in camera and out of the respondents’ presence, the testimony of petitioner Meachum, the Norfolk prison superintendent, [218]*218who repeated the information that had been received from informants. Each respondent was then told that the evidence supported the allegations contained in the notice but was not then — or ever — given transcripts or summaries of Meaehum’s testimony before the Board. Each respondent was allowed to present evidence in his own behalf; and each denied involvement in the particular infraction being investigated. Some respondents submitted supportive testimony or written statements from correction officers. A social worker also testified in the presence of each respondent, furnishing the respondent's criminal and custodial record, including prior rule infractions, if any, and other aspects of his performance and “general adjustment” at Norfolk.
The Board recommended that Boyce be placed in administrative segregation for 30 days; that Fano, Dus-sault, and McPhearson be transferred to Walpole, a maximum-security institution where the living conditions are substantially less favorable to the prisoners than those at Norfolk, and that DeBrosky and Hathaway be transferred to Bridgewater which has both maximum- and medium-security facilities. The reasons for its actions were stated in the Board's reports,2 which, however, [219]*219were not then available to respondents. Although respondents were aware of the general import of the informants’ allegations and were told that the recommen[220]*220dations drew upon informant sources, the details of this information were not revealed to respondents and are not included in the Board's reports which are part of the record before us.
[221]*221The Board’s recommendations were reviewed by the Acting Deputy Commissioner for Classification and Treatment and by the Commissioner of Corrections on the basis of the written report prepared by the Board. They accepted the recommendations of the Board with respect to Fano, Dussault, Hathaway, and McPhearson. DeBrosky and Royce were ordered transferred to Walpole.3 The transfers were carried out, with two exceptions.4 No respondent was subjected to disciplinary [222]*222punishment upon arrival at the transfer prison. None of the transfers ordered entailed loss of good time or disciplinary confinement.5
Meanwhile respondents had brought this action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 against petitioners Meachum, the prison superintendent; Hall, the State Commissioner of Corrections; and Dawber, the Acting Deputy for Classification and Treatment, alleging that respondents were being deprived of liberty without due process of law in that petitioners had ordered them transferred to a less favorable institution without an adequate factfinding hearing. They sought an injunction setting aside the ordered transfer, declaratory relief, and damages.
The District Court understood Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539 (1974), to entitle respondents to notice and hearing and held both constitutionally inadequate in this case. Respondents were ordered returned to the general prison population at Norfolk until transferred after proper notice and hearing. Petitioners were also ordered to promulgate regulations to establish procedures governing future transfer hearings involving informant testimony. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed, 520 F. 2d 374, holding that the transfers from Norfolk to maximum-security institutions involved “a significant modification of the overall conditions of confinement” and that this change in circumstances was “serious enough to trigger the application of due process protections.” Id., at 377-378.6
[223]*223We granted the prison officials’ petition for writ of certiorari, 423 U. S. 1013 (1975), in order to determine whether the Constitution required petitioners to conduct a factfinding hearing in connection with the transfers in this case where state law does not condition the authority to transfer on the occurrence of specific acts of misconduct or other events and, if so, whether the hearings granted in this case were adequate. In light of our resolution of the first issue, we do not reach the second.
II
The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits any State from depriving a person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The initial inquiry is whether the transfer of respondents from Norfolk to Walpole and Bridgewater infringed or implicated a “liberty” interest [224]*224of respondents within the meaning of the Due Process Clause. Contrary to the Court of Appeals, we hold that it did not. We reject at the outset the notion that any grievous loss visited upon a person by the State is sufficient to invoke the procedural protections of the Due Process Clause. In Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564 (1972), a university professor was deprived of his job, a loss which was surely a matter of great substance, but because the professor had no property interest in his position, due process procedures were not required in connection with his dismissal. We there held that the determining factor is the nature of the interest involved rather than its weight. Id., at 570-571.
Similarly, we cannot agree that any change in the conditions of confinement having a substantial adverse impact on the prisoner involved is sufficient to invoke the protections of the Due Process Clause. The Due Process Clause by its own force forbids the State from convicting any person of crime and depriving him of his liberty without complying fully with the requirements of the Clause. But given a valid conviction, the criminal defendant has been constitutionally deprived of his liberty to the extent that the State may confine him and subject him to the rules of its prison system so long as the conditions of confinement do not otherwise violate the Constitution. The Constitution does not require that the State have more than one prison for convicted felons; nor does it guarantee that the convicted prisoner will be placed in any particular prison if, as is likely, the State has more than one correctional institution. The initial decision to assign the convict to a particular institution is not subject to audit under the Due Process Clause, although the degree of confinement in one prison may be quite different from that in another. The conviction has sufficiently extinguished the defendant’s liberty interest to empower the State to confine him in any of its prisons.
[225]*225Neither, in our view, does the Due Process Clause in and of itself protect a duly convicted prisoner against transfer from one institution to another within the state prison system. Confinement in any of the State's institutions is within the normal limits or range of custody which the conviction has authorized the State to impose. That life in one prison is much more disagreeable than in another does not in itself signify that a Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest is implicated when a prisoner is transferred to the institution with the more severe rules.
Our cases hold that the convicted felon does not forfeit all constitutional protections by reason of his conviction and confinement in prison. He retains a variety of important rights that the courts must be alert to protect. See Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S., at 556, and cases there cited. But none of these cases reaches this one; and to hold as we are urged to do that any substantial deprivation imposed by prison authorities triggers the procedural protections of the Due Process Clause would subject to judicial review a wide spectrum of discretionary actions that traditionally have been the business of prison administrators rather than of the federal courts.
Transfers between institutions, for example, are made for a variety of reasons and often involve no more than informed predictions as to what would best serve institutional security or the safety and welfare of the inmate. Yet under the approach urged here, any transfer, for whatever reason, would require a hearing as long as it could be said that the transfer would place the prisoner in substantially more burdensome conditions that he had been experiencing. We are unwilling to go so far.
Wolff v. McDonnell, on which the Court of Appeals heavily relied, is not to the contrary. Under that case, the Due Process Clause entitles a state prisoner to cer[226]*226tain procedural protections when he is deprived of good-time credits because of serious misconduct. But the liberty interest there identified did not originate in the Constitution, which “itself does not guarantee good-time credit for satisfactory behavior while in prison.” Id,, at 557. The State itself, not the Constitution, had “not only provided a statutory right to good time but also specifies that it is to be forfeited only for serious misbehavior.” Ibid. We concluded:
“[A] person’s liberty is equally protected, even when the liberty itself is a statutory creation of the State. The touchstone of due process is protection of the individual against arbitrary action of government, Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U. S. 114, 123 (1889). Since prisoners in Nebraska can only lose good-time credits if they are guilty of serious misconduct, the determination of whether such behavior has occurred becomes critical, and the minimum requirements of procedural due process appropriate for the circumstances must be observed.” Id., at 558.
The liberty interest protected in Wolff had its roots in state law, and the minimum procedures appropriate under the circumstances were held required by the Due Process Clause “to insure that the state-created right is not arbitrarily abrogated.” Id., at 557. This is consistent with our approach in other due process cases such as Cross v. Lopez, 419 U. S. 565 (1975); Board of Regents v. Roth, supra; Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U. S. 593 (1972); Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U. S. 254 (1970).
Here, Massachusetts law conferred no right on the prisoner to remain in the prison to which he was initially assigned, defeasible only upon proof of specific acts of misconduct. Insofar as we are advised, transfers between Massachusetts prisons are not conditioned upon [227]*227the occurrence of specified events.7 On the contrary, transfer in a wide variety of circumstances is vested in prison officials. The predicate for invoking the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment as construed and applied in Wolff v. McDonnell is totally nonexistent in this case.
[228]*228Even if Massachusetts has not represented that transfers will occur only on the occurrence of certain events, it is argued that charges of serious misbehavior, as in this case, often initiate and heavily influence the transfer decision and that because allegations of misconduct may be erroneous, hearings should be held before transfer to a more confining institution is to be suffered by the prisoner. That an inmate’s conduct, in general or in specific instances, may often be a major factor in the decision of prison officials to transfer him is to be expected unless it be assumed that transfers are mindless events. A prisoner’s past and anticipated future behavior will very likely be taken into account in selecting a prison in which he will be initially incarcerated or to which he will be transferred to best serve the State’s penological goals.
A prisoner’s behavior may precipitate a transfer; and absent such behavior, perhaps transfer would not take place at all. But, as we have said, Massachusetts prison officials have the discretion to transfer prisoners for any number of reasons. Their discretion is not limited to instances of serious misconduct. As we understand it no legal interest or right of these respondents under Massachusetts law would have been violated by their transfer whether or not their misconduct had been proved in accordance with procedures that might be required by the Due Process Clause in other circumstances. Whatever expectation the prisoner may have in remaining at a particular prison so long as he behaves himself, it is too ephemeral and insubstantial to trigger procedural due process protections as long as prison officials have discretion to transfer him for whatever reason or for no reason at all.
Holding that arrangements like this are within reach of the procedural protections of the Due Process Clause would place the Clause astride the day-to-day functioning of state prisons and involve the judiciary in issues [229]*229and discretionary decisions that are not the business of federal judges. We decline to so interpret and apply the Due Process Clause. The federal courts do not sit to supervise state prisons, the administration of which is of acute interest to the States. Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475, 491-492 (1973); Cruz v. Beto, 405 U. S. 319, 321 (1972); Johnson v. Avery, 393 U. S. 483, 486 (1969). The individual States, of course, are free to follow another course, whether by statute, by rule or regulation, or by interpretation of their own constitutions. They may thus decide that prudent prison administration requires pretransfer hearings. Our holding is that the Due Process Clause does not impose a nationwide rule mandating transfer hearings.8
The judgment of the Court of Appeals accordingly is
Reversed.