Prison Riots in CA--aka The Inevitable

[Jenne]

The emphasis in last paragraph is mine.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/08/report-warned-of-violence-at-chino-prison-baracks-hit-by-race-riots.html

The Chino prison, which houses 5,900 inmates, nearly twice its designed capacity, remained on lockdown Monday and visits were suspended at nine other state prisons from which officers were drawn to help quell the Chino riot Saturday night. Those officers were also helping relocate about 1,000 inmates displaced by the destruction.

The disturbance, reportedly sparked by racial tensions between Latino and black inmates, appeared likely to deal a setback to efforts by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to desegregate the teeming "reception centers" in the state's 33-prison network that house incoming prisoners and probation violators.

A 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision rejected California's practice of segregating the reception centers by race as a means of combating violence among gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia and the Black Guerrilla Family.

The high court's decision in a case brought by imprisoned murder convict Garrison Johnson led to a negotiated settlement in which corrections officials agreed to stop using race as the sole criteria for assigning bunks in the reception centers.

The reception centers are supposed to house inmates for their first 60 days but are often where a prisoner serves his entire sentence for lack of cell space.

California has 158,000 prisoners in facilities designed for 84,000. A special three-judge federal court last week ordered the state to reduce its prison population by nearly 43,000 over the next two years to bring conditions up to constitutional standards.

The judges' decision was informed, at least in part, by a report from a former Texas corrections chief now consulting on California prison security, Doyle Wayne Scott, who visited Chino two years ago and witnessed what he considered inadequate staffing and potentially explosive intermingling of maximum-security prisoners with those sentenced to less harsh confinement.

-- Carol J. Williams in Los Angeles and Nicole Santa Cruz in Chino

[Requia ☣]

A 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision rejected California's practice of segregating the reception centers by race as a means of combating violence among gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia and the Black Guerrilla Family.

[Jenne]

My dad has described these "boats" that they put prisoners in.  They pull them into a cell/dorm when they are overcrowded.  They aren't cots...they're something between a cot and a canoe, I guess.  Don't know what they were originally used for, but this is what many live on for weeks while the prisoners are shuffled around.

The state of the health care situation in prisons is what caught the Feds' eye originally.  My dad's been told by more than one nurse and doctor that sharing meds and needles is what the cons deserve.  "You're in prison," they say, "you can't expect any better."

So meanwhile, Hep C and AIDS are rampant, and so is suicide.

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

Jesus Shit!

[Requia ☣]

My dad has described these "boats" that they put prisoners in.  They pull them into a cell/dorm when they are overcrowded.  They aren't cots...they're something between a cot and a canoe, I guess.  Don't know what they were originally used for, but this is what many live on for weeks while the prisoners are shuffled around.

The state of the health care situation in prisons is what caught the Feds' eye originally.  My dad's been told by more than one nurse and doctor that sharing meds and needles is what the cons deserve.  "You're in prison," they say, "you can't expect any better."

So meanwhile, Hep C and AIDS are rampant, and so is suicide.

I have said this before and I will say it again, the people running the prisons belong in there more than the prisoners.

For fuck sake thats basically murder.

[Jenne]

NO, that's "Justice in America."

The prison guard lobby has been the largest in Sacramento for forever.

[Cain]

A 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision rejected California's practice of segregating the reception centers by race as a means of combating violence among gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia and the Black Guerrilla Family.

We had that as a policy over here too.  Until some Asian kid in on a minor offence got brutally killed by his Neo-Nazi, many previous violence offences on the record and suspect in murder and rape cases cellmate.

Well, technically it got changed after this was leaked to the press, like a year after it happened.

[Jenne]

I am not sure if I ever shared this, but yes, my dad was attacked by a younger "Brothers of the Aryan Race" member who was shaking him down.  He had my aunt send the asshole shit from the prison catalog, and when he wanted still MORE from our family (putting money on his books), my dad refused.

He went after my dad, who luckily had been working out and was a bit buffed out (for him, anyway), and he was able to defend himself until the guard came and tasered and pepper-sprayed th e both of them.  My dad's urinalysis later showed he had blood in his kidneys.  The dude had kicked him there, hard.

This was in Centinela...the fuckhole I had written about in "When Your Dad Goes to Prison"...it's Dante's 15th circle of Hell, no shit.  My dad started thinking hardcore of suicide at one point in that place, as the guy in his cell who attacked him knew he'd bee in protective custody in Riverside, and so his days were numbered anyway if word got out about it.

Only two kinds of con go into PT:  baby-rapers and snitches.