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| Hundreds Hurt in California Prison Riot |
| By nytimes.com |
| Published: 08/10/2009 |
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LOS ANGELES — Rioting inmates smashed and burned a large California prison on Saturday night and Sunday morning, injuring 250 prisoners and hospitalizing 55. The 11-hour riot, at the Reception Center West at the California Institution for Men in Chino, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, broke down along racial lines, with black prison gangs fighting Latino gangs in hand-to-hand combat, the authorities said. No prison employees were injured, no deaths were reported, and no inmates escaped, state officials said. But 10 of the 33 prisons in the state system were put on lockdown to prevent unrest from spreading. Those 10 were in the southern part of the state. Damage to the 1,300-inmate medium-security prison was “significant and extensive,” said a spokesman, Lt. Mark Hargrove. One housing unit was virtually destroyed by fire, Lieutenant Hargrove said. The other housing areas were so badly damaged that they were uninhabitable, he said, so some inmates were being temporarily housed in tents while others were sent to alternate prisons. With more than 150,000 inmates, the California prison system is one of the most crowded in the nation, with many of its facilities holding more than double the number of inmates they were designed for. A federal three-judge panel ruled last week that crowding and poor health care caused one avoidable inmate death each week and that the system was “impossible to manage.” Lieutenant Hargrove said prisoners had smashed windows, torn down gates and used whatever they could to battle one another in the riot. “Inmates broke out glass and used shards as knives,” he said. “They used pieces of metal, wood, whatever they could break off the walls, pipes.” The Chino prison is trying to put into effect a 2005 Supreme Court decision that prohibits automatic and systematic racial segregation of prison inmates after more than three decades of racial separation in the corrections system. Read More. |
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Stop committing crimes and maybe the prisons won't be so packed either. Live sometimes sucks, but that little tidbit isn't an excuse to act like an animal. I grew up poor, a minority, with a mother who was more concerned about her next boyfriend than seeing if I was in bed or had eaten. I didn't know my biological father (just some random guy mom got knocked up by), and my adoptive father was too busy with his newest wife and child to be overly concerned with my welfare. However, I never committed any crimes...though my mother has been locked up a time or two...never dropped out of school, went to college, and managed a steady career. It's easy to point the finger at everyone except yourself. So the prisons are crowded. Big whoop. Why don't you visit some homeless shelters and see how many they bunk into a single room. Better yet, go visit India where an entire family sleeps on top of each other like a litter of puppies because they only have a one-bedroom shack made of cardboard. The biggest threat to prisoners stems from other prisoners, and they have no one but themselves to blame for that shit.
HELLO TO ALL. I'M A EX-CON FROM SO CAL. I PAROLED FROM CHINO IN 08,, AND YES THE PRISON IS SO OVERLY PACKED SOME PRISONERS I'VE BEEN TOLD ARE BUNKED { 3 } HIGH!!! what the HELL you are really asking for TROUBLE>>>>> ... AND FUCK THE WAY STAFF IS TREATING US CONS IT'S NO WONDER WE ACT OUT THE WAY WE DO... SHIT I WAS IN STICKER MORE WHEN {{ gonzo}} WAS KILLED}} CDCR STAFF REALLY NEEDS TO BE CHECKED ON THEIR WAYS OF DEALING WITH PRISONERS... STOP LOCKING UP PEOPLE FOR JUST MINOR B/S.. AND JUST MAYBE THE FUCKING SYSTEM WON'T BE SO OVER PACKED THE END { TROUBLE }