Tension Boils Over at Crowded California Prison

by Matt Kelley

categories: Overcrowding, race in prison

Published August 10, 2009 @ 06:57AM PT

A riot on Saturday night at the California Institution for Men in Chino left 250 prisoners injured and several housing areas uninhabitable. At left, one of the prison's dormitories was burned.

By many accounts, the riot was ignited by fights between African-American and Latino prisoners, and the violence was starkly divided along racial lines. But overcrowding clearly had a role in this disaster. Chino was built in 1941 for 3,033 prisoners and currently holds 5,911.

As I've written here before, racial divisions and violence are serious problems inside prisons across the country. The prevalence of gangs - usually divided along racial lines - exacerbates the problem. Friends who have served time across the country have told me about the hyper-awareness prisoners develop to race - and the difficulty to shake prejudices upon release.

Skipp Townsend, who served time in California prisons and jails and now works as the executive director of 2nd Call, a community organization addressing violence reduction in L.A., spoke with NPR's Tony Cox about race behind bars last year.

"In the prison system, in the jail system, it's a tension that is immediate. As soon as being incarcerated... the tension is there," Townsend said. "The guy who might be my friend on the street, I can no longer be friends with him inside of L.A. County Jail."

But we can't blame this riot on unavoidable racial tensions and move on. There are deeper causes, and until they are addressed, we'll see more revolts like this across the country. Overcrowding and the lack of education and other services contribute to uprisings like this one. Until these issues are addressed, we'll see more violence inside prison, continued recidivism, and officials will have no choice but to crack down and punish prisoners after the fact.

There's a great conversation going on here about the order from judges last week for California to reduce the prison population by 40,000. The judges wrote that "in these overcrowded conditions, inmate-on-inmate violence is almost impossible to prevent," and this riot shows they were right. As we reduce crowding in prisons across the country, more resources can be made available for various types of treatment and education, preventing violence before it starts.

Men's prisons in California were mostly segregated by race until last year, through an unspoken rule aimed at reducing violence. A court order finally led to the overdue desegregation, and the units in Chino that erupted on Saturday were desegregated. It's 2009, and it would be sad if we couldn't find a way to peacefully desegregate our prisons. The path to the solution lies in safe housing, and only imprisoning people who need to be there. A reduction in California's prison population will alleviate these tensions and allow the state to focus on the services that address the roots of violence, rather than dealing with riots after the fact.