August 10, 2009
Lawmakers question origin of prison riot, future of inmates, prisons
As state prison officials investigated the cause of the weekend riot at the California Institution for Men in Chino, local leaders and lawmakers started using the riot - which hospitalized 55 inmates - to frame the debate over a federal order to reduce the state's overall prison population.
While some officials said the apparently race-motivated riot is evidence that prisoners are dangerous and should be kept behind bars, others said the riot shows how dangerous the state's overcrowded prisons have become."Without a doubt, given that racial tensions exist, they are only exacerbated by the fact of our overcrowded prisons," said Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairman of the state Senate Public Safety Committee. "This could happen at any moment at any one of our overcrowded facilities. It would not take much to spark it."
The Reception Center West at the Chino facility, where Saturday's riot took place, was housing 1,280 men at the end of July. It was designed to hold only about 615…
LINK - DailyBulletin.com
