California’s sprawling prison system, the nation’s largest, retains deep racial divisions five years after a court-mediated settlement set in motion a plan to limit race-based cell assigning practices.

In 2005, the United States Supreme Court decreed that racial classification alone may not dictate cell assignments for new or newly transferred inmates in California’s prisons, but today inmates are still housed mostly along racial lines.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation implemented an integrated housing program at Folsom State Prison in Sacramento County five months ago, but a snapshot of the historic outdoor yard yields no clue of any change in the racial climate...

Lance Corcoran, a California Correctional Peace Officers Association spokesman, said inmates didn't like the ban on tobacco a few years ago either, but they adjusted. It takes a few troublemakers to disrupt the change to integrated housing, he said.

Corcoran said the inmates need to learn to live among different races. When they step out of prison, this is the reality of life, he said.

"We have guys who get out of administrative segregation, we give them $200 and put them on a bus where there's all kinds of people," he said. "You have to be able to live with each other and behave…"

In California, the prison system is going to start integrating its prison cells — for years, inmate housing has been segregated along racial lines. An inmate sued, though, getting all the way to the Supreme Court. As part of a settlement, Cali agreed to start throwing cons into the melting pot, the Washington Post reports.

(Slowly, though — it's only in a few prisons at first.)

I'm curious how this is going to go down. Everything I've ever read says that most prisoners self-segregate because, well, they just plain don't like people from other races. And they tend to get all stabby when pushed together…

Male prisoners in the nation's largest corrections system, long kept segregated by race in an effort to temper violence, will soon be sharing cells with inmates of other ethnicities.

A program aimed at integrating California's prisons for men will begin in coming weeks at two facilities and will be extended to the state's 28 other penitentiaries over the next year or so, officials said.

Segregating prison housing has long been the system's unwritten policy. But after an inmate's civil rights lawsuit went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, a mediated settlement led the state to reverse course despite many inmates' opposition…

Lawmakers at the Capitol discussed Monday the state's unwritten policy of segregating prison cells based on race, a practice set to end this month.

With prisons continuing to be overcrowded, California finally agreed to inmates, becoming the last state in the U.S. to do so after facing a lawsuit.

"Most other states have not had a practice of segregating from the beginning," state Sen. Gloria Romero said. "They have not had to undo essentially 30 years without a civil rights movement in a prison system…"

California has just launched a new policy to integrate inmates in housing units, wherever possible. Previously prisons used race as the primary factor in determining where inmates sleep, but not anymore, NBC11's Mike Luery reported.

The Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation has agreed to begin integrating inmates' cells, following the settlement of a lawsuit. On Monday hearings were scheduled to begin in the Senate on integrating California prisons.

California's prison chief, correctional officers and others were expected to comment on the contentious issue…

In what is being described as a major advancement for civil rights, California is ending a long-standing policy of segregation and allowing prisoners of different races to live together.

Despite its liberal reputation, California was among the few states that still used race as the determining factor for some male prisoners' cell assignments. Prison officials initially defended the measure as necessary to control racial and gang violence, but some inmates and civil rights activists disagreed.

The unwritten policy wound up before the United States' highest court in 2005. Starting this month, prison officials will begin fully integrating its cells, beginning with low-level offenders at two facilities…

When an inmate who is not black enters Will Williams' cell for the first time at San Quentin State Prison in Northern California, one of the last forms of legalized segregation will come to an end.

In a case that went as high as the U.S. Supreme Court, California's prisons must begin racially integrating their cells this month. Integration goes against an unwritten code of conduct among San Quentin inmates, which says they must never communicate with other races.

Inmates and guards admit they are nervous about the changes because so much of the violence inside the walls of the prison, which sits on the rocky shore of the San Francisco Bay, is caused by racial tensions…