Integrating the cell block

Integrating the cell block
State lockups can't separate prisoners by race alone.

Long Beach Press Telegram

California is one of the few states that openly acknowledges its prison system segregates inmates by race. That's about to change after the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a successful challenge to the unwritten policy that assigns inmates of the same race to two-inmate cells. Some wardens are nervous, and for good reason.
During the past few months riots have broken out between Latino and black inmates at L.A. County jails. Two inmates were killed and scores have been injured. Inmates at one prison told the Wall Street Journal that prison culture dictates that the races don't mingle. Of the 170,000 inmates in the state's overcrowded prisons, 38 percent are Hispanic, 29 percent are black and 27 percent are white. It's common, even at low-security lockups, for inmates who belong to the Mexican Mafia, Black Guerrilla Family or the Nazi Low Riders to display gang tattoos on the back of their heads.
Under the new policy, inmates, regardless of race, will be assigned to the next available cell. In Texas, which adopted the policy a decade ago, violence actually declined when cells were desegregated. Some scholars and Supreme Court justices are hopeful that prisoners will get along just fine in California, too. But at least one scholar, a former San Jose police chief who now is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, isn't so sure. He fears that the new policy could cause even more racial tension.
What's even more worrisome is the shortage of prison guards. On a recent day at the California Institute for Men at Chino eight officers were guarding 500 inmates in the prison yard. That's not unusual, a state corrections officials told the Journal.
We'd like to think prisons are all about rehabilitation, and that includes learning racial tolerance. The Supreme Court, citing Brown v. Board of Education, found prison segregation as unconstitutional as school segregation. The court concluded that prisoner segregation only reinforces "racial and ethnic divisions." But when it comes to gang-banger felons with racial tattoos on their heads, wardens understand the culture better than anyone, and should be allowed to do whatever is necessary to prevent violence.
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