The Press Enterprise article includes this snippet:
A spokesman with the Department of Corrections tells a different story. "We never said in the argument that the inmates are not segregated in the institutions . . . (or) outside the reception center," said Youth and Adult Corrections Agency spokesman J.P. Tremblay. Race is one of many factors considered for permanent housing assignments, he said.
However, that's not what the state's attorney told the court during oral arguments when justices repeatedly asked for assurance that the practice doesn't apply beyond the reception centers.
"It does not happen outside of the reception center cell practice. Once they go to their permanent housing assignment, they may choose their own cellmates," Grunder told the court.
It's not blacks, but hispanics as well. And it's not just housing, apparently, but programs too.
Correctional officer Chuck Helton, who works at North Kern State Prison, said not only are cells at Kern segregated by race, but there is an entire building and a half - 200 beds - set aside for Hispanics.
Race-based policies go well beyond housing, said David L. Robinson, a 22-year corrections officer who filed the whistleblower's complaint with the California state auditor's office. Despite court rulings requiring prisons to enroll inmates for classes and jobs by their order on waiting lists, prison administrators require officers to fill openings according to race, Robinson said.
If the next inmate on a program wait list is black, but the program already has more blacks than other races, the inmate will be bypassed for the next white or Hispanic on the list, he said.
Officials are careful to make programs ethnically balanced so that one gang doesn't outnumber rival gangs. If the balance of power is destabilized, racial tensions boil over into violence, said Robinson, an officer at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.
It's also alleged gang members. Read our November, 2002 post about the hunger strike at California's Pelican Bay State Prison.
Nevada reportedly has a similar racial segregation policy in its prisons.
