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California to stop segregating prisoners along racial lines
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.
- By Ashley Surdin, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
- Published: 00:04 August 2, 2008
Lancaster: 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 programme 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 US Supreme Court, a mediated settlement led the state to reverse course despite many inmates' opposition.
Officials now argue that segregation perpetuated racial divisions and that integration would lessen them.
Building tolerance
"We believe that once integrated housing is in place, it will ease those tensions and build that tolerance," said Ken Lewis, spokesman for the California State Prison, Los Angeles County, in Lancaster.
"The system has to have something in place to give them a push. One day these guys will get out, and they'll have to learn to live among different people. If he can be tolerant in prison, he can be tolerant on the street."
Mule Creek State Prison in Ione and the Sierra Conservation Centre in Jamestown, which are both in Northern California, will be the first to implement the programme, with Lancaster and others to follow.
Many inmates fiercely oppose integrating cells, calling it a dangerous idea that is guaranteed to lead to widespread riots and death.
"It's like screwing around with the ecosystem," said Rodney Raxon, 35, a white inmate at Lancaster's high-security prison.
"We don't want any part of it."
Raxon spoke inside a cramped, sweaty gymnasium-turned-dormitory for 150 low- to mid-level offenders. The racial divide was palpable.
Amid the rows of beds, blacks shared triple-decked bunks with blacks, Hispanics with Hispanics, whites with whites. They took turns using a handful of tables, as well as the television remote control. On this day, it belonged to the Hispanics.
Several inmates said racial separation helps preserve the peace. In dining halls and prison yards where convicts can commingle if they choose, they hang out with their own.
As the gym's black representative, Lavel Atkins, 34, of Compton, California, said he defuses nearly 20 grievances a day over issues such as whether one inmate's splashing water on another was a sign of disrespect. There would be more disputes, he said, if various races were forced to room together.
"Personally, I'm not racist, but if a white guy moved into a cell with me, he would have problems with his white friends," Atkins said.
"A majority of the prison population don't think for themselves. The gang leaders do."
Heightened pressure
The state's push to integrate prison housing stems from a lawsuit filed in 1995 by Garrison Johnson against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Johnson, a black inmate serving time for murder, robbery and assault, said that segregation heightened the pressure he was under to join gangs and associate only with blacks. Cell integration, he said, would alleviate that pressure.
In a 2005 ruling, the US Supreme Court held that the highest level of constitutional review - "strict scrutiny" - should apply anytime government imposes racial classifications. It returned the case to a lower court, where both parties reached the settlement that is now being implemented.
Under the program, prisoners were interviewed. Those who refuse to participate are subject to disciplinary action. Of the 144,437 inmates interviewed, 64.4 per cent were found eligible to room with members of another race, according to department documents. About 12 per cent refused to participate.
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