Prison fatality exposes inhumane conditions

A 45-year-old Black inmate was killed and over 100 others injured during a fight on Feb. 4 at the North County Correctional Facility that involved 2,000 inmates, according to the sheriff’s department. The department said this latest incident may have been in retaliation for the stabbing of a Latino inmate by a Black inmate earlier in the week at the Men’s Central Jail, a major downtown Los Angeles facility.

Violence at the North County facility is commonplace. More than 150 “racially moti vated” fights have occurred since 1990, police said. In 2000, 81 inmates were injured at the prison. Sheriff Lee Baca ordered a system-wide lockdown affecting over 20,000 prisoners in Los Angeles County.

None of the law enforcement officials has cited the much criticized overcrowded prisons or lack of recreation or learning facilities for inmates as contributing factors for the ongoing violence.

Yet California, the largest state prison system in the U.S., is known to be plagued with problems that include overcrowding and the denial of inmates’ basic health and safety.

According to Penal Reform Interna tional, which provides training kits for prison management: “Crowding prisoners into confined spaces meant for far fewer people is inhumane, violates international standards, and contributes to a wide variety of social ills that plague communities as a whole.”

In a March 13, 2005 Los Angeles Times article, correctional officials in Sacra mento said they could find no statistical correlation between crowding and violence. Yet the same story points out, “In February, the state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst’s office reported that the rate of inmate “incidents,” including assaults, had risen 18 percent from 1997 to 2003—a period of significant population growth.”

Overcrowding and stress is further encouraged when recreation--which can alleviate stress--is eliminated. In many California prisons, recreational facilities have been turned into housing units to deal with the increased population. The Times article described one such prison: “In a gymnasium now called “G Dorm,” the basketball hoops are folded back to make room for row upon row of triple-deck bunk beds. The noise—from televisions, radios, yelling and laughter—is constant, and the smell is about what you’d expect from 225 men living cheek by jowl who must use overworked toilets and wait in line for the few showers.”

Believing that “race” is the determining cause for the violence, Sheriff Baca ordered Latino and Black inmates to be segregated. However, the U.S. Supreme Court in February, 2005, ruled that the California Department of Corrections must stop segregating inmates by race unless it was the only way to maintain security since that would violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on racial segregation by the government.

Baca, as if speaking about lab rats, said that racial violence in the jails “is impossible to prevent.” “They will divide on racial lines,” he said. “There is a code of race. [You] are required to defend your race.”

Unity amongst inmates is undoubtedly a bigger threat to officials. Many inmates have spoken of correctional staff inciting violence and divisions between inmates of different ethnicities. Some California prisons have even been caught promoting “gladiator” bouts between Black and Latino inmates.

The Feb. 4 incident shines a big spotlight on horrendous prison conditions that must lead to increased community involvement in fighting the prison industrial complex and help end the isolation and repression facing both male and female prisoners.