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Is SCOTUS partially to blame for rioting in a California prison?

By Douglas A. Berman

Just when it might seem things could not get any worse for California's over-crowded and politically dysfunction prison system, a massive riot breaks out.  And, as this New York Times coverage of the riot reveals, it might be appropriate to blame a Supreme Court ruling for helping to create the conditions in which this riot broke out: Rioting inmates smashed and burned a large California prison on Saturday night and Sunday morning, injuring 250 prisoners and hospitalizing 55. The 11-hour riot, at the Reception Center West at the California Institution for Men in Chino, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, broke down along racial lines, with black prison gangs fighting Latino gangs in hand-to-hand combat, the authorities said. No prison employees were injured, no deaths were reported, and no inmates escaped, state officials said...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on August 10, 2009 (boomark / email).