The 1000-inmate, 90-minute riot Saturday morning, Dec. 30, 2006, at California Institution for Men in Chino, Calif., during which 51 men were injured, some seriously, is sadly telling of the urgency for prison reform.
All year long, Mason Stockstill, staff reporter with the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, has been reporting that CIM has become one of California”s deadliest prisons. Stories on the seriousness of the prison overcrowding crisis have appeared in papers across the state almost daily.
Talk of building more prisons and transferring a few prisoners to private out-of-state prisons will not solve this escalating problem. Immediate action on several fronts is needed to: reduce prison populations drastically (many prisoners belong in mental health and drug treatment, not prison); revise sentencing laws to eliminate excessive sentences that do not match the crime; and reduce recidivism by training parole agents to help parolees succeed rather than cycle them back to prison on minor parole violations.
It should be a crime to build an industry with the goal of warehousing more and more criminals. Why not build an industry of crime prevention and actual rehabilitation?
Barbara Christie
Arroyo Grande
