Racial segregation of prisoners - Practical survival strategy or instutional racism?

[astro]

Per this story, is racial segregation of prisoners simply a practical reality so they won’t kill each other or is it institutional racism?

Calif. prison guards: Racial division rampant
Report: Officials lied about use of race to set prison policies

Correctional officers and inmates told The Press-Enterprise of Riverside that segregation is rampant throughout the system, despite state attorneys’ contention that it is limited to inmates’ first 60 days behind bars.

“There is no way I’d put a white and a black together,” said Charles Hughes, a lieutenant at California State Prison in Lancaster. “I’d be putting my job on the line if I did that.”

The newspaper reported that one correctional officer filed a whistleblower complaint with the state auditor last month, saying the state presented false arguments to the high court in November in a lawsuit filed by inmate Garrison Johnson.

Johnson, who is black, claims his 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law was violated by the prison system’s racial segregation policies.

‘Reception center’ division
California Senior Assistant Attorney General Frances Grunder told the high court that racial segregation is limited to “reception center” housing of inmates during their first 60 days at a prison. They are initially segregated to determine their propensity for racial violence, lawyers told the court.

Attorney General Bill Lockyer said that beyond the reception centers, prison inmates are fully integrated.

“All other aspects of an inmate’s life in prison both while at the reception center and afterward are managed without reference to his race or that of his fellow inmates,” Lockyer said in a court brief. “There is no distinction based on race for jobs, meals, yard and recreational time, or vocational and educational assignments.”

‘We segregate permanently’
Six correctional officers told The Press-Enterprise, however, that racial segregation in cell assignments and other aspects of prison life is essentially demanded by the inmates, who are ruled by prison gang leaders and divided along racial lines.

“It’s all about segregation. It’s all we do,” Hughes said. “We segregate permanently and use race for job placement and everything, and for them to say otherwise is an absolute lie. And for them to lie to the Supreme Court is appalling.”

The state attorney general’s office revisited the issue after Johnson’s attorney, Bert Deixler, said Lockyer and Grunder may have misled the court, attorney general spokesman Nathan Barankin said. The office checked into the matter and was assured by the corrections department that segregation is temporary, he said.

[Wesley_Clark]

it is a solution to violence, which tends to be racial in prison. Its no different than segregating street gang X from street gang Y to cut down on violence.

[Lissa]

My husband works in a prison which houses close to three thousand inmates. It is not segregated in any fashion.

We’ve debated before, he and I, whether it would be a good idea to segregate racist groups like the Aryan Nation to cut down on potential problems, or a la American History X hope that contact may dispell some racist notions. A small, angry part of me says that to segregate them would be to give them the seperation they want, and I resent the idea of caving into their disgusting ideals.

The fact is, in our state at least, racial violence is not enough of a problem to make this a legitimate option. With three thousand medium security inmates, all races and ages mixed together, there is still very little violence in the prison in which my husband works. Every once in a while, a fistfight might break out, but usually it’s broken up by other inmates before it has a chance to get serious. There hasn’t been a murder in more than a decade (I think it’s around twenty years, actually.)