Public Safety | Daily Report

Inspector General David Shaw's long-awaited investigation into last year's riot at the California Institution for Men at Chino could not substantiate allegations that prison staff locked inmates in outdoor cages and denied them food, water and medical attention for days after the melee.

But the report, released today, criticizes the Department of Corrections for ignoring warnings and housing dangerous inmates in low security dorms where the riots occurred.

Shaw wrote: "This is a case of the wrong inmates housed in outdated buildings lacking critical security features that would have helped officers to regain control. Corrections needs to change its practice of housing unclassified inmates in dormitory settings."

Despite the criticism, Shaw’s report concludes that Chino prison staff responded effectively to the violence, given limited resources and severe overcrowding. At the time of the riot last August the prison housed 5,867 adult inmates within it’s four facilities, nearly twice its design capacity.

Here is how Shaw describes the riot, and how the Department of Corrections ignored warnings:

At approximately 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, August 8, 2009, a riot involving more than 1,000 inmates occurred at the California Institution for Men’s (CIM) Reception Center West facility (RC West). The rioting inmates caused damage so severe that seven of the eight housing units at the facility were rendered uninhabitable.

During the four hours of fighting, the inmates fashioned weapons from a variety of materials on hand, including pieces of metal bed frames, shards of porcelain bathroom fixtures, glass from broken windows, broom handles, and broken wood. In the aftermath of the riot, nearly 200 inmates sustained injuries - including 54 that needed transportation to local hospitals for treatment.

Despite the inherent dangers of housing reception center inmates in an open dormitory setting - as was the case with RC West - the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) took no substantive action that could have prevented a riot of this magnitude. RC West’s recent history included a riot in December 2006 involving about 800 inmates that required correctional staff twelve hours to contain. At least three more riots at RC West have occurred since then, leading up to the August 2009 riot that severely damaged the facility.

Shaw noted that in a November 2007 report filed after touring the one of RC West’s dormitories, the former director of the Texas Department of Corrections, Wayne Scott, declared, “The housing unit was a serious disturbance waiting to happen. If the prisoners wanted to take over the dorm they could do so in a second and no one would know."