When a group of prisoners attacked two guards at California's High Desert State Prison in 2006, the warden declared a full lockdown that confined African Americans in one wing of the prison to their cells, and kept them there for 14 months.
No outdoor exercise. No rehabilitation programs or prison jobs.
This week, California agreed to give up its unique use of race-based punishment as a tool to control violence in its crowded prisons. Corrections chief Jeffrey Beard and lawyers for inmates have settled a six-year-long civil rights lawsuit, filed in 2008, over the High Desert lockdown.
The case was eventually widened to cover all prisoners and lockdown practices that had become common statewide. The agreement now goes to a federal judge for expected approval.
[For more of this story, written by Paige St. John, go to http://www.latimes.com/local/c...-20141023-story.html]
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