California To De-Segregate Its Prisons...

California To De-Segregate Its Prisons...

It's exercise time at the California Institution for Men, and dozens of inmates walk around the track in pairs or small groups -- blacks with blacks, whites with whites, Hispanics with Hispanics.

Prison culture dictates that inmates stick with their own kind, associating almost exclusively with other inmates from their race or ethnic group, defending them to the death if necessary. And that is why prison officials, inmates and scholars are uneasy as California's prison system prepares to introduce a formal policy desegregating its double cells, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that prisoners may not be routinely segregated in cells by race. The ruling has ramifications for state correctional systems nationwide.

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