Riot-damaged area reopened after reconstruction

By Neil Nisperos

Staff Writer

CHINO--The California Institution for Men has reopened the dorm yard it closed last year after inmates violently destroyed the housing unit in a riot last year, with a grand opening ceremony scheduled for Oct. 6.

Reception Center West at CIM has been redubbed "CIM West," with contractors having finished refurbishing about half of the area's eight dormitories. The housing area is expected to be completely refurbished at the end of the month, said Lt. Mark Hargrove, CIM spokesman, at a total cost of $6 million. As of this week, 461 inmates have been moved into CIM West. 

The new dorms feature fire-retardent structures, sprinkler systems, and sturdier fixtures that can't be broken off into impromptu weapons as they were during the riot.

Officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation decided that the newly refurbished dorms, which had been rendered uninhabitable by the riot, would no longer house higher risk reception center inmates. 

At maximum capacity, the prison is expected to house about 960 lower security risk inmates who have been already been processed through a reception center, where incoming prisoners are evaluated for appropriate housing and rehabiliation.

A state report into the 2009 riot said officials in Sacramento had, prior to the riot, failed to address the "dangerous incompatibility" of higher-security-risk reception center inmates being housed in large, wooden dormitories, according to the report. These inmates are generally confined in cells, rather than an open dormitory setting as they were during the riot. More than 

200 inmates were injured during the 2009 riot.

The new population would include inmates with life sentences and inmates who may have dropped out of a gang and need additional security, Hargrove said. Rehabilitative programming and training classes are planned to be made available for the new dorm residents, Hargrove said. Hargrove said a general population of inmates makes for a more stable environment. 

The reopening of CIM's dormitories coincides with the closure of adult reception center housing operation last month at the nearby Heman G. Stark. Stark closed earlier this year, while it began to house displaced CIM reception center inmates after the 2009 CIM riot.

"They did remove all the inmates out of Stark and that's when we also began to house at CIM West," Hargrove said.

Despite no longer housing reception center inmates at the dorms at CIM West, Hargrove said some of the former adult Stark reception center inmates who have been endorsed by prison staff as low risk level 1 or level 2 have been placed at the new West dorms. Other reception center inmates at Stark were moved to other institutions throughout the state prison system.

"We identified inmates for West that fit the criteria for that housing and they were classified as endorsed," Hargrove said. "They could have come out of any of our state reception centers. They weren't specifically from Stark, although some Stark inmates were endorsed. Many of the Stark inmates have been shipped and rehoused at other institutions."