Folsom Keeps 600 Latino Inmates Restricted to Cells

More than 600 Latino prisoners remained restricted to their cells Friday as Folsom Prison officers sorted through individual records, before releasing the men back into the inmate population on a one-by-one basis, a spokesman said.

Lt. T. J. Smith said about 35 Latino inmates--”some of the old-timers we know are not troublemakers”--already were back at work sites and taking part in regular activities.

“It’s a time-consuming process,” he added. “We’ve got to sort out the disruptive element.”

Smith said that after an escalating series of stabbing incidents this year, in which three prisoners died, the entire 2,700-man prison population was locked down on Sept. 21. The lockdown ended two days later for all but about 650 Latino inmates, Smith said, because it had been concluded that Latinos were the aggressors in most incidents.

Ninety-six stabbing victims out of 165 have been black, and 40 have been Latino, Smith said.

Neither Smith nor a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections in Sacramento reported receiving any formal protest, but the director for the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit, foundation-financed legal firm at San Quentin, was critical of what he viewed as discrimination against Latino prisoners.

Donald Specter called the lockdown “symptomatic” of the overcrowding in California prisons, contending that “the prisons are basically out of control, and the prison officials have lost control . . . (and) are having to take measures which are not only discriminatory on their face but perpetuate the violence.”

Specter challenged what he saw as an official premise that most Latino prisoners belong to gangs like Nuestra Familia and the Mexican Mafia. He said many of those in lockdown were being punished for violent incidents they did not instigate and “this only leads to more anger and frustration.”