Chino prison repairs damage from August riot

Repairs underway at the riot-damaged California Institute for Men at Chino include replacing ceramic bathroom fixtures with stainless steel and cotton bedding with flame-retardant fabrics to prevent the kind of widespread destruction that occurred there in August, state prison authorities said Tuesday.

In a report on lessons learned from the Aug. 8 riot that injured 249 prisoners and eight staffers, investigators with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation praised staff response to the violent disturbance for preventing escapes and fatalities. But they also cited racial tensions as the cause of the chaotic melee and recommended measures to reduce overcrowding in the tense Reception Center-West complex where 1,300 beds were destroyed.

The reception center’s eight massive dormitories will be converted to a 375-bed unit for housing minimum-security prisoners, the report said. The inmate intake functions of the reception center, where new arrivals typically spend about two months, will be transferred to the nearby H.G. Stark complex, a former juvenile facility where adult prisoners displaced by the riot have been housed for the last seven months.

The damaged dorms at the California Institute for Men are being rebuilt under the Inmate Ward Labor Program that pairs state construction supervisors with local contractors and inmates. Cost of the repairs is estimated at $5.2 million.

California’s 33 adult prisons suffer such severe overcrowding that a panel of federal judges last year ordered the population reduced by about 40,000 by summer 2011.

carol.williams@latimes.com