Whether you believe Reuters:

Guards battled for four hours to subdue some 800 rioting inmates…

 

or The LA Times:

As many as 1,000 inmates rioted for 90 minutes Saturday…

one thing is for certain:

there was one mother of a riot in the California Institution for Men in Chino yesterday. 

More over the flip…

It appears the fighting began between two inmates in the exercise yard, then spread to more large scale hand to hand fighting in one barracks, which then expanded to four other barracks. The guards subdued the prisoners using pepper spray and tear gas as well as hard foam bullets and batons. Despite the scale of the riot, we are reassured:

“The facility was never at risk of being taken over,” said Lt. Mark Hargrove, the prison spokesman.

So, just how major was this riot?

Reuters calls it…

one of the state’s largest such uprisings in years

The LA Times gives us some perspective:

The riot appeared to be the largest at the prison in recent years. In September 2005, a fight erupted between 270 black and Latino inmates, leaving one critically injured.

As for injuries yesterday:

Fifty-one inmates were treated for moderate to serious injuries, including one with stab wounds and head trauma, a prison spokesman said…[Of those,] twenty-seven inmates were taken to hospitals.

The articles are less clear on what caused the riot. Reuters offers this nugget:

Gang conflicts are often the cause of fights within California’s prisons, and corrections facilities are often starkly divided along racial lines by the inmates themselves. Officials are investigating the cause of the latest riot, Hidalgo said.

The LA Times concurs:

Hargrove said investigators had not determined the cause of Saturday’s melee.

I could a hazard a guess:

Chino is designed to hold 3,160 prisoners, less than half the [6,400 inmates currently] housed there.

Today, the prison is still in lockdown, they will not be accepting any new prisoners until an investigation into the riot has been completed. Oh, and this will surely be helpful:

“We’re looking at transferring approximately 36 inmates because of unacceptable housing situations,” [a prison spokesman] said.

The prison crisis just got worse. The governor has offered some solutions, most of which are longterm, but so far, it’s been just words. It’s clear we need some immediate action, which will require everyone in Sacramento to unite on this; that means you too Prison Guard Union.