THE CHINO PRISON RIOT

Around 200 inmates were injured, 55 seriously, over the weekend in an
11-hour prison riot in California that appears to have had strong
racial overtones. Officials are still investigating, but a major
cause is already clear: 5,900 men were being held in a facility
designed for 3,000. The violence should serve as a warning to
officials across the country not to try to balance state budgets by
holding inmates in inhumane conditions.

California has already ignored too many warnings. In 2007, a state
oversight agency declared that "California's correctional system is
in a tailspin." That same year, a prison expert warned that the
California Institution for Men in Chino, the site of the recent riot,
was "a serious disturbance waiting to happen."

Last week, just days before the riot, a three-judge federal panel
ordered the state to reduce its prison population of more than
150,000 by about 40,000 within the next two years. That was the only
way, the panel ruled, to bring the prison health care system up to
constitutional standards.

The 184-page order painted a grim and alarming picture -- with some
state prison facilities at nearly 300 percent of intended capacity
and some prisoners forced to sleep in triple-bunk beds in gymnasiums.
"In these overcrowded conditions," the court said, "inmate-on-inmate
violence is almost impossible to prevent."

California's problem -- like much of the nation's -- is a mismatch
between its harsh sentencing policies and its willingness to pay to
keep so many people locked up for so long. A few years ago, it went
to the Supreme Court to defend its right, under the state's
three-strikes law, to sentence a shoplifter to 25 years to life.

Given the serious budget problems that California is facing, there is
not a lot of extra money available. The state could, however, divert
offenders into drug-treatment programs and other nonprison
environments, which are less expensive than incarceration and better
at rehabilitation. It could also do more to give prisoners job skills
and help them re-enter society -- so they don't end up back behind bars.

The riot in Chino and the federal court ruling contain the same
message for state officials everywhere: they must come up with smart
ways of reducing prison populations and they must do it quickly.