Did California Prison Guards Succeed in Causing a Riot at Avenal?

There was a riot today in Yard 2 of California’s Avenal State Prison, in Kings County. Avenal State Prison is designated a low-medium security institution and has six yards.

Two inmates were stabbed, and shots were fired. Reports say that after the riot, visiting was canceled and all visitors had to leave the prison.

Important legislative hearings begin this week and prisoner advocates say this is the reason the guards are stirring up the inmates, to cause problems and make it appear to lawmakers and voters that funding for the prison system is paramount, and that inmates cannot be released.

As an example of guard-initiated agitation, inmates are called names and otherwise verbally abused, while being kept standing out in the sun for five or six hours a day and told they will never get packages they are waiting for. Apparently, this happened on three separate days this week.

The goal of some of the guards is to make the inmates sunburned, frustrated and angry enough to react.

While there is no way to know the cause of this riot yet, it could be the guards succeeded in their goal. If this is true, we should expect more riots.

See Also, Letter to the editor:

Cause and Timeline of the Riot At Avenal Prison

Alan Gray is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of NewsBlaze Daily News and other online newspapers. He prefers to edit, rather than write, but sometimes an issue rears it’s head and makes him start hammering away on the keyboard.

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Alan is also a techie. His father was a British soldier in the 4th Indian Division in WWII, with Sikhs and Gurkhas. He was a sergeant in signals and after that, he was a printer who typeset magazines and books on his linotype machine. Those skills were passed on to Alan and his brothers, who all worked for Telecom Australia, on more advanced signals (communications). After studying electronics, communications, and computing at college, and building and repairing all kinds of electronics, Alan switched to programming and team building and management.

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