CHINO--Prison officials are assessing damage in the wake of the weekend riot at the California Institute for Men.

Fire severely damaged one housing unit. Beds and lockers were destroyed.

Meantime, prison officials are trying to identify the instigators and transfer them to other units. About a dozen of the most seriously injured remain hospitalized.

The CIM remains under lock-down as a search for make-shift weapons continues.

Prison officials estimated that about 1300 of the prison’s nearly 6,000 inmates were involved. Racial tensions between black and Latino inmates in the severely overcrowded prison sparked the riot.

The California Institute for Men opened in 1941 and was originally known as ‘the prison without walls’. It’s reception center is now a maximum-security lock-up.

Story Date: August 12, 2009