Race-based classification of prisoners should be upheld
Although Government classifications based on race are always suspect and rarely sustained against constitutional challenge, this one should be.
Within our Nation's prisons, the victims of violence, including sexual violence, are not randomly distributed among the races. Liberals are usually the ones to say it and they're right: we don't send people to prison for punishment; we send them to prison as punishment. To deny prison officials the ability to segregate inmates, even temporarily and before their gang affiliations are known, is to sentence young, small-framed, non-violent (and usually white) inmates to a punishment that no legislature has authorized and that no judge has imposed.
The tragedy of prison rape is discussed in polite society only rarely, and even then usually as the brunt of jokes. But it's no joking matter.
(The case referred to in the first link, Johnson v. California, was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on November 2, and is on appeal from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. That court's opinion, which upholds a prisoner classification system in which race is factor, is here.)