LOS ANGELES, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- Officials in Los Angeles area are considering to segregate black and Latino inmates at local prisons after one inmate killed and dozens injured in two prison riots over the weekend, a report said Monday.

    According to the Los Angeles Times, violence among prisoners has been on the rise in some of the correctional facilities in the past several years, as the jail system is struggling with a staffing shortage and funding crisis.

    The number of inmate-on-inmate assaults at the Castaic prison, the site of a weekend riot that left one inmate dead and some 50 injured, nearly doubled to over 600 last year, officials said.

    Most of the incidents were racially motivated, including the Saturday riot by more than 2,000 black and Latino inmates.

    And violence broke out again late Sunday at the Pitchess Detention Center North, a jail adjacent to the Castaic facility where prisoners rioted on Saturday, leaving 10 inmates injured.

    Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, the county's chief law enforcement officer, on Sunday put much of the county's 21,000-inmate jail system on lockdown, creating an unusual sense of emptiness and calm outside the Twin Towers jail in downtown Los Angeles.

    "We are on full lockdown!!! . There will be no visiting today Feb. 5 and tomorrow Feb. 6," read a sign posted on the door of the jail.

    The riots bring to the fore the question of inadequate staffing in the local jail system, officials said.

    As a result of Saturday's melee, which took law enforcement officers four hours to quell, authorities on Sunday segregated black and Latino inmates at the facility in Castaic, about 60 kilometers north of downtown Los Angeles.

    County Sheriff Baca is considering expanding the segregation of black and Latino inmates to other jail facilities because of the long history of violence between the ethnic groups.

    US Supreme Court ruled last year that prison officials cannot segregate inmates by race except under extraordinary circumstances in which segregation is the only way to maintain inmate safety.

    The sheriff said Saturday's attack was so well-planned and coordinated that it would have been difficult to prevent.

    It was reported that Latino inmates waited until after visiting hours, when many inmates were out of their cells, to launch their attack against black inmates, apparently as a retaliation for an earlier assault by black inmates on a Latino at a downtown jail. Enditem