PRISON NATION U$A

Bureau of Prisons to close California women's prison where inmates have been subjected to sex abuse

MICHAEL R. SISAK, MICHAEL BALSAMO and CHRISTOPHER WEBER
Updated Mon, April 15, 2024 

FILE - The Federal Correctional Institution stands in Dublin, Calif., Dec. 5, 2022. The federal Bureau of Prisons says it is planning to close a women’s prison in California known as the “rape club” despite attempts to reform the troubled facility after an Associated Press investigation exposed rampant staff-on-inmate sexual abuse. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)


LOS ANGELES (AP) — The beleaguered federal Bureau of Prisons said Monday it will close a women's prison in California known as the “rape club” despite attempts to reform the troubled facility after an Associated Press investigation exposed rampant staff-on-inmate sexual abuse.

Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters said in a statement to the AP that the agency had “taken unprecedented steps and provided a tremendous amount of resources to address culture, recruitment and retention, aging infrastructure and — most critical — employee misconduct.”

“Despite these steps and resources, we have determined that FCI Dublin is not meeting expected standards and that the best course of action is to close the facility,” Peters said. “This decision is being made after ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of those unprecedented steps and additional resources.”


The announcement of Dublin's closure represents an extraordinary acknowledgement by the Bureau of Prisons that its much-promised efforts to improve the culture and environment there have not worked. Many attempts to stem the problems at Dublin have come after the AP investigation revealed a pattern of abuse and mismanagement that crossed years, even decades.

Just 10 days before the closure announcement, a federal judge took the unprecedented step of appointing a special master to oversee the prison.

ADVOCATES WANT PRISONERS FREED

FCI Dublin, about 21 miles (34 kilometers) east of Oakland, is one of six women-only federal prisons and the only one west of the Rocky Mountains. It currently houses 605 inmates — 504 inmates in its main prison and another 101 at an adjacent minimum-security camp. That figure is down from a total of 760 prisoners in February 2022.

The women currently housed at the prison will be transferred to other facilities, Peters said, and no employees will lose their jobs.

Advocates have called for inmates to be freed from FCI Dublin, which they say is not only plagued by sexual abuse but also has hazardous mold, asbestos and inadequate health care.

Last August, eight FCI Dublin inmates sued the Bureau of Prisons, or BOP, alleging the agency had failed to root out sexual abuse. Amaris Montes, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, had said inmates continued to face retaliation for reporting abuse, including being put in solitary confinement and having belongings confiscated.

Montes said she and her clients had suspected closure might be a possibility, but the suddenness of the decision so quickly after the special master appointment came as a shock. “It's a signal that the prison knows that they are not meeting constitutional standards to keep people safe from sexual assault and sexual harassment,” Montes said Monday.

Montes said timing on the closure and transfer of inmates was still being worked out, but she hoped it would be done in a measured way.

“I think that the BOP is quick to try to transfer accountability and move accountability elsewhere as the way to remedy the issue. And that would mean, you know, moving people quickly without addressing people’s needs right now.” Many of the incarcerated women have physical and mental health issues that need to be dealt with, she said, while other inmates might be considered for release.

A former Dublin inmate who is a whistleblower in the civil lawsuit said Monday that the abruptly announced closure “just feels wrong” because it undermines the long process of getting justice for the women who endured abuse and appalling conditions.

“We’ve worked so hard to get a special master in there to clean house, so to speak,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of her status as a whistleblower in an ongoing lawsuit. The AP doesn’t name victims of sexual abuse without their consent. “And pretty much the minute after that happened, they say they're just going to close it down.”

She said it would be inhumane to transfer hundreds of inmates to prisons across the country, away from their families. “What the women have gone through at this facility, the abuse they suffered, that was punishment,” she said. “They’re all low security. Send them home, send them to supervised relief. Let them be productive members of society."

On Monday, two buses moved around the parking lot of FCI Dublin. Prison staff moved baggage and carts of supplies between the buildings and buses. An AP reporter did not see any inmates leaving the facility.

A HISTORY OF ABUSE ALLEGATIONS — AND CONVICTIONS

Last month, the FBI again searched the prison and the Bureau of Prisons again shook up its leadership after a warden sent to help rehabilitate the facility was accused of retaliating against a whistleblower inmate. Days later, a federal judge overseeing lawsuits against the prison, said she would appoint a special master to oversee the facility’s operations.

An AP investigation in 2021 found a culture of abuse and cover-ups that had persisted for years at the prison. That reporting led to increased scrutiny from Congress and pledges from the Bureau of Prisons that it would fix problems and change the culture at the prison.

Since 2021, at least eight FCI Dublin employees have been charged with sexually abusing inmates. Five have pleaded guilty. Two were convicted at trial, including the former warden, Ray Garcia. Another case is pending.

All sexual activity between a prison worker and an inmate is illegal. Correctional employees have substantial power over inmates, controlling every aspect of their lives from mealtime to lights out, and there is no scenario in which an inmate can give consent.

Inmate advocates worry that some of the safety concerns at FCI Dublin could persist at the other women's prisons. “The problem isn't solved by shipping these girls to new facilities,” said another former Dublin inmate and whistleblower who spoke on condition of anonymity. “These facilities still have the same issues."

Montes said the civil litigation will continue despite the imminent closure.

“The BOP is the defendant in the case. It's not FCI Dublin," she said. “And so we are in the mindset that this did not end our case — that they still have a responsibility to our clients to keep them safe.”

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Sisak and Balsamo reported from New York. Follow Sisak at x.com/mikesisak and Balsamo at x.com/MikeBalsamo1 and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/. Associated Press journalist Terry Chea in Dublin, California, contributed to this report.


US federal women’s prison plagued by rampant staff sexual abuse to close

Sam Levin and agencies
Mon, April 15, 2024

The Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, in 2006.Photograph: Ben Margot/AP

The US Bureau of Prisons (BoP) is closing a federal women’s prison in California that has been plagued by rampant staff sexual abuse of incarcerated residents.

Colette Peters, the BoP director, said in a statement to the Associated Press on Monday that Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Dublin was “not meeting expected standards and that the best course of action is to close the facility”.

Related: She repeatedly reported a prison guard’s sexual abuse. It took years for officials to believe her

The unusual closure announcement follows a series of criminal trials of former correctional officers found to have repeatedly sexually abused women in their custody at FCI Dublin, located 21 miles east of Oakland. A 2022 AP investigation also revealed that the facility was known among staff and residents as the “rape club” due to the widespread sexual violence by officers.

Peters said the BoP had “taken unprecedented steps and provided a tremendous amount of resources to address culture, recruitment and retention, aging infrastructure – and most critical – employee misconduct”. The decision to shutter the embattled prison, she said, was “made after ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of those unprecedented steps and additional resources”.

FCI Dublin is one of six women-only federal prisons in the US, and the only one in the west. It currently incarcerates 605 people who will be transferred to other facilities, Peters said. No employees will be losing their jobs. “The closure of the institution may be temporary but certainly will result in a mission change,” she added.

Eight FCI Dublin employees have been charged with sexually abusing incarcerated women since 2021, according to the AP. Five have pleaded guilty and two were convicted at trial, including Ray Garcia, the former warden who ran the facility. One case is still pending.

Advocates for the incarcerated residents have said the abuse documented in the criminal proceedings does not capture the full extent of the extensive misconduct, and eight FCI Dublin residents sued the BoP last year. Their complaint alleged that incarcerated residents continued to face severe retaliation for reporting sexual misconduct, including being placed in solitary confinement.

Last year, the Guardian reported on the case of a former FCI Dublin resident who reported being sexually abused by multiple guards, but after completing her sentence was transferred to US immigration custody threatened with deportation. Advocates said last year that several survivors of sexual abuse in the prison were deported and that dozens more were threatened with removal from the US.

Susan Beaty, senior attorney for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, who has represented survivors of FCI abuse, said the closure was long overdue, but that the news had caused a lot of stress and confusion inside the facility. The residents have been given a single bag for their belongings and were bracing for moves that could send them far away from their families, they said: “The BoP has already put the folks at Dublin through so much, and the scene unfolding right now in the prison is one of chaos and pandemonium.”

The news also comes after a US judge earlier this month appointed a special master to oversee FCI Dublin, the first time that has been done for the BoP. “[The] BoP was quite resistant to that and we’re concerned the closure is an attempt to evade that kind of accountability and oversight,” Beaty said. “The special master was on the ground last week and folks on the inside were encouraged and optimistic about the kinds of changes that might be coming.”

The judge on Monday ordered the BoP to halt any transfers until the bureau determined whether residents should be sent to another prison, released to home confinement or a halfway house or be granted compassionate release. The special master will review the transfer plans.

Beaty said they were further concerned that bureau would not be terminating any officers – “the same staff that have been running Dublin and participating in this really harmful culture”.

Peters said the BoP “for safety and security reasons” would not be sharing details about the timing of transfers, but that each woman’s “programming needs will be taken into account” and that the BoP would “endeavor to keep them as close to their release locations as possible and ensure that they have access to counsel at their receiving institution”.

One incarcerated Dublin resident, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said on Monday that the uncertainty was causing significant anguish: “All of the sudden, they’re yelling at us to go to your cell, things are going to change, we’re going to take people out, pack up this one bag ... They’re not communicating with us, we’re just living in darkness.”

Another resident said she cried as she watched her best friend be driven away and that she feared people would be transferred to facilities with similar misconduct problems. She said: “[I wish] they would try to fix what’s going on here instead of not hearing us and taking us and putting us somewhere else … I feel like that’s re-traumatizing all of us.”

FCI Dublin is one of many women’s prisons in the US to be plagued with major sexual abuse scandals. The two state women’s prisons in California have also faced repeated controversies surrounding guards harassing and assaulting residents, and retaliating against those who speak out. One former state guard was charged last year with nearly 100 sexual abuse counts, accused of violating at least 22 women in custody.

In 2022, the US Senate reported that staff had sexually abused women in custody in at least two-thirds of BoP facilities, finding that some women were abused for months or years on end.

FCI Dublin closing, women transferred to prisons across U.S.

Lisa Fernandez
Mon, April 15, 2024 at 8:40 AM MDT·8 min read

DUBLIN, Calif. - The scandal-plagued Federal Correctional Institute at Dublin is closing just weeks after a judge ordered the all-women's prison to be placed under unprecedented oversight, KTVU has learned.

Bureau of Prisons Director Colette S. Peters told KTVU in an email on Monday that the all-women's prison is "not meeting expected standards and the best course of action is to close the facility."

It's not clear whether it's a permanent or temporary closure, and the surprise announcement comes after a judge appointed a special master to oversee reforms at the prison and an investigation revealed mold and asbestos are riddled throughout the facility.

It's the first closure of a federal prison since the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York was shuttered in August 2021, where Jeffrey Epstein, who was facing sex-trafficking charges, died by suicide two years prior.

Peters said that the decision is being made after "ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of those unprecedented steps and additional resources."

U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonazlez Rogers held an emergency hearing following the news and reiterated to the attorneys involved in a class action civil lawsuit that special master Wendy Still will remain in place to ensure that no one will be retaliated against.

Gonzalez Rogers also ordered that all the women who were set to be released should not be shipped across the country until the special master can review the paperwork.

A source who works for the BOP told KTVU that before that order was given, 100 women were moved to a Seattle detention center, where there are no female officers. The first buses left the prison at 6 a.m., a source said. After the judge's order, some buses turned back to return the women to FCI Dublin, according to some women at the prison.

The same BOP source said that the closure is payback for the judge appointing a special master. Two formerly incarcerated women also said that this shutdown smacks of retaliation and undermines the judge's call for reforms.

Esther Aguirre of Ontario, Calif., said she is panicked that her mother will be sent far away.

"She don't know what's going on there," Aguirre told KTVU in an interview. "They came and told her that the whole prison is going to shut down, that they'll be shipped out by Friday, and she don't know where she's going."

She said her mom is 61 and in poor health and being incarcerated elsewhere will be a real hardship for their family - a trek that already takes five hours to visit.

Aguirre said she wished that instead of being transferred, the women could just be released.

"Why don't you let these women go now?" Aguirre asked. "You took enough time from them. So let them be free."

Robert Murphee, the husband of a woman at FCI Dublin, hasn't spoken to his wife for two weeks and now has no idea where she'll be taken. She was supposed to be released on May 20, and he was desperate to find out her fate.

"I'm concerned about my wife," he said.

FCI Dublin, about 20 miles east of Oakland and is adjacent to Alameda County's Santa Rita Jail. It currently has 605 incarcerated women, down from 760 prisoners in February 2022. There are no other minimum- or low-security women's prisons in California, like FCI Dublin. There is another federal prison in Victorville, but it is medium security.

There six other minimum- and low-security federal women's prisons in the United States are located in West Virginia, Texas, Alabama, Connecticut, Florida and Minnesota.

Buses were seen in the parking lot on Monday morning, presumably to begin taking women elsewhere. A source said that every woman inside the prison will be transferred elsewhere by Friday.

Sharon McMillan emailed KTVU from inside FCI Dublin, writing that prison management was throwing the women's personal property away, considering it "trash."

"All they are getting has to fit in one bag," McMillan wrote. "The lifers are in a panic."

A woman who asked to be identified only as Lisa said her incarcerated niece was also very scared.

"My niece just called me this morning," she said. "She is petrified because she doesn't know where she is going."

Lisa said her niece was actually supposed to be released in the next week or so, and now she has no idea what her fate is.

"So whether this is a good or bad thing for the prison in general, I can't say," she said.

Peters, the BOP director, said this move is being made after the BOP has taken "unprecedented steps and provided a tremendous amount of resources to address culture, recruitment and retention, aging infrastructure - and most critical - employee misconduct."

To date, eight correctional officers, including the warden, have been charged with sex crimes. Seven so far have been found guilty and sentenced to prison themselves.

Still, the prison's problems have persisted.

Earlier this month, the FBI raided the facility and that same week, Gonazlez Rogers mandated a special master to oversee reforms at FCI Dublin – the first such order in BOP history. FCI Dublin and individual correctional officers face more than 60 civil lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct with incarcerated women in their care.

Meanwhile, Peters said that "planning for the deactivation is currently ongoing, and we will have more updates as that process continues."

She added that none of the 203 employees would lose their jobs. It's obvious though, that people will have to move if they want to still work from the BOP.

In a cryptic note, Peters said the closure of the institution may be temporary but "certainly will result in a mission change."

Rhonda Fleming, an incarcerated woman at FCI Dublin and another employee of the prison, told KTVU they believe that the facility could eventually house all men, but that speculation was not confirmed.

Last week, Fleming emailed KTVU with suspicions of the closure. She told KTVU she knew of several California women being held at the Oklahoma transfer center. Instead of coming to California, they are now being sent to places in Illinois, she said.

"The evil is beyond comprehension," Fleming wrote in her email. "God will deal severely with these prison officials."

Fleming said that appointing a special master was not supposed to harm women, it was supposed to help them.

The closure came as a surprise to the attorney who sued the BOP on behalf of eight incarcerated women who had been the victims of sexual assault, rape and retaliation.

"This is unprecedented for the BOP," Oren Nimni, litigation director at Rights Behind Bars, whose lawsuit prompted the special master. "We were not informed as part of our case that the facility was going to be closed. So, I am definitely surprised and it is definitely a big deal. But in the grand scheme of things, it's the appropriate outcome."

As of April 2024, seven FCI Dublin correctional officers have been sentenced for sex crimes and the eighth officer seems to be heading to trial.

Attorney Jessica Pride, who represents several women suing correctional officers over sex abuses, said she believed that the closure is likely also the result of the mold and asbestos report that was recently released.

"They came in and had different experts do testing who then found positive findings of both mold and asbestos," Price said. "Both of those need to be remediated. And the government knows that currently, there are women that are actively sick right now having respiratory issues and rashes. They've had doctors out there examining the women and trying to figure out how to provide them with treatment. So the best course of action is to remediate, get rid of the problem, shut down the facility so that they can actually make sure it's safe."

One thing to note about this closure is that none of the parties involved in securing the special master were told it was going to happen.

"I mean, it's a shock," said Stephen Cha-Kim, an attorney representing the class action suit against the BOP on behalf of the women at FCI Dublin. "You know, we were not provided any kind of advance notice, which tells a lot about the approach the government has taken in keeping the welfare of the women and others who live at Dublin in mind."

On the one hand, Cha-Kim said closing FCI Dublin is a good thing because, in his opinion, this facility should even exist.

But he did note that things might get worse for women transferred away from their families and to prisons where they will inevitably face hardships as well – and won't be under the oversight of a special master.

He added, though, the lawsuit encompasses the "class" of 600 women held at FCI Dublin, and that he and his colleagues could continue to advocate for them wherever they are in the BOP system.

"One thing is clear, is that our case is not over," Cha-Kim said. "You know, the government for the BOP might want to ‘moot out’ the case. But we're representing a class of individuals who have suffered a lot at the hands of Dublin staff and BOP neglect, and obviously, just getting sent to other facilities isn't going to fix the systemic issues. Wherever they get sent, these individuals are human beings who we'll zealously advocate for. And so we're not just going to forget about them because they get shipped off in the middle of the night."





The Feds Will Close a Notorious California Prison Where Guards Abused Women with Impunity

C.J. Ciaramella
Tue, April 16, 2024 

APEX / MEGA / Newscom/DFBEV/Newscom


The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) announced Monday that it will close a federal women's prison in California where sexual abuse was so common that it was known as the "rape club."

The Associated Press first reported that the BOP is closing Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Dublin, a low-security women's prison in California's Bay Area, after several years of failed efforts to root out systemic misconduct and abuse.

The closure comes as the BOP tries to address larger, system-wide problems. The agency has been in crisis mode since before the COVID-19 pandemic, dogged by embarrassing security lapses, high-profile deaths, chronic understaffing, and persistent corruption. One result of all this is that zero-tolerance policies for sexual assault and federal laws that ban any sexual contact between staff and inmates go unenforced, and in many cases where an incarcerated person tries to invoke them, it only subjects them to retaliation.

BOP Director Colette Peters said in a statement provided to Reason that the agency has "taken unprecedented steps and provided a tremendous amount of resources to address culture, recruitment and retention, aging infrastructure and—most critical—employee misconduct."

"Despite these steps and resources, we have determined that FCI Dublin is not meeting expected standards and that the best course of action is to close the facility," Peters continued.

A 2021 Associated Press investigation revealed "a permissive and toxic culture at the Bay Area lockup, enabling years of sexual misconduct by predatory employees and cover-ups that have largely kept the abuse out of the public eye." Eight Dublin employees, including a former warden, have since been convicted or pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting incarcerated women under their control.

Eight inmates at FCI Dublin filed a lawsuit last year alleging that despite the prosecutions, the culture of abuse and whistleblower retaliation continued.

Last month, the BOP removed the fourth warden to be put in charge of FCI Dublin since 2021, after allegations that the warden retaliated against an inmate who testified in a lawsuit against the prison.

Shortly after the warden's departure, the federal judge overseeing the Dublin inmates' lawsuit announced she was appointing a special master to oversee operations at the prison, writing in her order that the BOP "has proceeded sluggishly with intentional disregard of the inmates' constitutional rights despite being fully apprised of the situation for years."

"The repeated installation of BOP leadership who fail to grasp and address the situation strains credulity," U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers wrote.

And there is also a long-running FBI investigation into Dublin staff and leadership.

It seems the BOP decided that Dublin wasn't worth the trouble anymore. However, this is not the first time the BOP has resorted to shuttering a scandal-ridden prison.

In 2021, the BOP closed down a minimum-security women's camp at FCC Coleman, a federal correctional complex in Florida. A Reason investigation detailed how a cadre of Coleman guards abused incarcerated women at Coleman with impunity for years, and how those guards were allowed to retire and escape prosecution, despite giving sworn statements to investigators admitting to assaulting inmates.

Peters, the former director of Oregon's prison system, had a reputation as a reformer when President Biden appointed her in 2022, but she inherited a sprawling federal agency with an entrenched culture. The repeated attempts to find a warden who could clean up Dublin failed not because the prison was an extreme outlier, but because it was so average.

The women currently incarcerated at Dublin will be transferred to other federal prisons, and Peters said in her statement that no BOP employees would lose their jobs as a result of the closure.

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