The Feds Will Close a Notorious California Prison Where Guards Abused Women with Impunity
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.Â
Eight inmates at FCI Dublin filed a lawsuit last year alleging that despite the prosecutions, the culture o
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