California prisons repeatedly and knowingly violated female prisoners’ civil rights by failing to prevent systemic sexual abuse, a two-year federal investigation revealed.
The state now has 49 days to address the issues outlined in a report released Thursday summarizing the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation, after which the federal government can sue the state to force changes within the system.
“The findings in this report are unacceptable,” U.S. Attorney Bilal Essayli said at a news conference announcing the investigation’s findings Thursday morning. “They’re unconscionable, and should serve as a turning point in California’s failed state prison system, and the way they handle these types of allegations.”
The investigation revealed “systemic deficiencies” that violated prisoners’ 8th and 14th amendment rights, Essayli said, and found that California’s prison system has failed to implement the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
The DOJ’s investigation followed years of lawsuits, complaints and prosecutions alleging that prison staff at the Central California Women’s Facility, in Chowchilla, and the California Institution for Women, in Chino, repeatedly sexually assaulted inmates, and that the state’s prison system had done little to stop or prevent the abuse.
In their report, federal investigators said the California Department of Corrections has been aware of sexual assault complaints since as long ago as 2000.
The two women’s prisons and the corrections system as a whole “knowingly expose” inmates to risk of sexual assault by failing to detect and prevent assaults, failing to provide prisoners with a way to report assaults confidentially, failing to report abuse and failing to hold staff accountable, the federal government concluded.
“The foregoing failures constitute deliberate indifference to the unconstitutional conditions that exist in the prisons,” investigators wrote.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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