The Department of Justice (DOJ) put California on notice last week that the state's decades-long failure to protect incarcerated women in two state prisons from rampant sexual abuse likely violates the Constitution.
An August 13 report by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division concluded that there was an "unbroken pattern of often violent, sexual misconduct by staff against prisoners from 2000 through 2024, continuing to the present" at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino. Although the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) repeatedly substantiated allegations of sexual abuse by correctional officers at the two prisons, Justice Department investigators found that CDCR officials failed to protect victims or hold correctional officers accountable, and the women who tried to report abuse were retaliated against.
