Author: redcarpet

CCWP In the News

“No Time to Wait”: The Unseen Costs of Aging in California’s Women’s Prisons

Roughly 30% of California’s prison population is past age 50– and that number is increasing every year.

It costs 2-3x more to incarcerate an elderly person compared to the general population. That is an annual cost of $255,000–$383,00 per elderly person.

What are the unseen costs of aging in prison?

Thank you:

UC Berkeley Law Policy Clinic

California Coalition for Women Prisoners

Uncommon Law

Featuring:

  • Jane Dorotik
  • Colby Lenz
  • Mychal Macias
  • Devan Shea
  • Maiya Zwerling
  • Caroline McGinnis
  • LaVelma Byrd
  • Rosemary Dyer

Video / Interview / Edit Chisato Hughes

Produced by UC Sentencing Project

Music Blue Dot Sessions

Organizing Updates

3rd Annual LWOP Walk for Life Walk-A-Thon

Walk for Life” Brings Hundreds of Californians Together to Raise Awareness About Life Without Parole

Over two dozen prison yards scheduled to participate in walk for “healing and hope”

WHEN & WHERE:

  • Tuesday, September 29, 2026
  • 10:00 AM – Walk Begins @ Tower Bridge
  • 11:00 AM – Press Conference at State Capitol
  • 1:00 PM – Rally at State Capitol

WHAT:

  • Rally, short speeches, art & visual displays made by incarcerated people

WHO:

  • People impacted by LWOP, families, community leaders, etc.  The 3rd Annual Walk-A-Thon to raise awareness about Life Without Parole (LWOP) convenes at the State Capitol on Tuesday, September 29, bringing people together to uplift hope, healing, and the call for change.

The Sacramento event is part of a week of action. From September 26 to October 3, 24+ prison yards throughout the state will participate in a powerful Week of Walks to bring awareness to the redemptive work people serving LWOP are doing inside prisons to heal themselves and the families and communities they may have harmed. This week of walks was initiated and is led by incarcerated people serving LWOP sentences. Incarcerated people are walking to raise awareness about extreme sentencing and the potential of rehabilitation, and to raise funds for a variety of organizations dedicated to helping communities throughout California. 

Advocates hope these events will urge Governor Newsom to take more action during his final period in office and help educate the public about LWOP. The United Nations has recommended that the United States halt the practice, calling these extreme sentences “death-by-incarceration” because “without the chance of parole, the rehabilitative function of the prison system is negated, reducing it to a tool of segregation and exploitation.” 

More than 5,000 people in California are serving the sentence, making it one of the largest LWOP populations in the country and world. 68% of people sentenced to LWOP in California are Black and Latinx; 62% of people sentenced in California were 25 years or younger at the time of the offense; and 71% of people sentenced to LWOP were convicted for the first-time.

“For those sentenced to LWOP, the punishment often carries the painful message that they are beyond redemption,” said Joseph Bell, a coordinator for Drop LWOP who was formerly sentenced to LWOP. “This Walk for Life offers hope and raises awareness that transformation is possible.”

This event is co-sponsored by the Drop LWOP Coalition, Californians United for a Responsible Budget, ASAP (Anti-Violence, Safety & Accountability Project), Felony Murder Elimination Project, Families United to End LWOP, and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.

Organizing Updates

Freedom Comes When One Walks Through It

Event Details

 
Visitacion Valley Branch Library (plus 2 others), 201 Leland Ave, San Francisco, CA 94134
 
More info here

October 3 – 17: Shows at 1pm and 3:15pm each Saturday

Flyaway Productions returns to the streets with a new dance-based public art project exploring the concept of freedom at the intersection of public libraries and prisons. Directed by Flyaway Artistic Director Jo Kreiter in coalition with the San Francisco Public Library, ‘Freedom Comes’ features a cast of seven female dancers, original research and text by April Harris, and commissioned music by Kalyn Harwood. 

A total of six 30-minute shows are scheduled at 1 p.m. and 3:15 p.m. over three consecutive Saturdays, October 3 – 17. ‘Freedom Comes’ opens October 3 at Visitacion Valley Branch Library before moving to the San Francisco Main Library on October 10, and finally to the Ortega Branch Library on October 17. All shows are free with no reservation required. 

Flyaway’s primary collaborator is April Harris, an incarcerated writer serving a life sentence at the California Institution for Women in Corona, California. She is currently a research advocate to support the University of California Sentencing Project, a collaboration between the University of California at San Diego and Los Angeles, and members of the California Coalition of Women Prisoners. 

According to the Sentencing Project, between 1980 and 2022, the number of incarcerated women surged nearly six-fold, with Black women imprisoned at rates 60% higher than white women. In the U.S., the flow of information between those who are incarcerated and those who are free is violently interrupted, trapping vast amounts of knowledge behind prison walls. “We are seeing that violence amplified with recent immigrant detentions,” added Kreiter. “Freedom Comes aims to break down these barriers and embrace the voices of systems-impacted women about what it means to be free.”

Free with no RSVP.

Presented by Flyaway Productions.

CCWP In the News

Warden at Central California Women’s Prison Ousted Amid Sexual Abuse Scandal

 
 
Christopher Alam

Warden’s Demotion Comes One Month After Feds Found an ‘Unbroken Pattern’ of Sexual Abuse at the Prison

Anissa De La Cruz is no longer warden of the Central California Women’s Facility as of Tuesday. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says she will become a correctional administrator at nearby Valley State Prison next month.

The move comes one month after the U.S. Department of Justice found a “unbroken pattern” of sexual assault and retaliation at the facility. The Justice Department began investigating the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino nearly two years ago after hundreds of incarcerated women filed legal claims alleging sexual exploitation by staff and an officer was arrested for sexually abusing at least 22 women.

Elizabeth Nomura is a formerly incarcerated advocate with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. She says the issue of sexual assault in prisons is bigger than one person.

Read the full story from KQED here.

Updates on Prisons

Incarcerated Women Are Pushing for Decarceration, Not “Trauma-Informed” Prisons

Truthout
By  

As abolitionists across the United States push for decarceration, a backlash has emerged in the form of new prison construction, demonstrating the resiliency of mass incarceration. Several new women’s prisons are being built despite a growing chorus of voices arguing that prisons only inflict more harm on women who have already endured abuse and trauma.

Last year, a new prison to hold nearly 1,000 women was opened in Louisiana to replace the prison that flooded almost a decade earlier. What the news media described as a “campus” (a word used to conflate imprisonment with voluntary settings like colleges and corporate parks) includes a rehabilitation center, classrooms, and a delivery room for women forced to have their babies in prison. In Maine, a new “reentry center” for women was completed in 2017. “Ideally we’d like to say that we don’t need prisons,” then-Gov. Paul LePage said at the grand opening. “But if we’re going to have prisons, this is the type of prison that we need…”

Truthout spoke with activists fighting the construction of new women’s prisons in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Illinois, who said they recognized similar trends. In Vermont, a proposal by the legislature for a new prison for women in Essex was halted last year when activists convinced the local planning commission to rule against a zoning request. In Massachusetts, after calls for a prison moratorium failed, Gov. Maura Healey announced in 2025 a plan to “re-imagine” the women’s prison there. In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Corrections launched in 2024 what is dubbed “RISE IDOC” to build two new prisons, including a new women’s prison with a “gender-responsive” design.

Read the full article from Truthout here.