Category: CCWP In the News

CCWP In the News

Pressure Mounts for Legislators to Address Rampant Staff Abuse in California Women’s Prisons

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 21, 2026

Sacramento, CA – Yesterday afternoon, California legislators heard dozens of testimonies demanding accountability and action to end staff abuse inside California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) women’s prisons. The Assembly Budget Committee on Public Safety convened the hearing as a follow-up to last year’s hearing, which discussed high-profile cases of staff sexual abuse and related budget requests. Read written testimony of people in California women’s prisons that was submitted to the committee here.

“Sexual violence in our prisons is not historical. It is happening now,” said Amika Mota, Executive Director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition, a panelist at the hearing. “And how California responds is a choice being made in this room today. Since we met last year, retaliation against survivors of staff sexual abuse has escalated. Survivors are losing jobs and peer roles, denied privacy when reporting, and facing ongoing harassment.”

A survivor of sexual assault in California prisons, Sandra Deanda, with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, described multiple incidents of staff abuse she experienced over the course of her 19-year sentence: “Officers demand sexual favors and threaten to send us to solitary confinement if we don’t comply. An officer trapped me in a room and sexually assaulted me. He was allowed to retire with no blemish on his reputation or accountability. I stayed in constant fear of retaliation.”

In addition to recent reporting from the Office of Inspector General, which found that only 11% of CDCR’s investigations into staff misconduct complaint cases were adequate, a central topic was an excessive force incident that took place at the Central California Women’s Facility in August 2024. The incident resulted in discipline for over 40 staff members and a $1.9 million settlement to some of the women injured. During her testimony, Deana emphasized that the sergeant who ordered this attack had threatened retaliation if residents did not stop reporting staff sexual misconduct and filing lawsuits. “Officers use weapons and force routinely to silence people who are trying to get medical attention, mental health care, or report abuse,” said Deanda.

Many stakeholders spoke to the state’s budget challenges and the need for additional resources to address abuse. The state’s Legislative Analyst Office is recommending that California close another prison, which would free up at least $150 million per year that could support prevention and responses to sexual abuse, retaliation, and violence in the women’s prisons.

“What we’re seeing is not a glitch—it’s a pattern,” said April Grayson, Political Director at Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition. “A pattern of obstruction, hostility, and disregard for both incarcerated residents and the organizations trying to support them. It is time to stop funding a system that actively obstructs rehabilitation. Our legislators must hold CDCR accountable through the state’s budget decisions this year.”

CCWP In the News

California Spends $300 Million Each Year Incarcerating Senior Citizens in Women’s Prisons

The Appeal

March 2026

After 34 years in prison, 67-year-old Cat Reed is suffering from sarcoidosis in the lungs, thyroid disease, sciatica, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes, which she blames on decades of starchy prison food. When she entered prison in 1992, she was 33 years old and, as she puts it, in “pretty good health.” But years of starchy prison food, inadequate medical care, sleeping on flimsy mattresses atop metal bunks, and the general chaos and violence in prison have worsened her health. And she’s not the only one.

“We have seniors all over the prison,” she told The Appeal. 

California has two women’s prisons, which incarcerate approximately 3,600 people. After decades of tough-on-crime policies, the state’s prison population is graying. Roughly one in five people in women’s prisons are over the age of 50. Although data from the prison system shows that recidivism rates decline with age, the state spends up to $300 million each year incarcerating approximately 740 elders in women’s prisons. 

No Time to Wait, a new report by the California Coalition for Women Prisoners and the UC Berkeley Law Policy Advocacy Clinic, analyzes pathways for release, including commutations, compassionate release, medical release, resentencing, and parole. It recommends that the state utilize elderly parole and resentencing more expansively, allowing more aging people, particularly those sentenced during California’s tough-on-crime era, to be released. 

Read the full story from The Appeal here. 

CCWP In the News

California agrees to $1.9 million settlement in prison use-of-force case

KQED
 
Mar 27, 2026 2:00 PM
 
By Madi Bolaños |
 

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has agreed to pay $1.9 million to settle a lawsuit filed by 13 women who say correctional officers injured them during a mass use-of-force incident at the Central California Women’s Facility in 2024.

The plaintiffs say they suffered seizures, respiratory distress and long-term vision problems after officers used batons, physical force and chemical agents on them.

“I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were on fire … I thought I was going to die,” plaintiff Wisdom Muhammad said in a recent interview at her home in Los Angeles.

The women received settlements ranging from $200,000 to $50,000 each, based on the severity of their injuries, according to their attorney Robert Chalfant.

Read the full story from KQED here. 

CCWP In the News

These Women Exposed Prison Sexual Abuse. Now ICE Wants to Deport Them.

Truthout 
March 8, 2026
By: 

In November 2022, a long-time permanent resident of the U.S. was released from FCI Dublin, a California federal women’s prison. A probation officer had visited and approved her to stay at her mother’s home. The woman, who asked to be identified here by the pseudonym “Cristal” due to fear of retaliation, was looking forward to rebuilding relationships with her family, particularly her daughters — ages 12 and 6. “All I wanted was to spend the day with them,” she told Truthout.

She was also relieved to be out of Dublin, a notorious prison dubbed “the rape club” after decades of staff sexual abuse. At Dublin, she had been sexually harassed and verbally abused by an officer, physically assaulted by another, witnessed other officers sexually abusing women, and been subjected to retaliation.

 

Read the full story from Truthout here. 

CCWP In the News

Aging Behind Bars: Why California Faces Pressure to Release Elderly Women from Prison

The Davis Vanguard

March 25, 2026

By David Greenwald 

California is confronting a quiet but accelerating crisis inside its prison system: a rapidly aging population of incarcerated women who, according to a new report, pose little threat to public safety but carry enormous human and financial costs the state can no longer justify.

A March 2026 report, No Time to Wait: A Case for Releasing Elders from California’s Women’s Prisons, argues that the continued incarceration of people over 50 in the state’s two women’s prisons is “unjustified, costly, and inhumane,” and calls for their immediate release as a central step toward broader decarceration.

The report, produced by the UC Berkeley Law Policy Advocacy Clinic and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, frames the issue not as a marginal reform question but as a structural failure decades in the making. California currently incarcerates about 3,600 people in its women’s prisons, and roughly one in five are over the age of 50.

“California incarcerates 3,600 people in its two women’s prisons, and one in five of them are aged fifty and older,” the report states, underscoring both the scale and urgency of the issue.

The numbers tell a story of policy decisions made decades ago. The state’s aging prison population is largely the product of sentencing laws enacted during the “tough-on-crime” era of the 1980s through early 2000s, when lawmakers expanded mandatory minimums and lengthened sentences. Today, the average sentence for older individuals in women’s prisons is about 25 years, with many having already served at least 15.

Read the full story from the Davis Vanguard here.