Category: Updates on Prisons

Updates on Prisons

FCI Dublin closure: Women leave prison despite lawyer’s attempt to halt transfers

 
Updated  April 19, 2024 
 
By and 
 

Lawyers representing a class of women incarcerated at the soon-to-close FCI Dublin prison filed an emergency temporary restraining order Friday, urging a judge to temporarily block the transfer of anyone who is left at the troubled women’s prison. 

However, their 72-page motion might be moot: Dozens of incarcerated women and their loved ones told KTVU that most, if not all, of the women have already been hastily shipped out of the prison. One mother said her daughter’s bus left for Nevada at 2 a.m. 

 
 
 
 
Updates on Prisons

Forced Sterilization Survivors Undertake Own Healing After Feeling ‘Silenced Again’ by State

kqed.org

Apr 15, 2024

By: Cayla Mihalovich

One morning last spring, Moonlight Pulido called on rituals drawn from her Native American spirituality to confront a painful experience.

She stepped outside of her home in Carson, California, and lit a bundle of white sage that she keeps in an abalone shell by the back door. Pulido, who is Apache, fanned the smoke around her with a feather.

She was preparing to make quilt squares for a project to honor people who were forcibly sterilized at state prisons in California. A survivor herself, she said she was searching for a way to release the hurt and heartache.

Read the full story from KQED. 

Updates on Prisons

Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition Calls for Releases Not Transfers

Condemns BOP Effort to Evade Accountability and Systemic Change!

On Monday, April 15, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) announced plans to abruptly close  FCI Dublin women’s prison in a surprise move designed to evade the jurisdiction of the Special Master Wendy Still. Judge Gonzalez Rogers appointed the Special Master–the first in BOP’s history–on April 5, 2024 to oversee the facility in light of rampant staff abuse, retaliation, and medical neglect. BOP officials began to load incarcerated people onto buses early in the morning on 4/15 before the Judge and Special Master were even aware of their plans. Chaos unfolded inside the facility, traumatizing incarcerated people who have already been subjected to immense harm by the BOP. As soon as she learned about what was happening, the Judge issued an order that people at Dublin needed to be evaluated for possible release and medically cleared before they could be transferred.  

The Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition (DPSC) calls for people to be released from BOP custody as soon as possible and demands that no person be transferred away from Dublin until everyone is evaluated for potential release. This is the only resolution that gives justice and accountability to those who have been incarcerated at Dublin and have endured  terrible injustices for years. There are many options for release–including compassionate release, home confinement and release to halfway houses–  and we believe that the overwhelming majority of people incarcerated at Dublin could meet the requirements for one of these options. We also echo the National Council’s call for President Biden to grant clemency to anyone who was sexually abused at FCI Dublin.


DPSC has worked for over two years to advocate with and for people incarcerated at Dublin.  We brought a class action lawsuit demanding systemic change. We collectively publicized the systemic problems which have led to rampant, continual sexual abuse. We advocated against the pervasive medical abuse occurring at the prison. We won recognition from the courts that  the law is being broken and appointment of a special master was required in order to ensure that immediate changes were made.  

At the very point when outside oversight was being brought in, BOP decided to shut Dublin down. But BOP should not be able to hide from community accountability..  The only other BOP women’s facility on the West Coast is nearly 400 miles away, and does not have capacity for everyone at risk of being transferred. People forcibly transferred could be sent thousands of miles away from their loved ones and their children. In addition, the entire BOP system is plagued by the same issues present at FCI Dublin, including staff sexual abuse, widespread retaliation, and abhorrent medical care. BOP wants to transfer people at FCI Dublin to far-off facilities which have their own records of abuse but do not have the type of consistent community support that has been built at Dublin. 

We will not let the BOP succeed with its effort to disappear the people detained at Dublin.  We are committed to maintaining our community advocacy, litigation and solidarity across the walls!


RELEASE NOT TRANSFERS!


HOLD BOP ACCOUNTABLE!


Join our mailing list


For more information contact dublinprisonsolidarity@gmail.com

Updates on Prisons

A prison guard confessed to sexual misconduct. He got a year of paid time off and no charges

The Guardian

 

October 30, 2023

Women incarcerated in California state prisons have filed hundreds of complaints of sexual abuse by staff since 2014. But in that time frame, only four officers have been terminated for sexual misconduct, according to data obtained by the Guardian. And only four guards have been confirmed to have faced criminal charges for their behavior.
 

One of the guards who was prosecuted, Gregory Rodriguez, has been accused of assaulting and harassing at least 22 women at the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF). He retired while under investigation and is awaiting trial on nearly 100 charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

Read the full story from the Guardian.

Organizing Updates, Updates on Prisons

She repeatedly reported a prison guard’s sexual abuse. It took years for officials to believe her

The Guardian

By:  

April 11, 2024

Nilda Palacios had nowhere to turn.

It was June 2016 inside the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF), the state’s largest women’s prison, and her cellmate had become abusive and violent, she recalled in an interview. Officers had refused her request for a room transfer. Her final hope: begging for help from Tony Ormonde, the sergeant who ran the yard.

“I can do the bed move, but you gotta do something for me,” she remembers him responding.

In the weeks after the transfer, the sergeant began summoning her to his office and other private locations, where he sexually harassed and assaulted her, Palacios said. The abuse continued for months: “I’d cry and ask why I put myself in this situation. I’d leave with disgust and feel used, and I’d hate that I didn’t have the choice to say no.”

Read full article from The Guardian.