October 19, 2026
Madi Bolaños and Sukey Lewis of KQED
Hear more of the story on the podcast We Are Jane Doe, from KQED’s Snap Studios.
Aliksandria Prout was at home the evening of Aug. 2, 2024, when her phone rang. It was her former cellmate at the Central California Women’s Facility. Catrina Cameron was nearly incoherent over the prison phone line.
“She told me she couldn’t see outta one eye,” Prout recalled. Cameron told Prout that correctional officers had sprayed her and dozens of other women with tear gas and pepper spray. “Our other cellmate had gotten beat up by correctional staff.”
Prout could barely grasp the enormity of the incident. As the public would later learn, correctional officers had removed 159 women from a prison housing unit, confined them for more than four hours in a dining hall without food, water or medication, and then unleashed streams of pepper spray and chemical blast grenades on them when tensions escalated.
Later, as the prisoners sat outside on the hot, dusty yard with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, officers again used tear gas and pepper grenades on them.
Read the full Story from Cal Matters here.
