Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice released an investigative report on two California women’s prisons confirming what people inside these facilities and their advocates have known for decades: that CDCR has long violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of prisoners incarcerated at CIW and CCWF by failing to protect them from widespread, systemic sexual abuse and harassment by prison staff. As detailed in the DOJ report, released on August 13, 2026, CDCR as well as officials at CCWF and CIW have shown a pattern and practice of deliberate indifference towards the egregious and flagrant risk of sexual harm by prison staff and have subjected prisoners to cruel and unusual punishment. The DOJ also found that CDCR violated the Fourteenth Amendment rights to bodily privacy of those incarcerated at CIW and CCWF.
For decades, survivors of staff sexual abuse at CIW and CCWF have bravely reported prison staff to CDCR for widespread sexual abuse of prisoners. CDCR has ignored complaints and retaliated against those who reported staff for sexual abuse. They have resisted advocates’ efforts to advocate for survivors and our proposals for systemic improvements. In the two and a half years since the release of the Sexual Abuse Response and Prevention Working Group Community Report to the Legislature, CDCR has failed to implement all but one of the recommendations.
The DOJ report describes countless incidents of staff sexual abuse where CDCR, CIW, and CCWF failed to take action against sexually predatory staff and failed to prevent further sexual abuse. The DOJ also acknowledges the severe retaliation that survivors face after reporting staff for sexual abuse and how that retaliation prevented more survivors from reporting their abuse.
The DOJ now makes many of the same recommendations from the 2024 Community Report that were ignored by CDCR. Given the DOJ report, CDCR has no choice but to work respectfully alongside advocates to remedy these constitutional violations.
The DOJ’s investigation confirms that CDCR’s prisons are unsafe, retraumatizing, and retaliatory for survivors of staff sexual abuse, the vast majority of who suffered sexual abuse before coming to prison. Given CDCR’s inability to provide a safe and rehabilitative environment for survivors, advocates urge immediate release for those who have suffered prison staff abuse.
The following organizations issued statements in response:
From Amika Mota, Executive Director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition: “ We recognize the incredible courage it took for survivors to provide testimony for the DOJ’s investigation and we call upon the DOJ and CDCR to take immediate action to protect survivors from further retaliation following the DOJ’s report. Accountability cannot end with reforming the conditions under which survivors remain incarcerated. California must bring survivors home. Anything less leaves people trapped inside with their assailants, in the very system the federal government has now found is failing to protect them from sexual abuse.”
From Leesa Nomura, formerly incarcerated membership organizer for the California Coalition for Women Prisoners: “CDCR must immediately make changes based on the proposal that our working group made in 2024! As survivors, we will not accept such egregious violations of our constitutional rights and constant traumatization of our lives! Ironically, the same abusive prison staff culture occurred at FCI Dublin. Dublin was a federal facility which was overseen by the DOJ and had to be shut down and is now under a consent decree to enforce required changes. If prison officials on all levels cannot provide safe environments for the people who live inside their facilities, survivors need to be released into environments where true safety and rehabilitation can be provided.
From Cynthia Totten, Deputy Executive Director at Just Detention International, “Sexual violence in prison is not only just a horrifying crime – it is a completely preventable one. CDCR officials knew that incarcerated people were being sexually abused, and they took the side of the abusers. The DOJ’s investigative report is just the first step in addressing the rampant sexual abuse in California’s women’s prisons. The state must overhaul the culture that allowed this crisis to go on unchecked for so many years. And it must release the survivors whose constitutional rights they continually fail to protect.”
From PREVAIL: “PREVAIL stands in solidarity with the survivors who courageously came forward and with those who have spent years advocating for safety, dignity, and accountability within California’s women’s prisons. Sexual violence is an abuse of power in any setting, and incarceration should never mean surrendering the fundamental right to bodily autonomy and safety. Survivors deserve to be believed, protected from retaliation, and supported in their healing. These findings must lead to meaningful and lasting change, not simply acknowledgment of the harm that has occurred. PREVAIL calls for transparency, accountability, survivor-centered reforms, and immediate protections that ensure every person in custody is treated with dignity and is safe from sexual abuse, harassment, and retaliation.”
From Alisa Bierria, co-founder of Survived & Punished: “Whether survivors experience sexual violence before prison or during prison, CDCR has failed survivors repeatedly and deliberately. CDCR did not only fail to protect survivors, they actively protected conditions of sexual violence. Freeing survivors is the only way to move forward.”
From David Lee, Deputy Director of ValorUS®: “No one deserves to experience sexual violence and those that do, should be able to heal on their terms, not be forced to stay in the same conditions in which they were harmed. Incarcerated people who experience sexual violence deserve strong prevention policies that are effectively implemented.”
From Jenny Huang, Director of the UC Davis School of Law’s Civil Rights Clinic: “The DOJ findings confirm what incarcerated people & advocates have known for years: CDCR’s prisons for women are unsafe and retraumatizing for survivors of sexual abuse by prison staff. It is past time for CDCR to release survivors of staff sexual abuse so they can safely recover and rehabilitate in their community.”