California, August 13, 2026 – The Justice Department released findings that California Women’s Prisons Fail to Protect Female Prisoners from Sexual Abuse by Staff. Amika Mota, Executive Director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition responds:
“Nothing in the Department of Justice’s report should come as a surprise to anyone who has listened to incarcerated survivors. For years, women and gender-diverse people inside California prisons have reported ongoing sexual abuse, harassment, retaliation, intimidation, and a system that too often protects the people causing harm rather than the people reporting it. Survivors have been telling the truth. This report confirms what they have risked their safety to expose: the abuse is not isolated—it is structural and systemic.
No one is sentenced to enduring sexual violence. No one should have to risk their housing, their work assignment, their access to basic necessities, or their physical safety simply to report abuse by the very staff entrusted with their custody. And no survivor should be forced to remain confined in the same system—and sometimes alongside the same people—responsible for their harm.
The only way to truly protect survivors from abuse inside these prisons is to get survivors out of them. California must pursue releases and pathways home for people who have survived staff sexual abuse and retaliation. Cameras, investigations, training, and reporting systems may provide important safeguards, but they cannot heal the violence that has already occurred or guarantee safety within an institution where the power imbalance that enables this abuse remains intact.
At the same time, California has an immediate responsibility to protect people who remain incarcerated. The Legislature must pass AB 464 (Aguiar-Curry) and SB 337 (Menjivar). These bills respond directly to failures documented by the Department of Justice by strengthening protections against retaliation, increasing oversight and documentation, improving accountability for staff misconduct, and preventing people who commit serious abuse from simply returning to positions of power within CDCR.
Survivors have been telling us for years, and now the United States Department of Justice has documented the consequences of failing to listen. AB 464 and SB 337 are urgent protections, and they should be passed and signed without delay. But 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.”