California women’s prison known as ‘rape club’ to shutter

A California women’s prison so notorious for sexual assaults against inmates that it was dubbed the “rape club” will be closed down after fruitless attempts to retool its abusive culture, the federal Bureau of Prisons said Monday.

The bureau took “unprecedented steps and provided a tremendous amount of resources to address culture, recruitment and retention, aging infrastructure and — most critical — employee misconduct” after abuses at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, Calif., were exposed in 2022 by the Associated Press.

“Despite these steps and resources, we have determined that FCI Dublin is not meeting expected standards and that the best course of action is to close the facility,” federal Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters said in a statement. “This decision is being made after ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of those unprecedented steps and additional resources.”

The AP detailed a pattern of mismanagement and abuse dating back decades at the site located about 21 miles east of Oakland. Staff members routinely groped and molested women, forcing them to pose naked out of sight of security cameras. Whistleblowers sufferred retaliation and complaints were ignored.

Several people were indicted, convicted and sent to prison, with five pleading guilty, but that did not stop the abuse.

Eight inmates sued the federal Bureau of Prisons last August, naming the current warden and 12 former and current guards. Earlier this month, a judge appointed a special master, though many prisoner advocates said the decision to close the facility just 10 days later was too hasty and did not address the underlying problems.

“We’ve worked so hard to get a special master in there to clean house, so to speak,” one whistleblower told The AP on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And pretty much the minute after that happened, they say they’re just going to close it down.”

Plaintiffs’ lawyer Amaris Montes said the Bureau of Prisons seemed to be attempting to “move accountability elsewhere as the way to remedy the issue.”

The women will be transferred to other prisons, as close to their current location as possible, and no employees will lose their jobs, the Bureau of Prisons said.

With News Wire Services