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"title": "Defense Casts Victims as ‘Manipulative’ in East Bay Prison Sex Abuse Trial, With More Ahead",
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"content": "\u003cp>The final criminal trial for a former \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/fci-dublin\">FCI Dublin\u003c/a> prison official charged with sexual abuse will take more than a weeklong break, as the defense tries to paint a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12031584/east-bay-prison-sex-abuse-trial-opens-account-guards-ultimate-control\">positive picture\u003c/a> of former correctional officer Darrell Wayne Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Wednesday, six witnesses testifying in defense of Smith — who faces 15 charges relating to alleged sexual misconduct — described him as “professional” and said that after the prison’s former warden was charged with abuse, they worried that false allegations could be made against officers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The defense’s final witness, Ed Canales, was an inspector at the prison tasked with investigating those abuse allegations. He won’t testify until next Thursday for medical reasons, prompting a pause in the weekslong trial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith is accused of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12031367/for-years-abuse-plagued-an-east-bay-prison-dubbed-the-rape-club-one-trial-remains\">sexually abusing\u003c/a> five women who were incarcerated at FCI Dublin between 2016 and 2021, while he worked as a counselor, and later, a correctional officer. He is one of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12018828/prison-sex-abuse-survivor-speaks-on-fci-dublins-cultural-rot-after-record-settlement\">eight former officials\u003c/a> who were charged with abuse amid a sprawling \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11987663/us-representatives-call-for-investigation-into-abrupt-east-bay-prison-shutdown\">federal investigation\u003c/a> into the prison, which revealed a culture of sexual misconduct, retaliation and cover-ups. The other seven have been convicted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The five women who are named in his suit — and a handful of others who were incarcerated around the same time — testified during the first six days of the trial that Smith made sexual comments toward them, forced them to lift up their tops in front of him and penetrated them with his fingers. One woman said he forced her to have sex with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the defense has tried to cast doubt on the veracity of the women’s allegations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Former colleagues and three other formerly incarcerated women who knew him primarily as a counselor, called to court by Smith’s attorneys, described his demeanor as fairly typical — a stark contrast to the casual, underdressed and flirty behavior described by victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12032044 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1A-KQED-1020x574.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Defense attorney Joanna Sheridan also asked Rachel Reyes, who has worked at FCI Dublin for 17 years as a secretary in the housing units and occasionally covered officers’ shifts, about two of the victims’ “trustworthiness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reyes testified that one of the women seemed “very dishonest and manipulative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, she described the other, whose disciplinary committee Reyes sat on after an unrelated incident, as disrespectful and said the witness didn’t seem to want to tell the truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reyes also testified that after the prison’s former warden, Ray Garcia, was initially charged with sexually abusing incarcerated women in 2021, she was worried she could be falsely accused of similar crimes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After “the case with Warden Garcia and other statements, [incarcerated women] were starting to be released and get money,” she said. “That’s when I felt we [the employees] lost control.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reyes told the jury that it felt like “anyone could say anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The defense also repeatedly questioned two other Dublin officials about whether there was an increase in mail from lawyers soliciting abuse allegations after Garcia’s arrest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Armando Sandoval, who worked in the mailroom at Dublin, first said that after Garcia was charged, the flow of legal mail “remained constant.” After further questioning, he said that the prison “would receive hundreds of solicitation mail from different law groups trying to solicit cases” around that time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Canales takes the stand next week, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will decide whether the prosecution has grounds for a rebuttal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith is not expected to testify.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The final criminal trial for a former \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/fci-dublin\">FCI Dublin\u003c/a> prison official charged with sexual abuse will take more than a weeklong break, as the defense tries to paint a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12031584/east-bay-prison-sex-abuse-trial-opens-account-guards-ultimate-control\">positive picture\u003c/a> of former correctional officer Darrell Wayne Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Wednesday, six witnesses testifying in defense of Smith — who faces 15 charges relating to alleged sexual misconduct — described him as “professional” and said that after the prison’s former warden was charged with abuse, they worried that false allegations could be made against officers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The defense’s final witness, Ed Canales, was an inspector at the prison tasked with investigating those abuse allegations. He won’t testify until next Thursday for medical reasons, prompting a pause in the weekslong trial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith is accused of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12031367/for-years-abuse-plagued-an-east-bay-prison-dubbed-the-rape-club-one-trial-remains\">sexually abusing\u003c/a> five women who were incarcerated at FCI Dublin between 2016 and 2021, while he worked as a counselor, and later, a correctional officer. He is one of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12018828/prison-sex-abuse-survivor-speaks-on-fci-dublins-cultural-rot-after-record-settlement\">eight former officials\u003c/a> who were charged with abuse amid a sprawling \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11987663/us-representatives-call-for-investigation-into-abrupt-east-bay-prison-shutdown\">federal investigation\u003c/a> into the prison, which revealed a culture of sexual misconduct, retaliation and cover-ups. The other seven have been convicted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The five women who are named in his suit — and a handful of others who were incarcerated around the same time — testified during the first six days of the trial that Smith made sexual comments toward them, forced them to lift up their tops in front of him and penetrated them with his fingers. One woman said he forced her to have sex with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the defense has tried to cast doubt on the veracity of the women’s allegations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Former colleagues and three other formerly incarcerated women who knew him primarily as a counselor, called to court by Smith’s attorneys, described his demeanor as fairly typical — a stark contrast to the casual, underdressed and flirty behavior described by victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Defense attorney Joanna Sheridan also asked Rachel Reyes, who has worked at FCI Dublin for 17 years as a secretary in the housing units and occasionally covered officers’ shifts, about two of the victims’ “trustworthiness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reyes testified that one of the women seemed “very dishonest and manipulative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, she described the other, whose disciplinary committee Reyes sat on after an unrelated incident, as disrespectful and said the witness didn’t seem to want to tell the truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reyes also testified that after the prison’s former warden, Ray Garcia, was initially charged with sexually abusing incarcerated women in 2021, she was worried she could be falsely accused of similar crimes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After “the case with Warden Garcia and other statements, [incarcerated women] were starting to be released and get money,” she said. “That’s when I felt we [the employees] lost control.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reyes told the jury that it felt like “anyone could say anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The defense also repeatedly questioned two other Dublin officials about whether there was an increase in mail from lawyers soliciting abuse allegations after Garcia’s arrest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Armando Sandoval, who worked in the mailroom at Dublin, first said that after Garcia was charged, the flow of legal mail “remained constant.” After further questioning, he said that the prison “would receive hundreds of solicitation mail from different law groups trying to solicit cases” around that time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Canales takes the stand next week, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will decide whether the prosecution has grounds for a rebuttal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith is not expected to testify.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "in-court-women-detail-abuse-east-bay-federal-prison-officer",
"title": "In Court, Women Detail Abuse by East Bay Federal Prison Officer: ‘It Finished Me’",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Warning: This story contains graphic language and descriptions of sexual violence.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12031367/for-years-abuse-plagued-an-east-bay-prison-dubbed-the-rape-club-one-trial-remains\">Darrell Wayne Smith\u003c/a> had a reputation as a correctional officer at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/fci-dublin\">FCI Dublin\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Women incarcerated at the East Bay federal prison said he patrolled housing units wearing a cowboy hat and boots, often leaving his shirts unbuttoned with nothing underneath. When he wasn’t making rounds, they said, he sat back in his chair at the officer’s desk, kicking his feet up and leering at women as they walked by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He made passing sexual comments and locked women in cells when they broke the rules, ordering them to flash him to get out or to be awarded special privileges, women testified in federal court in Oakland this week. Whenever new women arrived at the prison, they said they were warned about Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Officers were known for several things, but he was the officer that walked around with his shirt open, kind of cowboy style, not professional at all,” said one woman, who remembers learning his nickname, “Dirty Dick Smith,” soon after she arrived at Dublin in 2017.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He carried himself in a different way than other officers,” she said. “He was always talking to the girls in inappropriate ways or trying to get with all the girls. Kind of flirtatious.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I heard rumors about him,” another woman told the jury. “But I never thought I was going to go through things like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12031936\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12031936\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A courtroom sketch of a witness giving testimony under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sailaja Paidipaty in the trial of former FCI Dublin correctional officer Darrell Wayne Smith in Oakland on March 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Vicki Behringer for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>They are among eight women who have testified that Smith’s harassment went much further. Although they used their first names in court, KQED does not identify survivors of sexual assault.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith is charged with 15 counts of sexual abuse and related crimes against five women who were incarcerated at FCI Dublin between 2016 and 2021. The low-security women’s prison was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11982973/feds-abruptly-close-east-bay-womens-prison-following-sexual-abuse-scandals\">shut down last year\u003c/a> after a sprawling federal investigation revealed a culture of abuse, retaliation and cover-ups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eight officers were charged in the fallout. Smith, whose \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12031584/east-bay-prison-sex-abuse-trial-opens-account-guards-ultimate-control\">trial began Monday\u003c/a> and will continue next week, is the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12031367/for-years-abuse-plagued-an-east-bay-prison-dubbed-the-rape-club-one-trial-remains\">last to be tried\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three women named in Smith’s case have testified against him so far. This is what they say they endured under his watch.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘He thought it was a joke’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The first woman who took the stand on Monday, wrapped in an oversized black coat with her long dark hair pulled tightly into a bun, recalled meeting Smith while picking up her mail. She had just arrived at FCI Dublin and said he tried to connect with her about her Native heritage and told her about his home in Florida and his marital problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soon, she said, he began to invite her to the small desk and office that formed the officer’s station at the center of the housing unit, where he would ask her invasive questions about her sexuality and told her he liked small breasts. One day, he called her over as he was locking up at the end of his shift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12031934\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12031934\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1310\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED-800x524.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED-1020x668.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED-160x105.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED-1536x1006.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED-1920x1258.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A courtroom sketch of former FCI Dublin correctional officer Darrell Wayne Smith watching as a witness gives testimony against him in federal court in Oakland on March 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Vicki Behringer for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Looking down at a clipboard in his hands, he asked her quietly what she might need when she was released, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I said a job, I said a car,” the woman testified. “He said he’d get one for me if I’d be with him at night,” gesturing toward his groin as he responded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The woman said she shook her head and walked away, upset, but Smith’s actions only escalated. He started to comment on her feet when she wore slides to the shower, tried to touch her, and came into her cell when she was alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In early 2020, the woman said, she was beading on her bed when Smith showed up in her doorway. He ordered her to grab a stack of books on top of her white metal storage locker across the cell.[aside postID=news_12031584 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1181905632_qed-1020x680.jpg']“When I reached up, he took off one of my socks and he pointed to my foot. He said, ‘That’s nice,’ and I stood there,” she said. “Then he cupped my butt underneath and in between my legs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next year, the woman said, Smith kissed her, stuck his fingers into her vagina and anus on multiple occasions, and once forced her to touch his penis. She started asking to be transferred to a different prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just wanted a change,” she told attorneys when they questioned why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final time Smith assaulted her, she said, was in the spring of 2021. She was kneeling, facing out to the window at the back of her cell, when he rushed in and stuck his hands down her pants, touching her buttocks, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He laughed and walked away. He thought it was a joke, and I was playing with him,” she testified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Later that day, she said, he came back. She was standing with her back to the closed door, mixing instant coffee into hot water at her locker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12002795\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12002795\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, a prison for women, in Dublin on April 8, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“He came in very fast. He had my arm with his arm, and at the same time, he was trying to put his hands down my pants,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She swatted and tried to push him off, but Smith backed her against a wall, she said. Pinning her by her wrist, she said, Smith reached into her pants and inserted his finger into her anus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just kept trying to fight him off of me,” she testified through tears, looking down as Smith sat across the courtroom. “I was scared, and it brought back flashbacks of other times I had been assaulted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Smith left her room, she said, she heard another woman in the hallway ask him what he had been doing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He said, ‘I’m trying to help her get transferred,’” the woman said, wiping her nose with a tissue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After that, Smith continued to harass her but did not touch her again, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For months, she feared she would be sent to a solitary housing unit or face a retaliatory investigation if she reported him, but she eventually did so in March 2022. Shortly after, she was transferred to a facility in Minnesota. Two weeks ago, she was released to a reentry center, multiple years before her sentence was set to end, after being granted compassionate release because of the abuse she endured at Dublin.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘That was his unit’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The second woman who Smith is charged with abusing said her interactions with him started when she was moved to Housing Unit C during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That was his unit,” she said Tuesday, looking out toward Smith, who sat next to his defense team in a blue button-down shirt. “He bid for the unit and worked doubles. I think he got a lot of attention from that unit, and he liked it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12031931\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12031931\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A courtroom sketch of former FCI Dublin correctional officer Darrell Wayne Smith, right, watching as a witness cries while giving testimony against him on March 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Vicki Behringer for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She said Smith started coming by her cell for a few minutes every now and then while she was reading in bed or making food by her locker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He would comment about my body if he thought I looked nice,” she said. “He told me I had the nicest ass he had ever seen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The woman told Smith that she was dating another woman in the unit, thinking it would get him to stop pursuing her. She said Smith responded by asking if he could watch them have sex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few months after she had moved into Housing Unit C, the woman said she went to the officer’s station to confront Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I told him to leave me alone and said he was causing problems in my relationships,” she told the court. He dismissed her, and she went back upstairs to her room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11972312\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11972312\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"FCI Dublin Women's Prison in Dublin on Aug. 16, 2023.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Federal Correctional Institution Dublin, a women’s prison in the East Bay, on Aug. 16, 2023. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t even make it to the back of the cell before he was in the room, closing the door behind him,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said she had just walked past the room’s toilet and was standing in front of the lockers squeezed into the corner opposite her bed when “he told me to take my clothes off.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said, “to lean over the locker. He put his fingers inside me,” she said. “I felt violated. I was in pain because he was rough. It didn’t feel like a sexual thing, it was an ‘I run shit’ thing … ‘This is my house, and I am going to do what I want.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The woman said Smith pulled back after that. Sometimes, he would stand in her way, forcing her to brush up against him when she passed, she said, but he left her mostly alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was really relieved and hoping that would be the end of it,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But one morning, in the fall or winter of 2020, she said, she was starting the early load on her new job as a laundry orderly for her unit when Smith came into the room behind her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He told me to bend over, and he again put his fingers in my vagina,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The job was one of the few positions that gave women permission to leave their cells during COVID-19 restrictions. Every morning, she would roll out of bed just after 4 a.m. and drag the first load of dirty uniforms down the dark hallway to the laundry room. She said she would be half-asleep as she started the washing machine and stumbled back to her cell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next few months, the woman said, Smith followed her into the laundry room again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt like, ‘When is this going to end?’” she said. “Before he even did it [the second time], I thought he was going to. I heard his keys coming down the hall, and he just said, ‘Bend over.’ It was almost like a routine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The woman said that after the two incidents in the laundry room, she wasn’t assaulted by Smith again. She filed a Prison Rape Elimination Act report against him at the end of 2022 and was released from prison in May, 18 months early, through a compassionate release agreement based on her abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘I felt like I couldn’t do anything’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The third of Smith’s victims who testified this week was also transferred to Housing Unit C in the early days of the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He said, ‘Welcome to my unit,’” the woman recalled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He started being nice to me, getting close to me, talking to me at the balcony outside my room,” she said. “I heard rumors about him. I never thought I was going to go through things like that, but he made me uncomfortable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12031939\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12031939\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1222\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1-800x489.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1-1020x623.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1-160x98.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1-1536x938.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1-1920x1173.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A courtroom sketch shows former FCI Dublin correctional officer Darrell Wayne Smith, right, listen as a witness testifies in federal court in Oakland on March 18, 2025. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Paulson is questioning her, and District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers sits on the bench. \u003ccite>(Vicki Behringer for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He started calling her over to the officer’s station, where he would tell her about his trips to Tijuana and ask about her family, she said. He told her he was attracted to Hispanic women with long hair, like her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If she was lying on her bed when she was supposed to line up for a count or have gotten up for the day, she said Smith would come in her room and spank her, saying she needed to “get ready for him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He began to call her his girlfriend, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I said he was crazy and that I didn’t want to be part of it, I was not his girlfriend,” she told the jury. “He said I would come around.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith started withholding mail her husband had sent, she said, shaking the physical letters over her head while he motioned for her to lift up her shirt. On multiple occasions, he would pull back her shower curtain and stare.[aside postID=news_12031908 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250303-ANTIOCHPOLICE-01-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg']“He would touch me, spank me, rub my back when I was sleeping,” she testified. “He told me to get up and look pretty for [him].”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said he told her that if she didn’t cooperate, he would take away her mail or her telephone and commissary privileges. Once, he ripped up a letter of hers in front of her, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, in September 2020, he came by her cell in the evening. He told her that if she met him in the laundry room after curfew, he would give her a cellphone to call her children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He told me to walk in, and he started touching me,” she said. “I started pushing him away and saying I just wanted to see my kids. He said I needed to earn it. I wasn’t ready for that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The woman said Smith assaulted her three times in the laundry room, sticking his fingers into her anus and vagina and exposing his penis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just closed my eyes and just lost it,” she said. “I felt so disgusted, I felt powerless. I wanted to defend myself. I wanted to do something, and I felt like I couldn’t do anything. Who was I going to ask for help, who was I going to tell?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The last time Smith assaulted her was in the winter of 2020, she said. This time, he told her to go to the janitor’s closet, which was down the dark, sterile hallway from the laundry room she had grown accustomed to meeting him in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said that she knew “he wanted more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He didn’t want to finger me or play with me or just interact with me no more,” she said. “He wanted to hurt me by getting what he wanted, to use me, to have sex with me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith waited for her at the entrance to the hallway that led to the closet and followed behind her, walking slowly in his jeans and cowboy boots, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He just walked toward me and told me to turn around. I wanted to push him away, but I guess he was tired of me, my actions, my mouth,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11997597\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11997597\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sign for the Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, a prison for women, in Dublin on April 8, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Backed into a wall of tall black lockers, she said, she turned around and bent over. He forced her to have sex with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was nothing,” she said quietly in court, pausing as she spoke. “I had no say. I couldn’t defend myself toward somebody who was there to do right for us. Instead of helping, he had done all the wrongs and really hurt me, really damaged me and showed me that I had no way of getting out of it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The woman said that after that, Smith moved on to a new “girlfriend” but continued to harass her. She reported his abuse in December 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said she remained in Dublin until it was abruptly shuttered last April, when she was transferred to a federal prison in Florida. She was also party to a civil suit that was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12018828/prison-sex-abuse-survivor-speaks-on-fci-dublins-cultural-rot-after-record-settlement\">settled in December\u003c/a> and has had her sentence shortened by seven years as part of a compassionate release deal. Smith’s defense pointed out that she was undocumented when she was arrested and will likely be granted a U-visa — which is set aside for victims of certain crimes — for aiding the government in Smith’s trial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, she said, Smith’s “abuse broke me, it finished me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no money, there’s no visa that would change anything. Not even me looking at my kids would change the damage that he cost me,” she said. “It is more painful than anything, and I don’t think I can recover from it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Three women named in the case against former FCI Dublin officer Darrell Wayne Smith have testified against him so far. This is what they say they endured under his watch.",
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"title": "In Court, Women Detail Abuse by East Bay Federal Prison Officer: ‘It Finished Me’ | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Warning: This story contains graphic language and descriptions of sexual violence.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12031367/for-years-abuse-plagued-an-east-bay-prison-dubbed-the-rape-club-one-trial-remains\">Darrell Wayne Smith\u003c/a> had a reputation as a correctional officer at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/fci-dublin\">FCI Dublin\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Women incarcerated at the East Bay federal prison said he patrolled housing units wearing a cowboy hat and boots, often leaving his shirts unbuttoned with nothing underneath. When he wasn’t making rounds, they said, he sat back in his chair at the officer’s desk, kicking his feet up and leering at women as they walked by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He made passing sexual comments and locked women in cells when they broke the rules, ordering them to flash him to get out or to be awarded special privileges, women testified in federal court in Oakland this week. Whenever new women arrived at the prison, they said they were warned about Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Officers were known for several things, but he was the officer that walked around with his shirt open, kind of cowboy style, not professional at all,” said one woman, who remembers learning his nickname, “Dirty Dick Smith,” soon after she arrived at Dublin in 2017.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He carried himself in a different way than other officers,” she said. “He was always talking to the girls in inappropriate ways or trying to get with all the girls. Kind of flirtatious.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I heard rumors about him,” another woman told the jury. “But I never thought I was going to go through things like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12031936\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12031936\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-3A-KQED-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A courtroom sketch of a witness giving testimony under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sailaja Paidipaty in the trial of former FCI Dublin correctional officer Darrell Wayne Smith in Oakland on March 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Vicki Behringer for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>They are among eight women who have testified that Smith’s harassment went much further. Although they used their first names in court, KQED does not identify survivors of sexual assault.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith is charged with 15 counts of sexual abuse and related crimes against five women who were incarcerated at FCI Dublin between 2016 and 2021. The low-security women’s prison was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11982973/feds-abruptly-close-east-bay-womens-prison-following-sexual-abuse-scandals\">shut down last year\u003c/a> after a sprawling federal investigation revealed a culture of abuse, retaliation and cover-ups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eight officers were charged in the fallout. Smith, whose \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12031584/east-bay-prison-sex-abuse-trial-opens-account-guards-ultimate-control\">trial began Monday\u003c/a> and will continue next week, is the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12031367/for-years-abuse-plagued-an-east-bay-prison-dubbed-the-rape-club-one-trial-remains\">last to be tried\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three women named in Smith’s case have testified against him so far. This is what they say they endured under his watch.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘He thought it was a joke’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The first woman who took the stand on Monday, wrapped in an oversized black coat with her long dark hair pulled tightly into a bun, recalled meeting Smith while picking up her mail. She had just arrived at FCI Dublin and said he tried to connect with her about her Native heritage and told her about his home in Florida and his marital problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soon, she said, he began to invite her to the small desk and office that formed the officer’s station at the center of the housing unit, where he would ask her invasive questions about her sexuality and told her he liked small breasts. One day, he called her over as he was locking up at the end of his shift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12031934\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12031934\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1310\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED-800x524.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED-1020x668.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED-160x105.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED-1536x1006.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-2B-KQED-1920x1258.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A courtroom sketch of former FCI Dublin correctional officer Darrell Wayne Smith watching as a witness gives testimony against him in federal court in Oakland on March 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Vicki Behringer for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Looking down at a clipboard in his hands, he asked her quietly what she might need when she was released, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I said a job, I said a car,” the woman testified. “He said he’d get one for me if I’d be with him at night,” gesturing toward his groin as he responded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The woman said she shook her head and walked away, upset, but Smith’s actions only escalated. He started to comment on her feet when she wore slides to the shower, tried to touch her, and came into her cell when she was alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In early 2020, the woman said, she was beading on her bed when Smith showed up in her doorway. He ordered her to grab a stack of books on top of her white metal storage locker across the cell.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“When I reached up, he took off one of my socks and he pointed to my foot. He said, ‘That’s nice,’ and I stood there,” she said. “Then he cupped my butt underneath and in between my legs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next year, the woman said, Smith kissed her, stuck his fingers into her vagina and anus on multiple occasions, and once forced her to touch his penis. She started asking to be transferred to a different prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just wanted a change,” she told attorneys when they questioned why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final time Smith assaulted her, she said, was in the spring of 2021. She was kneeling, facing out to the window at the back of her cell, when he rushed in and stuck his hands down her pants, touching her buttocks, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He laughed and walked away. He thought it was a joke, and I was playing with him,” she testified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Later that day, she said, he came back. She was standing with her back to the closed door, mixing instant coffee into hot water at her locker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12002795\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12002795\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, a prison for women, in Dublin on April 8, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“He came in very fast. He had my arm with his arm, and at the same time, he was trying to put his hands down my pants,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She swatted and tried to push him off, but Smith backed her against a wall, she said. Pinning her by her wrist, she said, Smith reached into her pants and inserted his finger into her anus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just kept trying to fight him off of me,” she testified through tears, looking down as Smith sat across the courtroom. “I was scared, and it brought back flashbacks of other times I had been assaulted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Smith left her room, she said, she heard another woman in the hallway ask him what he had been doing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He said, ‘I’m trying to help her get transferred,’” the woman said, wiping her nose with a tissue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After that, Smith continued to harass her but did not touch her again, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For months, she feared she would be sent to a solitary housing unit or face a retaliatory investigation if she reported him, but she eventually did so in March 2022. Shortly after, she was transferred to a facility in Minnesota. Two weeks ago, she was released to a reentry center, multiple years before her sentence was set to end, after being granted compassionate release because of the abuse she endured at Dublin.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘That was his unit’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The second woman who Smith is charged with abusing said her interactions with him started when she was moved to Housing Unit C during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That was his unit,” she said Tuesday, looking out toward Smith, who sat next to his defense team in a blue button-down shirt. “He bid for the unit and worked doubles. I think he got a lot of attention from that unit, and he liked it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12031931\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12031931\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1B-KQED-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A courtroom sketch of former FCI Dublin correctional officer Darrell Wayne Smith, right, watching as a witness cries while giving testimony against him on March 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Vicki Behringer for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She said Smith started coming by her cell for a few minutes every now and then while she was reading in bed or making food by her locker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He would comment about my body if he thought I looked nice,” she said. “He told me I had the nicest ass he had ever seen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The woman told Smith that she was dating another woman in the unit, thinking it would get him to stop pursuing her. She said Smith responded by asking if he could watch them have sex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few months after she had moved into Housing Unit C, the woman said she went to the officer’s station to confront Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I told him to leave me alone and said he was causing problems in my relationships,” she told the court. He dismissed her, and she went back upstairs to her room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11972312\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11972312\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"FCI Dublin Women's Prison in Dublin on Aug. 16, 2023.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Federal Correctional Institution Dublin, a women’s prison in the East Bay, on Aug. 16, 2023. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t even make it to the back of the cell before he was in the room, closing the door behind him,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said she had just walked past the room’s toilet and was standing in front of the lockers squeezed into the corner opposite her bed when “he told me to take my clothes off.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said, “to lean over the locker. He put his fingers inside me,” she said. “I felt violated. I was in pain because he was rough. It didn’t feel like a sexual thing, it was an ‘I run shit’ thing … ‘This is my house, and I am going to do what I want.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The woman said Smith pulled back after that. Sometimes, he would stand in her way, forcing her to brush up against him when she passed, she said, but he left her mostly alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was really relieved and hoping that would be the end of it,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But one morning, in the fall or winter of 2020, she said, she was starting the early load on her new job as a laundry orderly for her unit when Smith came into the room behind her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He told me to bend over, and he again put his fingers in my vagina,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The job was one of the few positions that gave women permission to leave their cells during COVID-19 restrictions. Every morning, she would roll out of bed just after 4 a.m. and drag the first load of dirty uniforms down the dark hallway to the laundry room. She said she would be half-asleep as she started the washing machine and stumbled back to her cell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next few months, the woman said, Smith followed her into the laundry room again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt like, ‘When is this going to end?’” she said. “Before he even did it [the second time], I thought he was going to. I heard his keys coming down the hall, and he just said, ‘Bend over.’ It was almost like a routine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The woman said that after the two incidents in the laundry room, she wasn’t assaulted by Smith again. She filed a Prison Rape Elimination Act report against him at the end of 2022 and was released from prison in May, 18 months early, through a compassionate release agreement based on her abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘I felt like I couldn’t do anything’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The third of Smith’s victims who testified this week was also transferred to Housing Unit C in the early days of the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He said, ‘Welcome to my unit,’” the woman recalled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He started being nice to me, getting close to me, talking to me at the balcony outside my room,” she said. “I heard rumors about him. I never thought I was going to go through things like that, but he made me uncomfortable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12031939\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12031939\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1222\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1-800x489.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1-1020x623.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1-160x98.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1-1536x938.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250318-FCI-DUBLIN-VB-1-KQED-1-1920x1173.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A courtroom sketch shows former FCI Dublin correctional officer Darrell Wayne Smith, right, listen as a witness testifies in federal court in Oakland on March 18, 2025. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Paulson is questioning her, and District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers sits on the bench. \u003ccite>(Vicki Behringer for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He started calling her over to the officer’s station, where he would tell her about his trips to Tijuana and ask about her family, she said. He told her he was attracted to Hispanic women with long hair, like her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If she was lying on her bed when she was supposed to line up for a count or have gotten up for the day, she said Smith would come in her room and spank her, saying she needed to “get ready for him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He began to call her his girlfriend, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I said he was crazy and that I didn’t want to be part of it, I was not his girlfriend,” she told the jury. “He said I would come around.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith started withholding mail her husband had sent, she said, shaking the physical letters over her head while he motioned for her to lift up her shirt. On multiple occasions, he would pull back her shower curtain and stare.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“He would touch me, spank me, rub my back when I was sleeping,” she testified. “He told me to get up and look pretty for [him].”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said he told her that if she didn’t cooperate, he would take away her mail or her telephone and commissary privileges. Once, he ripped up a letter of hers in front of her, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, in September 2020, he came by her cell in the evening. He told her that if she met him in the laundry room after curfew, he would give her a cellphone to call her children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He told me to walk in, and he started touching me,” she said. “I started pushing him away and saying I just wanted to see my kids. He said I needed to earn it. I wasn’t ready for that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The woman said Smith assaulted her three times in the laundry room, sticking his fingers into her anus and vagina and exposing his penis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just closed my eyes and just lost it,” she said. “I felt so disgusted, I felt powerless. I wanted to defend myself. I wanted to do something, and I felt like I couldn’t do anything. Who was I going to ask for help, who was I going to tell?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The last time Smith assaulted her was in the winter of 2020, she said. This time, he told her to go to the janitor’s closet, which was down the dark, sterile hallway from the laundry room she had grown accustomed to meeting him in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said that she knew “he wanted more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He didn’t want to finger me or play with me or just interact with me no more,” she said. “He wanted to hurt me by getting what he wanted, to use me, to have sex with me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith waited for her at the entrance to the hallway that led to the closet and followed behind her, walking slowly in his jeans and cowboy boots, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He just walked toward me and told me to turn around. I wanted to push him away, but I guess he was tired of me, my actions, my mouth,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11997597\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11997597\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sign for the Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, a prison for women, in Dublin on April 8, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Backed into a wall of tall black lockers, she said, she turned around and bent over. He forced her to have sex with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was nothing,” she said quietly in court, pausing as she spoke. “I had no say. I couldn’t defend myself toward somebody who was there to do right for us. Instead of helping, he had done all the wrongs and really hurt me, really damaged me and showed me that I had no way of getting out of it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The woman said that after that, Smith moved on to a new “girlfriend” but continued to harass her. She reported his abuse in December 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said she remained in Dublin until it was abruptly shuttered last April, when she was transferred to a federal prison in Florida. She was also party to a civil suit that was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12018828/prison-sex-abuse-survivor-speaks-on-fci-dublins-cultural-rot-after-record-settlement\">settled in December\u003c/a> and has had her sentence shortened by seven years as part of a compassionate release deal. Smith’s defense pointed out that she was undocumented when she was arrested and will likely be granted a U-visa — which is set aside for victims of certain crimes — for aiding the government in Smith’s trial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, she said, Smith’s “abuse broke me, it finished me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no money, there’s no visa that would change anything. Not even me looking at my kids would change the damage that he cost me,” she said. “It is more painful than anything, and I don’t think I can recover from it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>As the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12031367/for-years-abuse-plagued-an-east-bay-prison-dubbed-the-rape-club-one-trial-remains\">final criminal trial\u003c/a> against a former official at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/fci-dublin\">FCI Dublin\u003c/a> began Monday, prosecutors described a culture of abuse, retaliation and cover-up that they said allowed him to sexually abuse women incarcerated at the now-shuttered East Bay prison for six years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They said \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11983422/another-former-fci-dublin-officer-facing-criminal-charges-is-scheduled-for-trial\">Darrell Wayne Smith\u003c/a> — whose case stemmed from a larger investigation into the prison known by former workers and incarcerated women as\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11904298/ap-investigation-dublin-womens-prison-fostered-culture-of-abuse\"> the “rape club”\u003c/a> — threatened, bribed and held power over the heads of five women he is accused of sexually abusing while working as a correctional officer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Defendant Darrell Smith liked power, and he abused that power,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sailaja Paidipaty said during her opening statement. “He abused his power when he fondled [one victim’s] breasts. He abused his power when he pinned her against a wall and shoved his fingers into her anus. … He used his power for many years to sexually abuse many women.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith is one of eight former correctional officers and high-ranking officials who were criminally charged in the sprawling probe into FCI Dublin. The other seven, including the prison’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11934639/ex-warden-of-dublin-womens-prison-convicted-of-sexually-abusing-inmates\">former warden\u003c/a>, have all been sentenced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Known as “Dirty Dick Smith” in court documents, he faces six counts of sexual abuse of a ward, seven counts of abusive sexual contact, one count of aggravated sexual abuse, and one count of deprivation of rights by bestowing cruel and unusual punishment. If convicted, he could face a lifetime sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11972312\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11972312\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"FCI Dublin Women's Prison in Dublin on Aug. 16, 2023.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Federal Correctional Institution Dublin, a women’s prison in the East Bay, on Aug. 16, 2023. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Women who were formerly incarcerated at FCI Dublin plan to testify that Smith made sexual comments toward them, forced them to lift up their tops in front of him, penetrated them with his fingers as they slept, and even forced them to have sex with him, Paidipaty said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of Smith’s abuse happened in the housing units on that property,” where he was often the only guard, she told the jury. “This is where the women lived, where they slept at night, where they showered, where they did their laundry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For these units, Smith had ultimate control.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His defense said that the picture of Smith’s time as a correctional officer would be incomplete, though.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12031367 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/240408-FCIDublin-016-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You will not see DNA evidence, you will not see any other forensic evidence, physical evidence of a sexual assault,” attorney Joanna Sheridan said in opening statements. “You will not see any surveillance video of Mr. Smith touching an inmate. You might want to pause and think about that, considering that this is a prison, a highly secured facility.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sheridan foreshadowed a strategy of attempting to discredit witness testimony — “These are women who … were there because they committed felony offenses,” she said — and pushed back against the prosecution’s depiction of the power hierarchy of the prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Inmates figure out how to get what they want,” she told jurors. “They learn how to manipulate the system. They learn how to manipulate staff and [Bureau of Prison] management to benefit their interests.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since 2021, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12018828/prison-sex-abuse-survivor-speaks-on-fci-dublins-cultural-rot-after-record-settlement\">more than 100 women\u003c/a> have come forward alleging sexual misconduct by officials at FCI Dublin. Last year, the Federal Bureau of Prisons acknowledged the damage done at the facility with a $116 million settlement split among 103 women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11987297\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11987297\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240408-FCIDublin-008-BL_qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240408-FCIDublin-008-BL_qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240408-FCIDublin-008-BL_qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240408-FCIDublin-008-BL_qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240408-FCIDublin-008-BL_qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240408-FCIDublin-008-BL_qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, a prison for women, in Dublin on April 8, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Sixty-three civil suits have been filed against the prison and its officials since 2021, and FCI Dublin was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11982973/feds-abruptly-close-east-bay-womens-prison-following-sexual-abuse-scandals\">abruptly closed last April\u003c/a>, a month after an FBI raid and just weeks after a judge appointed the first-ever special master to the Bureau of Prisons to oversee changes at Dublin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Special master Wendy Still’s report on the institution, unsealed in August, said that women could not easily obtain forms used to lodge complaints and that to “obtain any of the forms necessary to file a remedy at any level, the [woman] had to request the form from staff and justify the need for the form which had a chilling effect” and made women “fearful of retaliation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Reporting an officer in prison is risky,” Paidipaty said during her opening statement for the prosecution. “You can face retaliation, and in fact, you’ll hear from some women about the consequences that they’ve faced when they tried to speak up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said that in the coming days of the trial, more than a dozen women will likely take the stand to testify about the abuse they faced from Smith or to corroborate the reports of those who were harmed around them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Within the walls of that prison, those women felt powerless,” she said. “Smith did what he wanted, and when he wanted, for years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/shossaini\">Sara Hossaini\u003c/a> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Darrell Wayne Smith is the final former FCI Dublin official to face trial after a sprawling abuse investigation into the now-shuttered federal prison.",
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"title": "East Bay Prison Sex Abuse Trial Opens With Account of Guard’s ‘Ultimate Control’ | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12031367/for-years-abuse-plagued-an-east-bay-prison-dubbed-the-rape-club-one-trial-remains\">final criminal trial\u003c/a> against a former official at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/fci-dublin\">FCI Dublin\u003c/a> began Monday, prosecutors described a culture of abuse, retaliation and cover-up that they said allowed him to sexually abuse women incarcerated at the now-shuttered East Bay prison for six years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They said \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11983422/another-former-fci-dublin-officer-facing-criminal-charges-is-scheduled-for-trial\">Darrell Wayne Smith\u003c/a> — whose case stemmed from a larger investigation into the prison known by former workers and incarcerated women as\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11904298/ap-investigation-dublin-womens-prison-fostered-culture-of-abuse\"> the “rape club”\u003c/a> — threatened, bribed and held power over the heads of five women he is accused of sexually abusing while working as a correctional officer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Defendant Darrell Smith liked power, and he abused that power,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sailaja Paidipaty said during her opening statement. “He abused his power when he fondled [one victim’s] breasts. He abused his power when he pinned her against a wall and shoved his fingers into her anus. … He used his power for many years to sexually abuse many women.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith is one of eight former correctional officers and high-ranking officials who were criminally charged in the sprawling probe into FCI Dublin. The other seven, including the prison’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11934639/ex-warden-of-dublin-womens-prison-convicted-of-sexually-abusing-inmates\">former warden\u003c/a>, have all been sentenced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Known as “Dirty Dick Smith” in court documents, he faces six counts of sexual abuse of a ward, seven counts of abusive sexual contact, one count of aggravated sexual abuse, and one count of deprivation of rights by bestowing cruel and unusual punishment. If convicted, he could face a lifetime sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11972312\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11972312\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"FCI Dublin Women's Prison in Dublin on Aug. 16, 2023.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/01/240111-FCI-DUBLIN-MD-01-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Federal Correctional Institution Dublin, a women’s prison in the East Bay, on Aug. 16, 2023. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Women who were formerly incarcerated at FCI Dublin plan to testify that Smith made sexual comments toward them, forced them to lift up their tops in front of him, penetrated them with his fingers as they slept, and even forced them to have sex with him, Paidipaty said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of Smith’s abuse happened in the housing units on that property,” where he was often the only guard, she told the jury. “This is where the women lived, where they slept at night, where they showered, where they did their laundry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For these units, Smith had ultimate control.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His defense said that the picture of Smith’s time as a correctional officer would be incomplete, though.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You will not see DNA evidence, you will not see any other forensic evidence, physical evidence of a sexual assault,” attorney Joanna Sheridan said in opening statements. “You will not see any surveillance video of Mr. Smith touching an inmate. You might want to pause and think about that, considering that this is a prison, a highly secured facility.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sheridan foreshadowed a strategy of attempting to discredit witness testimony — “These are women who … were there because they committed felony offenses,” she said — and pushed back against the prosecution’s depiction of the power hierarchy of the prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Inmates figure out how to get what they want,” she told jurors. “They learn how to manipulate the system. They learn how to manipulate staff and [Bureau of Prison] management to benefit their interests.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since 2021, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12018828/prison-sex-abuse-survivor-speaks-on-fci-dublins-cultural-rot-after-record-settlement\">more than 100 women\u003c/a> have come forward alleging sexual misconduct by officials at FCI Dublin. Last year, the Federal Bureau of Prisons acknowledged the damage done at the facility with a $116 million settlement split among 103 women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11987297\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11987297\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240408-FCIDublin-008-BL_qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240408-FCIDublin-008-BL_qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240408-FCIDublin-008-BL_qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240408-FCIDublin-008-BL_qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240408-FCIDublin-008-BL_qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240408-FCIDublin-008-BL_qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, a prison for women, in Dublin on April 8, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Sixty-three civil suits have been filed against the prison and its officials since 2021, and FCI Dublin was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11982973/feds-abruptly-close-east-bay-womens-prison-following-sexual-abuse-scandals\">abruptly closed last April\u003c/a>, a month after an FBI raid and just weeks after a judge appointed the first-ever special master to the Bureau of Prisons to oversee changes at Dublin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Special master Wendy Still’s report on the institution, unsealed in August, said that women could not easily obtain forms used to lodge complaints and that to “obtain any of the forms necessary to file a remedy at any level, the [woman] had to request the form from staff and justify the need for the form which had a chilling effect” and made women “fearful of retaliation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Reporting an officer in prison is risky,” Paidipaty said during her opening statement for the prosecution. “You can face retaliation, and in fact, you’ll hear from some women about the consequences that they’ve faced when they tried to speak up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said that in the coming days of the trial, more than a dozen women will likely take the stand to testify about the abuse they faced from Smith or to corroborate the reports of those who were harmed around them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Within the walls of that prison, those women felt powerless,” she said. “Smith did what he wanted, and when he wanted, for years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/shossaini\">Sara Hossaini\u003c/a> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "for-years-abuse-plagued-an-east-bay-prison-dubbed-the-rape-club-one-trial-remains",
"title": "For Years, Abuse Plagued an East Bay Prison Dubbed the ‘Rape Club.’ One Trial Remains",
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"headTitle": "For Years, Abuse Plagued an East Bay Prison Dubbed the ‘Rape Club.’ One Trial Remains | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>While she was incarcerated at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/fci-dublin\">FCI Dublin\u003c/a>, one woman says in court documents, her father died. Her mail from her husband was withheld, her calls to him were cut off, and she fell into a depression.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, a correctional officer at the East Bay federal prison seemed to offer her a lifeline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11983422/another-former-fci-dublin-officer-facing-criminal-charges-is-scheduled-for-trial\">Darrell Wayne Smith\u003c/a> told her that if she met him in the prison’s laundry room, he would give her a cellphone so she could have a video visit with her children, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when she arrived, she said, he put his hands on her breasts and buttocks. According to court documents, she alleges that when she asked about calling her kids, Smith “told her she had to cooperate with him first.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith had blocked her communication, she said, and would come to her cell, force her to walk around and spank her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between September 2020 and January 2021, the woman said, Smith got her alone and subjected her to unwanted sexual acts — first by promising contact with her family, and later by threatening trouble if she didn’t comply or by grabbing her physically. She alleges that he made her “model” lingerie, penetrated her with his fingers and ordered her to have sex with him.[aside postID=news_11983422 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/04/240408-FCIDublin-002-BL_qut-1020x680.jpg']After Smith had assaulted her multiple times, the woman told him that she wanted “what was going on between them” to stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Smith responded that she had no choice, and it would not stop until he wanted it to stop,” according to court documents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of the eight former FCI Dublin officers charged in a sprawling investigation into the prison’s widespread culture of abuse, retaliation and cover-ups, Smith is the last whose fate is uncertain. His trial on 15 counts of abuse and deprivation of civil rights is set to begin Monday in federal court in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12018828/prison-sex-abuse-survivor-speaks-on-fci-dublins-cultural-rot-after-record-settlement\">More than 100 women\u003c/a> have come forward alleging sexual misconduct by correctional officers and high-ranking officials at the low-security women’s prison, which was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11982973/feds-abruptly-close-east-bay-womens-prison-following-sexual-abuse-scandals\">shuttered last April\u003c/a> after the yearslong investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This trial is something a lot of women have been looking forward to … and are going to be paying attention to and hoping for a just outcome in,” said Jae Oh, who represented three women who made claims against Smith in civil cases, including the one who said she was isolated and abused by him in 2020 and 2021. KQED does not identify victims of sexual violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This “will be sort of the last bookend step in this very long process where we’ve been repeatedly trying to get the truth and accountability for everything that these women have gone through,” Oh told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Known as “Dirty Dick Clark,” Smith, 55, faces six counts of sexual abuse of a ward, seven counts of abusive sexual contact, one count of aggravated sexual abuse, and one count of deprivation of rights by bestowing cruel and unusual punishment. If convicted, he could face a lifetime sentence.[aside postID=news_12018828 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg']“The defendant’s alleged actions are some of the most disturbing charges we’ve seen for a former federal corrections officer,” Michael Nordwall, executive assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, said in a statement when Smith’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11997595/former-east-bay-prison-officer-charged-with-more-sex-crimes-against-women-in-his-custody\">indictment was expanded to add new charges\u003c/a> last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith is accused of digitally penetrating five women as far back as 2016, some on multiple occasions, and forcing one to have intercourse with him while one of the other victims “stood outside to serve as a lookout.” He often bribed them to get them alone and threatened retaliation if they didn’t comply, according to court documents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That fear of retaliation loomed over many women who were “very scared about participating in this process” by filing complaints against FCI Dublin officers, Oh said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some who did were sent to the solitary housing unit, she said, where they lost contact with their families, recreation time and credit for good behavior that could have shortened their time in prison. Another \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12018828/prison-sex-abuse-survivor-speaks-on-fci-dublins-cultural-rot-after-record-settlement\">told KQED she lost visitation privileges\u003c/a>, phone and commissary access, and was barred from speaking with lawyers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some women who are still incarcerated after being transferred to other facilities have not come forward with their stories of abuse at FCI Dublin because of the power imbalance they face, Oh said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Correctional officers “know where the security cameras are; they know who the women will talk to; they get access to their emails, their phone calls, their mails,” she told KQED. “That great power differential and the fact that these women are reliant on the officers day in and day out for food, for recreation time, for mail, for phone calls to family — I think they just feel powerless.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the sentences against the seven other FCI Dublin officers, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11934639/ex-warden-of-dublin-womens-prison-convicted-of-sexually-abusing-inmates\">former warden Ray Garcia\u003c/a>, have shown the power of women coming forward, Oh said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Validating their stories and their concerns has been very meaningful because time and time again with the other criminal cases up until now, we’ve seen that there is power in the victims’ voices when they speak up,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The years of staff violence at FCI Dublin, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11904298/ap-investigation-dublin-womens-prison-fostered-culture-of-abuse\">dubbed the “rape club”\u003c/a> by workers and women incarcerated there, was first reported in a 2021 Associated Press investigation. The prison is facing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11978712/infamous-east-bay-womens-prison-hit-with-12-additional-sexual-assault-lawsuits\">more than 60 lawsuits\u003c/a> alleging sexual assault and retaliation by prison officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Federal Bureau of Prisons also faces a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11987292/trial-for-class-action-lawsuit-over-troubled-womens-prison-slated-for-june-2025\">class-action lawsuit\u003c/a> brought on behalf of women who were formerly incarcerated at FCI Dublin, including some who were transferred to other federal facilities after its closure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is unconscionable that any correctional agency could allow incarcerated individuals under their control and responsibility to be subject to the conditions that existed at FCI-Dublin for such an extended period of time without correction,” read a report by court-appointed special master Wendy Still, who was tasked with overseeing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11982014/judge-chooses-top-pick-for-special-master-to-oversee-womens-prison-following-rampant-abuse\">changes at the site\u003c/a> — the first time such an appointment was made in the history of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still’s report, unsealed by a judge in August, also says she worried about “the mistreatment, neglect and abuse” that women suffered at Dublin being repeated after they were transferred, “as many of the conditions that existed at this facility appear to be longstanding and systemic in nature.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "The federal trial of former FCI Dublin officer Darrell Wayne Smith is set to begin in Oakland. Seven others have been sentenced after a sprawling sexual abuse investigation.",
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"title": "For Years, Abuse Plagued an East Bay Prison Dubbed the ‘Rape Club.’ One Trial Remains | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>While she was incarcerated at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/fci-dublin\">FCI Dublin\u003c/a>, one woman says in court documents, her father died. Her mail from her husband was withheld, her calls to him were cut off, and she fell into a depression.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, a correctional officer at the East Bay federal prison seemed to offer her a lifeline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11983422/another-former-fci-dublin-officer-facing-criminal-charges-is-scheduled-for-trial\">Darrell Wayne Smith\u003c/a> told her that if she met him in the prison’s laundry room, he would give her a cellphone so she could have a video visit with her children, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when she arrived, she said, he put his hands on her breasts and buttocks. According to court documents, she alleges that when she asked about calling her kids, Smith “told her she had to cooperate with him first.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith had blocked her communication, she said, and would come to her cell, force her to walk around and spank her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between September 2020 and January 2021, the woman said, Smith got her alone and subjected her to unwanted sexual acts — first by promising contact with her family, and later by threatening trouble if she didn’t comply or by grabbing her physically. She alleges that he made her “model” lingerie, penetrated her with his fingers and ordered her to have sex with him.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>After Smith had assaulted her multiple times, the woman told him that she wanted “what was going on between them” to stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Smith responded that she had no choice, and it would not stop until he wanted it to stop,” according to court documents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of the eight former FCI Dublin officers charged in a sprawling investigation into the prison’s widespread culture of abuse, retaliation and cover-ups, Smith is the last whose fate is uncertain. His trial on 15 counts of abuse and deprivation of civil rights is set to begin Monday in federal court in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12018828/prison-sex-abuse-survivor-speaks-on-fci-dublins-cultural-rot-after-record-settlement\">More than 100 women\u003c/a> have come forward alleging sexual misconduct by correctional officers and high-ranking officials at the low-security women’s prison, which was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11982973/feds-abruptly-close-east-bay-womens-prison-following-sexual-abuse-scandals\">shuttered last April\u003c/a> after the yearslong investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This trial is something a lot of women have been looking forward to … and are going to be paying attention to and hoping for a just outcome in,” said Jae Oh, who represented three women who made claims against Smith in civil cases, including the one who said she was isolated and abused by him in 2020 and 2021. KQED does not identify victims of sexual violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This “will be sort of the last bookend step in this very long process where we’ve been repeatedly trying to get the truth and accountability for everything that these women have gone through,” Oh told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Known as “Dirty Dick Clark,” Smith, 55, faces six counts of sexual abuse of a ward, seven counts of abusive sexual contact, one count of aggravated sexual abuse, and one count of deprivation of rights by bestowing cruel and unusual punishment. If convicted, he could face a lifetime sentence.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“The defendant’s alleged actions are some of the most disturbing charges we’ve seen for a former federal corrections officer,” Michael Nordwall, executive assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, said in a statement when Smith’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11997595/former-east-bay-prison-officer-charged-with-more-sex-crimes-against-women-in-his-custody\">indictment was expanded to add new charges\u003c/a> last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith is accused of digitally penetrating five women as far back as 2016, some on multiple occasions, and forcing one to have intercourse with him while one of the other victims “stood outside to serve as a lookout.” He often bribed them to get them alone and threatened retaliation if they didn’t comply, according to court documents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That fear of retaliation loomed over many women who were “very scared about participating in this process” by filing complaints against FCI Dublin officers, Oh said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some who did were sent to the solitary housing unit, she said, where they lost contact with their families, recreation time and credit for good behavior that could have shortened their time in prison. Another \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12018828/prison-sex-abuse-survivor-speaks-on-fci-dublins-cultural-rot-after-record-settlement\">told KQED she lost visitation privileges\u003c/a>, phone and commissary access, and was barred from speaking with lawyers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some women who are still incarcerated after being transferred to other facilities have not come forward with their stories of abuse at FCI Dublin because of the power imbalance they face, Oh said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Correctional officers “know where the security cameras are; they know who the women will talk to; they get access to their emails, their phone calls, their mails,” she told KQED. “That great power differential and the fact that these women are reliant on the officers day in and day out for food, for recreation time, for mail, for phone calls to family — I think they just feel powerless.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the sentences against the seven other FCI Dublin officers, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11934639/ex-warden-of-dublin-womens-prison-convicted-of-sexually-abusing-inmates\">former warden Ray Garcia\u003c/a>, have shown the power of women coming forward, Oh said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Validating their stories and their concerns has been very meaningful because time and time again with the other criminal cases up until now, we’ve seen that there is power in the victims’ voices when they speak up,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The years of staff violence at FCI Dublin, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11904298/ap-investigation-dublin-womens-prison-fostered-culture-of-abuse\">dubbed the “rape club”\u003c/a> by workers and women incarcerated there, was first reported in a 2021 Associated Press investigation. The prison is facing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11978712/infamous-east-bay-womens-prison-hit-with-12-additional-sexual-assault-lawsuits\">more than 60 lawsuits\u003c/a> alleging sexual assault and retaliation by prison officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Federal Bureau of Prisons also faces a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11987292/trial-for-class-action-lawsuit-over-troubled-womens-prison-slated-for-june-2025\">class-action lawsuit\u003c/a> brought on behalf of women who were formerly incarcerated at FCI Dublin, including some who were transferred to other federal facilities after its closure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is unconscionable that any correctional agency could allow incarcerated individuals under their control and responsibility to be subject to the conditions that existed at FCI-Dublin for such an extended period of time without correction,” read a report by court-appointed special master Wendy Still, who was tasked with overseeing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11982014/judge-chooses-top-pick-for-special-master-to-oversee-womens-prison-following-rampant-abuse\">changes at the site\u003c/a> — the first time such an appointment was made in the history of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still’s report, unsealed by a judge in August, also says she worried about “the mistreatment, neglect and abuse” that women suffered at Dublin being repeated after they were transferred, “as many of the conditions that existed at this facility appear to be longstanding and systemic in nature.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "prison-sex-abuse-survivor-speaks-on-fci-dublins-cultural-rot-after-record-settlement",
"title": "Prison Sex Abuse Survivor Speaks on FCI Dublin’s ‘Cultural Rot’ After Record Settlement",
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"headTitle": "Prison Sex Abuse Survivor Speaks on FCI Dublin’s ‘Cultural Rot’ After Record Settlement | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>When Darlene Baker entered \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/fci-dublin\">FCI Dublin\u003c/a> in April 2022, she had heard about the sexual abuse allegations that plagued the prison. The month before she arrived, the Bureau of Prisons had been there promising to improve reporting protocol, and the warden and a chaplain were facing criminal charges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Baker said that after she was forced into a back room of the medical building and assaulted by an officer who was supposed to be administering care, she discovered just how pervasive the culture of sexual misconduct, retaliation and cover-up at the East Bay facility was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a cultural rot,” Baker, 60, told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Tuesday, the federal government acknowledged the damage done at FCI Dublin, granting a $116 million settlement — the largest for sexual assault survivors in U.S. prison history — to 103 women, including Baker, who were formerly incarcerated at the now-shuttered facility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For much of her 11 months in the prison, Baker faced retaliation for reporting her abuser. She was denied visits with her family; her phone and commissary access were cut off; she was barred from speaking with her lawyer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was also forced to return to the medical office and interact with the officer who she said had assaulted her to receive necessary care or medications. She said the final words he spoke to her, the day before she was scheduled for early release, were: “he knew where I lived, and he would be up to have a drink with me at some point.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My release was canceled the next morning,” Baker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 100 women have come forward with experiences like Baker’s since a 2021 \u003cem>Associated Press\u003c/em> investigation revealed that the facility, dubbed the “rape club” by workers and women imprisoned there, had a long history of enabling sexual abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an affirmation that sexual abuse of female prisoners will not be tolerated in this society,” attorney Jessica Pride, who represents plaintiffs in the case, said of this week’s settlement. “The Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice now have 116 million reasons why they will make sure that prisoners will not be sexually abused under their watch.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, the Bureau of Prisons said it condemns all sexually abusive behavior and “takes seriously its duty to protect the individuals in [its] custody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bureau “remains committed to rooting out criminal behavior and holding accountable those who violate their oath of office,” the statement continues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The global settlement was divided among the women based on in-depth interviews with two former judges, who listened to their accounts of abuse and reviewed their treatment records. Individuals received $500,000 to $1.6 million each, Pride said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The settlement is the latest legal victory for women who were incarcerated at FCI Dublin, which the Bureau of Prisons said this month \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12017117/east-bay-federal-prison-plagued-sex-abuse-scandal-close-permanently\">will close permanently\u003c/a> after it was abruptly cleared out and shuttered in April. The women are also in the process of settling a class-action lawsuit aimed at protecting women who remain incarcerated elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11958364\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11958364\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A person with glasses speaks into a microphone in an outdoor setting.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jane Courant speaks in front of the federal courthouse in Oakland as part of the announcement of a class-action lawsuit over sexual abuse by guards at FCI Dublin on Aug. 16, 2023. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Eight former FCI Dublin employees, including the warden and chaplain, have been charged with sex crimes since 2021; seven have already been sentenced, and the eighth is set to go to trial in March on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12002790/fci-dublin-officer-pleads-not-guilty-after-facing-new-sex-abuse-charges\">15 charges that could carry a potential life sentence\u003c/a>. More than 20 others who have been accused of sexual misconduct and retaliation, including the medical officer Baker said assaulted her, are being investigated, according to Pride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It just was top-down, from the warden, the chaplain, safety officers, recycling officers. It just was a pervasive culture,” Baker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many women did not come forward for fear of retaliation. Those who did were often sent to the solitary housing unit or lost privileges, like those taken from Baker. Without adequate mental health care, they struggled to recover from the trauma of their assault.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Officers carry keys all the time. If you heard the keys coming, there would be your heart — that kind of a heart attack feeling — and just fear because you’re not safe,” Baker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April, shortly after the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11978878/fbi-raids-dublin-womens-prison-plagued-by-sexual-abuse\">FBI raided the prison\u003c/a>, the BOP \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11982014/judge-chooses-top-pick-for-special-master-to-oversee-womens-prison-following-rampant-abuse\">appointed a special master\u003c/a> to oversee \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11998682/special-master-slams-conditions-at-fci-dublin-in-report\">operational changes\u003c/a>. Just over a week later, the facility was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11982973/feds-abruptly-close-east-bay-womens-prison-following-sexual-abuse-scandals\">ordered to close\u003c/a>, and more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11985645/closure-of-california-federal-prison-was-poorly-planned-judge-says-ordering-further-monitoring\">600 inmates were transferred\u003c/a> to a handful of other federal institutions, many far from their families and legal teams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12017652 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/IMG_0850.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this month, the BOP announced it would make FCI Dublin’s closure \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12017117/east-bay-federal-prison-plagued-sex-abuse-scandal-close-permanently\">permanent\u003c/a>, saying a staffing shortage, crumbling infrastructure and limited budgetary resources made reopening it unfeasible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the attorneys representing those who say they were abused at FCI Dublin are committed to ensuring that there’s meaningful change at the remaining federal women’s prisons. There have been reports that some of the women transferred have \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11990979/biden-administration-seeks-to-dismiss-lawsuit-over-bay-area-womens-prison-abuses\">faced similar abuse\u003c/a>, and many aren’t receiving the resources they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to have a safe place to try to begin to heal, and inside the confines of a prison like that, you’re not safe,” Baker told KQED. “The women who went to other prisons when the facility was closed in April, they’re still suffering sexual trauma, and they don’t have a safe place to try to heal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said that the settlement agreement reached last week on behalf of nearly 500 incarcerated women who were transferred from FCI Dublin in April includes a two-year consent decree meant to protect and oversee their care. That will be subject to approval by a judge in February.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the coming months, attorney Pride expects that 50 to 100 more civil cases will be filed against the BOP.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The bottom line is that when we’ve accepted responsibility for our crimes, accepted plea agreements, the punishment does not include rape and sexual assault within the prison confines,” Baker said. “We weren’t sentenced to that particular punishment, and nobody should have to experience that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/dcronin\">\u003cem>Dana Cronin\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When Darlene Baker entered \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/fci-dublin\">FCI Dublin\u003c/a> in April 2022, she had heard about the sexual abuse allegations that plagued the prison. The month before she arrived, the Bureau of Prisons had been there promising to improve reporting protocol, and the warden and a chaplain were facing criminal charges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Baker said that after she was forced into a back room of the medical building and assaulted by an officer who was supposed to be administering care, she discovered just how pervasive the culture of sexual misconduct, retaliation and cover-up at the East Bay facility was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a cultural rot,” Baker, 60, told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Tuesday, the federal government acknowledged the damage done at FCI Dublin, granting a $116 million settlement — the largest for sexual assault survivors in U.S. prison history — to 103 women, including Baker, who were formerly incarcerated at the now-shuttered facility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For much of her 11 months in the prison, Baker faced retaliation for reporting her abuser. She was denied visits with her family; her phone and commissary access were cut off; she was barred from speaking with her lawyer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was also forced to return to the medical office and interact with the officer who she said had assaulted her to receive necessary care or medications. She said the final words he spoke to her, the day before she was scheduled for early release, were: “he knew where I lived, and he would be up to have a drink with me at some point.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My release was canceled the next morning,” Baker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 100 women have come forward with experiences like Baker’s since a 2021 \u003cem>Associated Press\u003c/em> investigation revealed that the facility, dubbed the “rape club” by workers and women imprisoned there, had a long history of enabling sexual abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an affirmation that sexual abuse of female prisoners will not be tolerated in this society,” attorney Jessica Pride, who represents plaintiffs in the case, said of this week’s settlement. “The Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice now have 116 million reasons why they will make sure that prisoners will not be sexually abused under their watch.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, the Bureau of Prisons said it condemns all sexually abusive behavior and “takes seriously its duty to protect the individuals in [its] custody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bureau “remains committed to rooting out criminal behavior and holding accountable those who violate their oath of office,” the statement continues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The global settlement was divided among the women based on in-depth interviews with two former judges, who listened to their accounts of abuse and reviewed their treatment records. Individuals received $500,000 to $1.6 million each, Pride said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The settlement is the latest legal victory for women who were incarcerated at FCI Dublin, which the Bureau of Prisons said this month \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12017117/east-bay-federal-prison-plagued-sex-abuse-scandal-close-permanently\">will close permanently\u003c/a> after it was abruptly cleared out and shuttered in April. The women are also in the process of settling a class-action lawsuit aimed at protecting women who remain incarcerated elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11958364\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11958364\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A person with glasses speaks into a microphone in an outdoor setting.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-06-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jane Courant speaks in front of the federal courthouse in Oakland as part of the announcement of a class-action lawsuit over sexual abuse by guards at FCI Dublin on Aug. 16, 2023. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Eight former FCI Dublin employees, including the warden and chaplain, have been charged with sex crimes since 2021; seven have already been sentenced, and the eighth is set to go to trial in March on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12002790/fci-dublin-officer-pleads-not-guilty-after-facing-new-sex-abuse-charges\">15 charges that could carry a potential life sentence\u003c/a>. More than 20 others who have been accused of sexual misconduct and retaliation, including the medical officer Baker said assaulted her, are being investigated, according to Pride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It just was top-down, from the warden, the chaplain, safety officers, recycling officers. It just was a pervasive culture,” Baker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many women did not come forward for fear of retaliation. Those who did were often sent to the solitary housing unit or lost privileges, like those taken from Baker. Without adequate mental health care, they struggled to recover from the trauma of their assault.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Officers carry keys all the time. If you heard the keys coming, there would be your heart — that kind of a heart attack feeling — and just fear because you’re not safe,” Baker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April, shortly after the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11978878/fbi-raids-dublin-womens-prison-plagued-by-sexual-abuse\">FBI raided the prison\u003c/a>, the BOP \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11982014/judge-chooses-top-pick-for-special-master-to-oversee-womens-prison-following-rampant-abuse\">appointed a special master\u003c/a> to oversee \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11998682/special-master-slams-conditions-at-fci-dublin-in-report\">operational changes\u003c/a>. Just over a week later, the facility was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11982973/feds-abruptly-close-east-bay-womens-prison-following-sexual-abuse-scandals\">ordered to close\u003c/a>, and more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11985645/closure-of-california-federal-prison-was-poorly-planned-judge-says-ordering-further-monitoring\">600 inmates were transferred\u003c/a> to a handful of other federal institutions, many far from their families and legal teams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this month, the BOP announced it would make FCI Dublin’s closure \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12017117/east-bay-federal-prison-plagued-sex-abuse-scandal-close-permanently\">permanent\u003c/a>, saying a staffing shortage, crumbling infrastructure and limited budgetary resources made reopening it unfeasible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the attorneys representing those who say they were abused at FCI Dublin are committed to ensuring that there’s meaningful change at the remaining federal women’s prisons. There have been reports that some of the women transferred have \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11990979/biden-administration-seeks-to-dismiss-lawsuit-over-bay-area-womens-prison-abuses\">faced similar abuse\u003c/a>, and many aren’t receiving the resources they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to have a safe place to try to begin to heal, and inside the confines of a prison like that, you’re not safe,” Baker told KQED. “The women who went to other prisons when the facility was closed in April, they’re still suffering sexual trauma, and they don’t have a safe place to try to heal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said that the settlement agreement reached last week on behalf of nearly 500 incarcerated women who were transferred from FCI Dublin in April includes a two-year consent decree meant to protect and oversee their care. That will be subject to approval by a judge in February.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the coming months, attorney Pride expects that 50 to 100 more civil cases will be filed against the BOP.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The bottom line is that when we’ve accepted responsibility for our crimes, accepted plea agreements, the punishment does not include rape and sexual assault within the prison confines,” Baker said. “We weren’t sentenced to that particular punishment, and nobody should have to experience that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/dcronin\">\u003cem>Dana Cronin\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The troubled East Bay federal women’s prison \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/fci-dublin\">FCI Dublin\u003c/a> will shut down permanently following years of sexual abuse by prison workers, the federal government announced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, the Bureau of Prisons said it faces significant challenges that prevent reopening the Dublin site, which was abruptly closed in April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those include a staffing shortage, crumbling infrastructure, and limited budgetary resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eight former prison officers, including the former warden and chaplain, have been \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12002790/fci-dublin-officer-pleads-not-guilty-after-facing-new-sex-abuse-charges\">charged with sexual abuse\u003c/a>, and the prison faces dozens of lawsuits from women who were formerly incarcerated there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those problems also led to scrutiny from Congress.[aside postID=news_12002790 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg']East Bay Rep. Mark DeSaulnier said in a statement that while he’s pleased the prison is being closed permanently, it still does not bring justice to women who suffered there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amaris Montes is director of West Coast litigation and advocacy at Rights Behind Bars, a group that’s representing women who were incarcerated at FCI Dublin in a class action lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This permanent closure is a great step towards recognizing that BOP is just unable to meet the constitutional rights of individuals who are incarcerated there,” Montes said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hundreds of incarcerated women were transferred from FCI Dublin to other facilities throughout the country after the April closure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11987292/trial-for-class-action-lawsuit-over-troubled-womens-prison-slated-for-june-2025\">trial in the class action lawsuit\u003c/a> is set for June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/ahall\">Alex Hall\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/tgoldberg\">Ted Goldberg\u003c/a> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The troubled East Bay federal women’s prison \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/fci-dublin\">FCI Dublin\u003c/a> will shut down permanently following years of sexual abuse by prison workers, the federal government announced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, the Bureau of Prisons said it faces significant challenges that prevent reopening the Dublin site, which was abruptly closed in April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those include a staffing shortage, crumbling infrastructure, and limited budgetary resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eight former prison officers, including the former warden and chaplain, have been \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12002790/fci-dublin-officer-pleads-not-guilty-after-facing-new-sex-abuse-charges\">charged with sexual abuse\u003c/a>, and the prison faces dozens of lawsuits from women who were formerly incarcerated there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those problems also led to scrutiny from Congress.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>East Bay Rep. Mark DeSaulnier said in a statement that while he’s pleased the prison is being closed permanently, it still does not bring justice to women who suffered there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amaris Montes is director of West Coast litigation and advocacy at Rights Behind Bars, a group that’s representing women who were incarcerated at FCI Dublin in a class action lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This permanent closure is a great step towards recognizing that BOP is just unable to meet the constitutional rights of individuals who are incarcerated there,” Montes said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hundreds of incarcerated women were transferred from FCI Dublin to other facilities throughout the country after the April closure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11987292/trial-for-class-action-lawsuit-over-troubled-womens-prison-slated-for-june-2025\">trial in the class action lawsuit\u003c/a> is set for June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/ahall\">Alex Hall\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/tgoldberg\">Ted Goldberg\u003c/a> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>On Christmas Eve in 2012, Amika Mota and the firefighters of Madera County Station Five responded to a house fire call.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she realized the homeowners had children, Mota and her crew began pulling out gifts and family heirlooms to save the kids’ Christmas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mota, who was a lead engineer in the fire department, later learned that the house belonged to a correctional officer at the Central California Women’s Prison she knew. Firefighting was just one of the jobs Mota performed during her seven years in prison, putting her life on the line for 34 cents an hour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mota told KQED the work constituted forced labor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We cannot choose to not do this work without potentially being punished in prison,” Mota said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Voters in 15 states, including Utah, Nebraska and Alabama, have ended forced labor in prisons, closing legal loopholes that allow states to permit legal slavery as a punishment for crime. Why didn’t a similar measure — \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/elections/results/california/proposition-6\">Proposition 6\u003c/a> — easily pass in California, a state \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12013395/newsom-calls-special-session-prepare-california-legal-fight-against-trump\">hoping to establish itself as a legal bulwark\u003c/a> against the second Trump administration?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12011969\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12011969\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Inmates perform yard work at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin on July 26, 2023. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California voters rejected a measure that would have banned the use of forced prison labor as punishment for crimes, with 53.8% voting against Proposition 6 according to the Associated Press.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was no opposition listed to Proposition 6 in the state’s voter guide. Many, including Mota, who now organizes around criminal justice issues, were stunned when initial results on Tuesday revealed Californians were voting against the measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just really, really devastating that California didn’t have the information they needed to pass this proposition,” said Mota, the executive director of the Sister Warrior Freedom Coalition, a nonprofit that fights for policy change to improve the lives of incarcerated women and trans people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proposition 6 would have changed the state constitution to ban involuntary servitude in any form. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12002804/centerpiece-reparations-bill-derailed-by-newsoms-late-request-heres-why\">It came out of recommendations\u003c/a> by the state task force that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/reparations\">studied reparations for Black Californians\u003c/a> amid a push to eradicate the vestiges of slavery from state constitutions. While still too early to call, about 55% of voters opposed the measure as of Thursday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next door, in Nevada, 60% of voters passed a similar measure, removing language from the state’s constitution allowing slavery and indentured servitude as a form of punishment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The legislative pendulum appears to be shifting to the right in California, moving away from progressive candidates and ideology. Across the state, progressive legislators faced recalls, lost elections and a tough-on-crime measure — Proposition 36 — \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12012656/proposition-36-californias-newest-tough-on-crime-measure-appears-headed-for-victory\">passed overwhelmingly\u003c/a>. Proposition 36 made shoplifting a felony for repeat offenders and increased penalties on some drug offenses, including fentanyl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11991741\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11991741\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"An outside view of a large prison facility (San Quentin).\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, formerly known as San Quentin State Prison, on June 3, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Proposition 6, unfortunately, is just naturally tied in many ways to Proposition 36. The overcriminalization of our people is going to result in forced labor of our incarcerated population,” Mota said. “It’s hard to separate the issues.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The result marks another blow to the movement to provide reparations to Black Californians. The language of Proposition 6 reflected a recommendation from the state’s reparations task force and members of the California Legislative Black Caucus. It won support from colleagues in the state Legislature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proposition 6 aimed to follow in the footsteps of states such as Alabama and Colorado, where voters recently took similar steps to remove a remnant of enslavement from their state constitutions. California’s founding document currently allows involuntary servitude “as punishment to a crime.” In practice, this provision allowed incarcerated people to lose family visits and telephone access for turning down a work assignment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The task force, created in 2020 to study reparations for African Americans, found the clause to be especially harmful to Black Californians, who account for 28% of the state’s prison population despite making up just 5% of the state’s population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the proposal faced initial resistance in Sacramento, including from officials in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Department of Finance, who argued that language change could open the door for incarcerated people to demand minimum wage. In 2022, the measure was voted down on the Senate floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, the measure was rewritten to clarify its specific intent to ban the disciplining of an incarcerated person for refusing a work assignment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proposition 6 was supported by the state Democratic Party and a coalition of criminal justice reform and civil rights groups, such as All of Us or None, who provided the bulk of funding to support the measure. While there was no fundraising against Proposition 6, the state Republican Party and anti-tax groups opposed the idea, arguing if more incarcerated people turned down work assignments, the work would have to be contracted out, adding state costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Rushford, president and CEO of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, an organization that advocates for increased sentencing and favors work requirements for incarcerated people, said the timing didn’t help the measure’s chances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The folks that want stronger law enforcement showed up, and they saw this on there and said, ‘All right, well, we’re voting against that,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sam Lewis, the executive director of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, said the practice of punishing incarcerated people for missing or refusing work assignments is not uncommon. It happened to him while serving his time at the Correctional Training Facility, commonly referred to as Soledad State Prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While completing his college degree in prison, Lewis received permission from his supervisor to miss a shift to take an exam. When he returned to work in the laundry unit, he was written up and 30 days were added to his sentence. While Lewis was able to appeal that punishment, he has spoken with countless others whose rehabilitation “was sidetracked or derailed in some instances.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Do you want me to come home as a changed person that’s rehabilitated?” Lewis said. “Or do you want to just stick me in a prison system where I have to do work that does not help me become a better me? That’s an example of what Prop. 6 would have changed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"Live 2024 Election Results\" link1='https://www.kqed.org/elections/results/california,Learn about the results of the California Propositions' hero=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/80/2024/09/Aside-California-Propositions-2024-General-Election-1200x1200-1.png]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Anti-Recidivism Coalition’s phone number was listed on the state voter information guides to provide more context to voters. Lewis said he fielded many questions from confused voters about what Proposition 6 was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The language of the official voter guide “used the term involuntary servitude,” Lewis said. “We should use the word slavery, which is very clear to people,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Polling on the initiative conducted in September and October by the Public Policy Institute of California showed \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/crosstabs-likely-voters-1024.pdf\">it was headed for defeat\u003c/a>. Respondents voiced lower interest in Proposition 6 compared to other measures. Only 41% of respondents indicated support for the measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When voters lack information, they’re more inclined to vote no, according to Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s survey director.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Voters have to feel like they’re making policy,” Baldassare said. “They want to feel like they know what they’re doing and they’re not going to make mistakes. And sometimes, if they feel like it might be confusing, they’ll take a pass this time and wait till the next time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rushford said some voters believe work requirements for incarcerated people are beneficial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I firmly believe that an inmate’s time spent incarcerated needs to be spent doing something productive to help the inmate prepare to be released from prison and become a productive member of society,” Rushford said. “It makes no sense to claim that that’s some kind of slavery.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Baldassare questioned the idea that both Propositions 6 and 36 are part of a sea change in criminal justice issues. He pointed out that, unlike other measures put on the ballot by legislators, like \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12012256/californias-10-billion-climate-bond-ahead-with-a-strong-lead\">Proposition 4\u003c/a>, a $10 billion bond to help the state prepare and adapt to climate change, voters understood clearly what that proposition was — and what problems it addressed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the case of Proposition 36, he said, citizens heard directly from local officials, including four mayors statewide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that when the Legislature puts something on the ballot, they need to explain to people why it is that it’s important to change the state constitution, particularly if the wording may be confusing to some people,” Baldassare said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/gmarzorati\">Guy Marzorati\u003c/a> contributed to this story\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>On Christmas Eve in 2012, Amika Mota and the firefighters of Madera County Station Five responded to a house fire call.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she realized the homeowners had children, Mota and her crew began pulling out gifts and family heirlooms to save the kids’ Christmas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mota, who was a lead engineer in the fire department, later learned that the house belonged to a correctional officer at the Central California Women’s Prison she knew. Firefighting was just one of the jobs Mota performed during her seven years in prison, putting her life on the line for 34 cents an hour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mota told KQED the work constituted forced labor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We cannot choose to not do this work without potentially being punished in prison,” Mota said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Voters in 15 states, including Utah, Nebraska and Alabama, have ended forced labor in prisons, closing legal loopholes that allow states to permit legal slavery as a punishment for crime. Why didn’t a similar measure — \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/elections/results/california/proposition-6\">Proposition 6\u003c/a> — easily pass in California, a state \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12013395/newsom-calls-special-session-prepare-california-legal-fight-against-trump\">hoping to establish itself as a legal bulwark\u003c/a> against the second Trump administration?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12011969\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12011969\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-09-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Inmates perform yard work at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin on July 26, 2023. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California voters rejected a measure that would have banned the use of forced prison labor as punishment for crimes, with 53.8% voting against Proposition 6 according to the Associated Press.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was no opposition listed to Proposition 6 in the state’s voter guide. Many, including Mota, who now organizes around criminal justice issues, were stunned when initial results on Tuesday revealed Californians were voting against the measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just really, really devastating that California didn’t have the information they needed to pass this proposition,” said Mota, the executive director of the Sister Warrior Freedom Coalition, a nonprofit that fights for policy change to improve the lives of incarcerated women and trans people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proposition 6 would have changed the state constitution to ban involuntary servitude in any form. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12002804/centerpiece-reparations-bill-derailed-by-newsoms-late-request-heres-why\">It came out of recommendations\u003c/a> by the state task force that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/reparations\">studied reparations for Black Californians\u003c/a> amid a push to eradicate the vestiges of slavery from state constitutions. While still too early to call, about 55% of voters opposed the measure as of Thursday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next door, in Nevada, 60% of voters passed a similar measure, removing language from the state’s constitution allowing slavery and indentured servitude as a form of punishment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The legislative pendulum appears to be shifting to the right in California, moving away from progressive candidates and ideology. Across the state, progressive legislators faced recalls, lost elections and a tough-on-crime measure — Proposition 36 — \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12012656/proposition-36-californias-newest-tough-on-crime-measure-appears-headed-for-victory\">passed overwhelmingly\u003c/a>. Proposition 36 made shoplifting a felony for repeat offenders and increased penalties on some drug offenses, including fentanyl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11991741\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11991741\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"An outside view of a large prison facility (San Quentin).\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240603-SANQUENTINACES-176-BL-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, formerly known as San Quentin State Prison, on June 3, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Proposition 6, unfortunately, is just naturally tied in many ways to Proposition 36. The overcriminalization of our people is going to result in forced labor of our incarcerated population,” Mota said. “It’s hard to separate the issues.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The result marks another blow to the movement to provide reparations to Black Californians. The language of Proposition 6 reflected a recommendation from the state’s reparations task force and members of the California Legislative Black Caucus. It won support from colleagues in the state Legislature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proposition 6 aimed to follow in the footsteps of states such as Alabama and Colorado, where voters recently took similar steps to remove a remnant of enslavement from their state constitutions. California’s founding document currently allows involuntary servitude “as punishment to a crime.” In practice, this provision allowed incarcerated people to lose family visits and telephone access for turning down a work assignment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The task force, created in 2020 to study reparations for African Americans, found the clause to be especially harmful to Black Californians, who account for 28% of the state’s prison population despite making up just 5% of the state’s population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the proposal faced initial resistance in Sacramento, including from officials in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Department of Finance, who argued that language change could open the door for incarcerated people to demand minimum wage. In 2022, the measure was voted down on the Senate floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, the measure was rewritten to clarify its specific intent to ban the disciplining of an incarcerated person for refusing a work assignment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proposition 6 was supported by the state Democratic Party and a coalition of criminal justice reform and civil rights groups, such as All of Us or None, who provided the bulk of funding to support the measure. While there was no fundraising against Proposition 6, the state Republican Party and anti-tax groups opposed the idea, arguing if more incarcerated people turned down work assignments, the work would have to be contracted out, adding state costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Rushford, president and CEO of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, an organization that advocates for increased sentencing and favors work requirements for incarcerated people, said the timing didn’t help the measure’s chances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The folks that want stronger law enforcement showed up, and they saw this on there and said, ‘All right, well, we’re voting against that,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sam Lewis, the executive director of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, said the practice of punishing incarcerated people for missing or refusing work assignments is not uncommon. It happened to him while serving his time at the Correctional Training Facility, commonly referred to as Soledad State Prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While completing his college degree in prison, Lewis received permission from his supervisor to miss a shift to take an exam. When he returned to work in the laundry unit, he was written up and 30 days were added to his sentence. While Lewis was able to appeal that punishment, he has spoken with countless others whose rehabilitation “was sidetracked or derailed in some instances.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Do you want me to come home as a changed person that’s rehabilitated?” Lewis said. “Or do you want to just stick me in a prison system where I have to do work that does not help me become a better me? That’s an example of what Prop. 6 would have changed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Anti-Recidivism Coalition’s phone number was listed on the state voter information guides to provide more context to voters. Lewis said he fielded many questions from confused voters about what Proposition 6 was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The language of the official voter guide “used the term involuntary servitude,” Lewis said. “We should use the word slavery, which is very clear to people,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Polling on the initiative conducted in September and October by the Public Policy Institute of California showed \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/crosstabs-likely-voters-1024.pdf\">it was headed for defeat\u003c/a>. Respondents voiced lower interest in Proposition 6 compared to other measures. Only 41% of respondents indicated support for the measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When voters lack information, they’re more inclined to vote no, according to Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s survey director.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Voters have to feel like they’re making policy,” Baldassare said. “They want to feel like they know what they’re doing and they’re not going to make mistakes. And sometimes, if they feel like it might be confusing, they’ll take a pass this time and wait till the next time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rushford said some voters believe work requirements for incarcerated people are beneficial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I firmly believe that an inmate’s time spent incarcerated needs to be spent doing something productive to help the inmate prepare to be released from prison and become a productive member of society,” Rushford said. “It makes no sense to claim that that’s some kind of slavery.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Baldassare questioned the idea that both Propositions 6 and 36 are part of a sea change in criminal justice issues. He pointed out that, unlike other measures put on the ballot by legislators, like \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12012256/californias-10-billion-climate-bond-ahead-with-a-strong-lead\">Proposition 4\u003c/a>, a $10 billion bond to help the state prepare and adapt to climate change, voters understood clearly what that proposition was — and what problems it addressed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the case of Proposition 36, he said, citizens heard directly from local officials, including four mayors statewide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that when the Legislature puts something on the ballot, they need to explain to people why it is that it’s important to change the state constitution, particularly if the wording may be confusing to some people,” Baldassare said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/gmarzorati\">Guy Marzorati\u003c/a> contributed to this story\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]ncarcerated women at the Central California Women’s facility in Chowchilla say correctional officers used pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets on them after forcing them into a cafeteria with no food, water or medication for more than four hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four women told KQED they were left injured, had difficulty breathing and were traumatized by the incident that occurred last month on Aug. 2.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three incarcerated people had difficulty breathing and were transported to an offsite medical facility, according to an emailed statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its statement, CDCR said officials have “identified concerning information about the handling of the Aug. 2 incident at the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) and are taking swift action.” The statement adds that a fight between two inmates prompted the incident and that approximately 100 others became “disruptive,” requiring staff to “quell the incident.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sources told KQED that a fight had broken out earlier, well before the alleged use of force by officers, whose later behavior was unprovoked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Central California Women’s Facility is the largest female institution in the state. It houses over 2,000 incarcerated people at all security levels, \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Warden-Mary-Lattimore-One-Year-Audit-Central-California-Womens-Facility.pdf\">according to a report\u003c/a> by the California Office of the Inspector General.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘People were screaming for help’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On Aug. 2, correctional officers informed the women in one of the units that they were going to conduct a contraband search of the entire building, according to half a dozen formerly and currently incarcerated women who spoke to KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Antoinette Yancey said she is a member of the Inmate Advisory Council, which communicates with prison staff about prisoners’ needs. She said everyone who was there that day complied with the order from officers to file into the cafeteria, also known as the chow hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yancey said that after nearly four hours inside the cafeteria, the women had missed their state-issued lunch and others had not been given their medication. She said she asked to speak to Sergeant Fernando Arroyo, the officer she believed to be in charge that day. Meanwhile, another woman was seen having a seizure, according to Yancey and other witnesses. Yancey told KQED that a guard called a “medical code.” Moments later, she said, 30 to 40 officers entered the cafeteria, including Sgt. Arroyo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I saw Sergeant Arroyo, I assumed that he was coming in to talk to us about lunches, food, water and things like that,” she said. Yancey said Arroyo did not address the women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The officers then formed a skirmish line around them, according to three of the women. Yancey said she saw Sergeant Arroyo tap officers on the shoulder before officers started screaming “Get back!” at the women, who, she said, posed no threat. Officers began to spray pepper spray and tear gas at the women, according to four accounts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Some of the inmates ran away from the [chemical] bomb. Officers chased them, body slamming people who had walkers and couldn’t get down,” Yancey said, “Snatching shirts off people’s faces and [pepper] spraying them directly in the face.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the chaos unfolded, Elaine De Leon Guerrero, an Iraq war veteran, said she immediately threw herself to the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I ended up getting trampled on. People were screaming for help, crying, asking to please stop,” she said. “There were multiple orders being sent by different staff. Some were screaming at us, saying, get down. Others were saying, ‘Get up and file.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>De Leon Guerrero said she saw two women have seizures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the statement, CDCR officials acknowledged that correctional officers used chemical weapons but would not provide any more details; the agency said no rubber bullets were used and maintained that the incident did not amount to excessive force. CDCR declined to specify whether other projectiles were used.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency also declined to confirm whether a Sgt. Fernando Arroyo works at the Chowchilla facility or was in charge that day. \u003ca href=\"https://openpayrolls.com/employee/fernando-arroyo-9571\">Public records show\u003c/a> that a Sgt. Fernando Arroyo worked at the Chowchilla facility until at least 2023. A Chowchilla prison employee named Fernando Arroyo is listed as one of several defendants in an \u003ca href=\"https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/roe-vs-cdcr-complaint-sacramento.pdf\">ongoing civil suit filed by 144 plaintiffs\u003c/a> in Sacramento County alleging sexual assault and sexual battery at the Chowchilla facility. Arroyo could not be reached by phone; CDCR did not respond to KQED’s request to make Arroyo available for an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘They just wouldn’t stop. It was like a war zone’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Witnesses interviewed by KQED said that eventually, officers zip-tied all the women’s hands and escorted them outside to the yard, where they were made to sit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re thinking, okay, we’re sitting, we’re defenseless, now we’re going to get answers,” inmate Johnnyne Ramirez said. Instead, Ramirez said the officers continued another round of pepper spraying and tear gas bombing. Yancey and De Leon Guerrero gave KQED a matching account of the events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I really thought I was going to die that day because they were shooting. They were throwing [tear gas] grenades. They just wouldn’t stop. It was like a war zone,” Ramirez said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12003230 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/USDeptofJusticeGetty-1020x680.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Witnesses told KQED that the unrest in the yard went on for another hour before prison staff escorted the women back to their cells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But they didn’t decontaminate us after using the chemical agents, which they’re supposed to do,” De Leon Guerrero said. “They just sent us, little at a time, back to the cells.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A CDCR spokesperson declined to comment on specific allegations following the system’s written statement, citing an active investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Staff at the facility began an immediate week-long intensive training on appropriate incident response, according to the statement from CDRC.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>An unprecedented use of force\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When told about the incident, Deputy Director for the ACLU National Prison Project Corene Kendrick said she had never seen this level of force at a women’s prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve never heard of anything this severe of an overreaction, especially when it’s in the context of something like a property search. And the women were just asking ‘what’s going on? And how much longer is this going to take?’” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She pointed to a CDCR policy that states chemical agents should not be used once a person is restrained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sara Norman, an attorney who monitors jails and prisons, said the alleged violence by CDCR staff is disturbing but not surprising. In 2020, staff at the men’s correctional facility in Soledad rounded up incarcerated Black men and locked them in a cafeteria for hours at a time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were zip-tied and they were interrogated about involvement with Black Lives Matter,” Norman said. “So these sorts of things tend to burst out in the current culture at CDCR.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>History of alleged abuse at the Chowchilla Facility\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Department of Justice \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12003230/feds-investigate-california-prisons-where-women-say-culture-of-impunity-surrounded-abuse\">announced last week\u003c/a> that it is investigating the CDCR’s handling of sexual abuse allegations at the state women’s prisons in Chowchilla and Chino.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-civil-rights-investigation-correctional-staff-sexual-abuse-two\">In a statement\u003c/a>, the DOJ said it found significant justification to open the investigation, including “hundreds of private lawsuits” and reports alleging sexual abuse by correctional officers. Last year a correctional officer at the Chowchilla facility was charged with \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/25/gregory-rodriguez-california-correctional-officer-accused-sexual-assault-womens-prison\">96 criminal counts\u003c/a>, including rape, sodomy and sexual battery over a 13-year period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The DOJ’s investigation is appropriate given the charges brought against the correctional officer, said state Sen. Nancy Skinner, the chair of the Women’s Legislative Caucus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s hard to imagine that that individual was able to get away with that without other officials knowing. And it really puts a spotlight on what is happening there,” the East Bay lawmaker told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The women who were in the chow hall at the Central California Women’s Facility on Aug. 2 said they hope the CDCR’s investigation leads to transparency and accountability. All of the women said they were traumatized by the alleged attack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t like being around a lot of people now, so I kind of stay secluded,” De Leon Guerrero said. “I cannot go into the chow hall. I’ve tried it. I start[ed] getting anxiety and a panic attack.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story has been updated.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>ncarcerated women at the Central California Women’s facility in Chowchilla say correctional officers used pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets on them after forcing them into a cafeteria with no food, water or medication for more than four hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four women told KQED they were left injured, had difficulty breathing and were traumatized by the incident that occurred last month on Aug. 2.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three incarcerated people had difficulty breathing and were transported to an offsite medical facility, according to an emailed statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its statement, CDCR said officials have “identified concerning information about the handling of the Aug. 2 incident at the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) and are taking swift action.” The statement adds that a fight between two inmates prompted the incident and that approximately 100 others became “disruptive,” requiring staff to “quell the incident.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sources told KQED that a fight had broken out earlier, well before the alleged use of force by officers, whose later behavior was unprovoked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Central California Women’s Facility is the largest female institution in the state. It houses over 2,000 incarcerated people at all security levels, \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Warden-Mary-Lattimore-One-Year-Audit-Central-California-Womens-Facility.pdf\">according to a report\u003c/a> by the California Office of the Inspector General.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘People were screaming for help’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On Aug. 2, correctional officers informed the women in one of the units that they were going to conduct a contraband search of the entire building, according to half a dozen formerly and currently incarcerated women who spoke to KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Antoinette Yancey said she is a member of the Inmate Advisory Council, which communicates with prison staff about prisoners’ needs. She said everyone who was there that day complied with the order from officers to file into the cafeteria, also known as the chow hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yancey said that after nearly four hours inside the cafeteria, the women had missed their state-issued lunch and others had not been given their medication. She said she asked to speak to Sergeant Fernando Arroyo, the officer she believed to be in charge that day. Meanwhile, another woman was seen having a seizure, according to Yancey and other witnesses. Yancey told KQED that a guard called a “medical code.” Moments later, she said, 30 to 40 officers entered the cafeteria, including Sgt. Arroyo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I saw Sergeant Arroyo, I assumed that he was coming in to talk to us about lunches, food, water and things like that,” she said. Yancey said Arroyo did not address the women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The officers then formed a skirmish line around them, according to three of the women. Yancey said she saw Sergeant Arroyo tap officers on the shoulder before officers started screaming “Get back!” at the women, who, she said, posed no threat. Officers began to spray pepper spray and tear gas at the women, according to four accounts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Some of the inmates ran away from the [chemical] bomb. Officers chased them, body slamming people who had walkers and couldn’t get down,” Yancey said, “Snatching shirts off people’s faces and [pepper] spraying them directly in the face.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the chaos unfolded, Elaine De Leon Guerrero, an Iraq war veteran, said she immediately threw herself to the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I ended up getting trampled on. People were screaming for help, crying, asking to please stop,” she said. “There were multiple orders being sent by different staff. Some were screaming at us, saying, get down. Others were saying, ‘Get up and file.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>De Leon Guerrero said she saw two women have seizures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the statement, CDCR officials acknowledged that correctional officers used chemical weapons but would not provide any more details; the agency said no rubber bullets were used and maintained that the incident did not amount to excessive force. CDCR declined to specify whether other projectiles were used.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency also declined to confirm whether a Sgt. Fernando Arroyo works at the Chowchilla facility or was in charge that day. \u003ca href=\"https://openpayrolls.com/employee/fernando-arroyo-9571\">Public records show\u003c/a> that a Sgt. Fernando Arroyo worked at the Chowchilla facility until at least 2023. A Chowchilla prison employee named Fernando Arroyo is listed as one of several defendants in an \u003ca href=\"https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/roe-vs-cdcr-complaint-sacramento.pdf\">ongoing civil suit filed by 144 plaintiffs\u003c/a> in Sacramento County alleging sexual assault and sexual battery at the Chowchilla facility. Arroyo could not be reached by phone; CDCR did not respond to KQED’s request to make Arroyo available for an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘They just wouldn’t stop. It was like a war zone’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Witnesses interviewed by KQED said that eventually, officers zip-tied all the women’s hands and escorted them outside to the yard, where they were made to sit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re thinking, okay, we’re sitting, we’re defenseless, now we’re going to get answers,” inmate Johnnyne Ramirez said. Instead, Ramirez said the officers continued another round of pepper spraying and tear gas bombing. Yancey and De Leon Guerrero gave KQED a matching account of the events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I really thought I was going to die that day because they were shooting. They were throwing [tear gas] grenades. They just wouldn’t stop. It was like a war zone,” Ramirez said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Witnesses told KQED that the unrest in the yard went on for another hour before prison staff escorted the women back to their cells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But they didn’t decontaminate us after using the chemical agents, which they’re supposed to do,” De Leon Guerrero said. “They just sent us, little at a time, back to the cells.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A CDCR spokesperson declined to comment on specific allegations following the system’s written statement, citing an active investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Staff at the facility began an immediate week-long intensive training on appropriate incident response, according to the statement from CDRC.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>An unprecedented use of force\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When told about the incident, Deputy Director for the ACLU National Prison Project Corene Kendrick said she had never seen this level of force at a women’s prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve never heard of anything this severe of an overreaction, especially when it’s in the context of something like a property search. And the women were just asking ‘what’s going on? And how much longer is this going to take?’” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She pointed to a CDCR policy that states chemical agents should not be used once a person is restrained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sara Norman, an attorney who monitors jails and prisons, said the alleged violence by CDCR staff is disturbing but not surprising. In 2020, staff at the men’s correctional facility in Soledad rounded up incarcerated Black men and locked them in a cafeteria for hours at a time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were zip-tied and they were interrogated about involvement with Black Lives Matter,” Norman said. “So these sorts of things tend to burst out in the current culture at CDCR.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>History of alleged abuse at the Chowchilla Facility\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Department of Justice \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12003230/feds-investigate-california-prisons-where-women-say-culture-of-impunity-surrounded-abuse\">announced last week\u003c/a> that it is investigating the CDCR’s handling of sexual abuse allegations at the state women’s prisons in Chowchilla and Chino.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-civil-rights-investigation-correctional-staff-sexual-abuse-two\">In a statement\u003c/a>, the DOJ said it found significant justification to open the investigation, including “hundreds of private lawsuits” and reports alleging sexual abuse by correctional officers. Last year a correctional officer at the Chowchilla facility was charged with \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/25/gregory-rodriguez-california-correctional-officer-accused-sexual-assault-womens-prison\">96 criminal counts\u003c/a>, including rape, sodomy and sexual battery over a 13-year period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The DOJ’s investigation is appropriate given the charges brought against the correctional officer, said state Sen. Nancy Skinner, the chair of the Women’s Legislative Caucus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s hard to imagine that that individual was able to get away with that without other officials knowing. And it really puts a spotlight on what is happening there,” the East Bay lawmaker told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The women who were in the chow hall at the Central California Women’s Facility on Aug. 2 said they hope the CDCR’s investigation leads to transparency and accountability. All of the women said they were traumatized by the alleged attack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t like being around a lot of people now, so I kind of stay secluded,” De Leon Guerrero said. “I cannot go into the chow hall. I’ve tried it. I start[ed] getting anxiety and a panic attack.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story has been updated.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Following hundreds of lawsuits alleging systemic sexual abuse by correctional officers at two California state prisons, advocates for incarcerated women are hopeful a newly launched federal investigation by the Department of Justice will bring change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The department said on Wednesday that it had “significant justification” to evaluate whether the state was meeting its constitutional duty to protect residents of the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino, which for years have been plagued by misconduct scandals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The announcement references\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11936438/former-california-prison-officer-accused-of-sexual-misconduct-against-multiple-inmates\"> the May arrest of \u003c/a>Gregory Rodriguez, 56, who is accused of abusing or raping 22 women in his custody at Chowchilla, the state’s largest women’s facility, for years. The former correctional officer is set to go on trial in state court this week on nearly 100 counts of sexual abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among his accusers is Latasha Brown, a Vallejo woman who has been incarcerated at both the Chino and Chowchilla facilities over the past 21 years. She \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/29/womens-prison-guards-sexual-abuse\">testified \u003c/a>last year at a legislative hearing on sexual violence that she suffered abuse at the hands of Rodriguez and other officers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Not everyone employed by [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] is a predator. I’m only saying that the uniform or the suit makes a perfect camouflage for one,” Brown said in recorded remarks from prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Justice Department’s announcement of its investigation, Kristen Clarke, who leads the department’s Civil Rights Division, said, “California must ensure that the people it incarcerates are housed in conditions that protect them from sexual abuse.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No woman incarcerated in a jail or prison should be subjected to sexual abuse by prison staff who are constitutionally bound to protect them,” Clarke said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The investigation comes more than two and a half years after the \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB1455\">passage of a state bill\u003c/a> that extended the statute of limitations for victims of sexual assault by police and correctional officers to sue their assailants in civil court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12002790 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240408-FCIDublin-009-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are incredibly grateful that the DOJ is stepping in,” said Amika Mota, executive director of advocacy group Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As formerly incarcerated people that have lived inside, it tends to be when the feds get involved that we see some action and shift. And unfortunately, in these last couple of years working closely with CDCR and also trying to get access to provide more trauma-informed support to people on the inside, we’ve seen reluctance to allow advocates inside.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state bill, AB 1455, allows victims to sue in civil court up to 10 years after their assailants are convicted of sexual assault or a crime in which sexual assault was initially alleged. It also gives victims the option to sue up to 10 years after their assailants leave the law enforcement agency they were working at when the assault occurred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the law took effect, women have filed hundreds of lawsuits describing numerous instances of sexual assault by correctional officers overseen by CDCR, including the Chowchilla and Chino facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuits range from allegations of inappropriate searching to forcible rape, and officers at both facilities reportedly sought sexual favors in return for contraband and privileges, the DOJ said in a press release. And among the correctional officers accused of misconduct are some of the very people responsible for handling complaints of sexual abuse made by women incarcerated there, according to the DOJ.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11997597\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11997597\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sign for the Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, a prison for women, in Dublin on April 8, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Prisons were initially built to ‘reform,’ places of ‘penance,’ but they have become places where society’s throwaways suffer a litany of abuses by the ones we hold responsible for our safety and security. Places where a culture of impunity pervades,” Brown said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her testimony, Brown described the retribution she faced after speaking out against sexual violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Since I am completely at the mercy of my captors, I have a feeling of perpetual uneasiness since I know the lengths they will go to cover up their misconduct,” she said. “I was stripped of my property, isolated, surveilled and deprived of communication with my loved ones when I came forward.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Nancy Skinner, who represents the East Bay, visited the Chowchilla prison with other legislators last January and spoke with women inside about the difficulties of reporting abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No person, … no matter what the actions that they took that resulted in their getting a sentence, should be subject to being assaulted or raped while they are incarcerated. Nobody,” said Skinner, chair of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11999317 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/07/230726-SAN-QUENTIN-MHN-04-KQED-1020x680.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The joint efforts of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus and Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition to shine a light on sexual abuse were cited by the Justice Department for helping launch its investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m relieved that some of our work in the Women’s Caucus has come to the surface, and people are acknowledging the work we’ve done by having this investigation,” said Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry of East Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When people say the government doesn’t work, well, it does. Sometimes, it takes a little bit longer than we would like.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of their work, the Women’s Caucus will travel next week to visit prisons in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Aguiar-Curry added, to learn from other countries about rehabilitation and how they prepare women for reentry into society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response to the allegations around the Chowchilla and Chino facilities, CDCR plans to intensify staff training with a focus on misconduct and will increase cameras and surveillance at both of the facilities, according to a statement from department secretary Jeff Macomber.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sexual assault is a heinous violation of fundamental human dignity that is not tolerated — under any circumstances — within California’s state prison system,” Macomber said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our department embraces transparency, and we fully welcome the U.S. Department of Justice’s independent investigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The investigation also comes after the closure of a federal women’s prison in the East Bay following years of sexual misconduct allegations and scandals. Seven former corrections officers at FCI Dublin have been sentenced, and the eighth is set to go to trial after \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12002790/fci-dublin-officer-pleads-not-guilty-after-facing-new-sex-abuse-charges\">pleading not guilty on Tuesday\u003c/a> to 15 counts of sexual abuse of incarcerated women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/mbolanos\">Madi Bolaños\u003c/a> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Following hundreds of lawsuits alleging systemic sexual abuse by correctional officers at two California state prisons, advocates for incarcerated women are hopeful a newly launched federal investigation by the Department of Justice will bring change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The department said on Wednesday that it had “significant justification” to evaluate whether the state was meeting its constitutional duty to protect residents of the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino, which for years have been plagued by misconduct scandals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The announcement references\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11936438/former-california-prison-officer-accused-of-sexual-misconduct-against-multiple-inmates\"> the May arrest of \u003c/a>Gregory Rodriguez, 56, who is accused of abusing or raping 22 women in his custody at Chowchilla, the state’s largest women’s facility, for years. The former correctional officer is set to go on trial in state court this week on nearly 100 counts of sexual abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among his accusers is Latasha Brown, a Vallejo woman who has been incarcerated at both the Chino and Chowchilla facilities over the past 21 years. She \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/29/womens-prison-guards-sexual-abuse\">testified \u003c/a>last year at a legislative hearing on sexual violence that she suffered abuse at the hands of Rodriguez and other officers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Not everyone employed by [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] is a predator. I’m only saying that the uniform or the suit makes a perfect camouflage for one,” Brown said in recorded remarks from prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Justice Department’s announcement of its investigation, Kristen Clarke, who leads the department’s Civil Rights Division, said, “California must ensure that the people it incarcerates are housed in conditions that protect them from sexual abuse.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No woman incarcerated in a jail or prison should be subjected to sexual abuse by prison staff who are constitutionally bound to protect them,” Clarke said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The investigation comes more than two and a half years after the \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB1455\">passage of a state bill\u003c/a> that extended the statute of limitations for victims of sexual assault by police and correctional officers to sue their assailants in civil court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are incredibly grateful that the DOJ is stepping in,” said Amika Mota, executive director of advocacy group Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As formerly incarcerated people that have lived inside, it tends to be when the feds get involved that we see some action and shift. And unfortunately, in these last couple of years working closely with CDCR and also trying to get access to provide more trauma-informed support to people on the inside, we’ve seen reluctance to allow advocates inside.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state bill, AB 1455, allows victims to sue in civil court up to 10 years after their assailants are convicted of sexual assault or a crime in which sexual assault was initially alleged. It also gives victims the option to sue up to 10 years after their assailants leave the law enforcement agency they were working at when the assault occurred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the law took effect, women have filed hundreds of lawsuits describing numerous instances of sexual assault by correctional officers overseen by CDCR, including the Chowchilla and Chino facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuits range from allegations of inappropriate searching to forcible rape, and officers at both facilities reportedly sought sexual favors in return for contraband and privileges, the DOJ said in a press release. And among the correctional officers accused of misconduct are some of the very people responsible for handling complaints of sexual abuse made by women incarcerated there, according to the DOJ.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11997597\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11997597\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/240408-FCIDublin-012-BL_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sign for the Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, a prison for women, in Dublin on April 8, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Prisons were initially built to ‘reform,’ places of ‘penance,’ but they have become places where society’s throwaways suffer a litany of abuses by the ones we hold responsible for our safety and security. Places where a culture of impunity pervades,” Brown said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her testimony, Brown described the retribution she faced after speaking out against sexual violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Since I am completely at the mercy of my captors, I have a feeling of perpetual uneasiness since I know the lengths they will go to cover up their misconduct,” she said. “I was stripped of my property, isolated, surveilled and deprived of communication with my loved ones when I came forward.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Nancy Skinner, who represents the East Bay, visited the Chowchilla prison with other legislators last January and spoke with women inside about the difficulties of reporting abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No person, … no matter what the actions that they took that resulted in their getting a sentence, should be subject to being assaulted or raped while they are incarcerated. Nobody,” said Skinner, chair of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The joint efforts of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus and Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition to shine a light on sexual abuse were cited by the Justice Department for helping launch its investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m relieved that some of our work in the Women’s Caucus has come to the surface, and people are acknowledging the work we’ve done by having this investigation,” said Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry of East Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When people say the government doesn’t work, well, it does. Sometimes, it takes a little bit longer than we would like.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of their work, the Women’s Caucus will travel next week to visit prisons in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Aguiar-Curry added, to learn from other countries about rehabilitation and how they prepare women for reentry into society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response to the allegations around the Chowchilla and Chino facilities, CDCR plans to intensify staff training with a focus on misconduct and will increase cameras and surveillance at both of the facilities, according to a statement from department secretary Jeff Macomber.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sexual assault is a heinous violation of fundamental human dignity that is not tolerated — under any circumstances — within California’s state prison system,” Macomber said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our department embraces transparency, and we fully welcome the U.S. Department of Justice’s independent investigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The investigation also comes after the closure of a federal women’s prison in the East Bay following years of sexual misconduct allegations and scandals. Seven former corrections officers at FCI Dublin have been sentenced, and the eighth is set to go to trial after \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12002790/fci-dublin-officer-pleads-not-guilty-after-facing-new-sex-abuse-charges\">pleading not guilty on Tuesday\u003c/a> to 15 counts of sexual abuse of incarcerated women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/mbolanos\">Madi Bolaños\u003c/a> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>On Monday, the communications director of Assemblymember Chris Holden (D-Pasadena) sent a press release with the news that AB 280, a bill that sought to limit the use of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/solitary-confinement\">solitary confinement\u003c/a> in state prisons, was not moving forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Last year, we decided to leave the bill on the Assembly Floor to allow more time for all of the stakeholders involved to work toward a solution and during that time, new regulations were put forth to address some of the issues related to solitary confinement,” Holden, the bill’s author, said in the press release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Without a doubt, more change is needed, and I believe holding the bill on the Assembly Floor will allow the Legislature and advocates to review the results of these regulations and use new data to implement the most effective plan of action.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In February, the California Legislative Black Caucus announced the 14 reparations bills it was prioritizing. CLBC members curated the list to test the limits of the Legislature’s commitment to racial justice while seeking to avoid a wholesale rejection that could derail the quest for reparations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bills were drawn from two years of work by the California Reparations Task Force, which \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/reparations\">KQED has reported on since its inception\u003c/a>. The task force’s final report, published in June 2023, includes over 100 policy proposals, as well as a plan to provide direct cash payments to eligible residents. None of the introduced bills include cash payments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nine reparations bills remain alive, including one requiring the list of books banned inside California prisons to be publicly displayed. And in November, Californians will vote on a measure that seeks to remove language from the state’s constitution allowing involuntary servitude “as punishment to a crime.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a brief recap of AB 280. For more information on reparations bills, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11981271/track-the-success-of-californias-14-reparations-bills-for-black-residents\">please check out our tracker\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What AB 280 wanted to do:\u003c/strong> Limit the use of solitary confinement in state prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How is limiting solitary confinement reparations?\u003c/strong> Black men make up 28% of the state’s prison population and 18.5% of the population in restricted housing. Meanwhile, Black women account for 25.4% of the prison population, and four out of five women in restricted housing are Black, \u003ca href=\"https://law.yale.edu/centers-workshops/arthur-liman-center-public-interest-law/liman-center-publications/time-cell-2021\">according to a 2022 report\u003c/a> by the Correctional Leaders Association and the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11981271 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/02/AP24032786348814-1020x680.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why isn’t AB 280 moving forward?\u003c/strong> Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar proposal in 2022, arguing that the bill’s exclusion of certain groups from segregated housing — such as inmates younger than 26 or older than 59 — was too broad. After vetoing the bill, Newsom ordered state prison officials to “develop regulations that would restrict the use of segregated confinement except in limited situations, such as where the individual has been found to have engaged in violence in the prison.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While AB 280 was pending in the state Assembly, a spokesperson told KQED that Holden was waiting for advice from the governor’s office about how to amend the bill to avoid a second veto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monday’s press release from Holden’s office cited the support for AB 280 as a reason the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation released new solitary confinement guidelines in 2023 because the bill brought heightened awareness to issues with solitary confinement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The legislation is there. The language is written. I believe that it is important to move on this with urgency once the new information has been considered,” Holden said. “My hope is that AB 280 is the seed that will sprout into actionable change next session and that with a new fiscal year, this bill can make it to the finish line.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>On Monday, the communications director of Assemblymember Chris Holden (D-Pasadena) sent a press release with the news that AB 280, a bill that sought to limit the use of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/solitary-confinement\">solitary confinement\u003c/a> in state prisons, was not moving forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Last year, we decided to leave the bill on the Assembly Floor to allow more time for all of the stakeholders involved to work toward a solution and during that time, new regulations were put forth to address some of the issues related to solitary confinement,” Holden, the bill’s author, said in the press release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Without a doubt, more change is needed, and I believe holding the bill on the Assembly Floor will allow the Legislature and advocates to review the results of these regulations and use new data to implement the most effective plan of action.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In February, the California Legislative Black Caucus announced the 14 reparations bills it was prioritizing. CLBC members curated the list to test the limits of the Legislature’s commitment to racial justice while seeking to avoid a wholesale rejection that could derail the quest for reparations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bills were drawn from two years of work by the California Reparations Task Force, which \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/reparations\">KQED has reported on since its inception\u003c/a>. The task force’s final report, published in June 2023, includes over 100 policy proposals, as well as a plan to provide direct cash payments to eligible residents. None of the introduced bills include cash payments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nine reparations bills remain alive, including one requiring the list of books banned inside California prisons to be publicly displayed. And in November, Californians will vote on a measure that seeks to remove language from the state’s constitution allowing involuntary servitude “as punishment to a crime.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a brief recap of AB 280. For more information on reparations bills, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11981271/track-the-success-of-californias-14-reparations-bills-for-black-residents\">please check out our tracker\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What AB 280 wanted to do:\u003c/strong> Limit the use of solitary confinement in state prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How is limiting solitary confinement reparations?\u003c/strong> Black men make up 28% of the state’s prison population and 18.5% of the population in restricted housing. Meanwhile, Black women account for 25.4% of the prison population, and four out of five women in restricted housing are Black, \u003ca href=\"https://law.yale.edu/centers-workshops/arthur-liman-center-public-interest-law/liman-center-publications/time-cell-2021\">according to a 2022 report\u003c/a> by the Correctional Leaders Association and the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why isn’t AB 280 moving forward?\u003c/strong> Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar proposal in 2022, arguing that the bill’s exclusion of certain groups from segregated housing — such as inmates younger than 26 or older than 59 — was too broad. After vetoing the bill, Newsom ordered state prison officials to “develop regulations that would restrict the use of segregated confinement except in limited situations, such as where the individual has been found to have engaged in violence in the prison.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While AB 280 was pending in the state Assembly, a spokesperson told KQED that Holden was waiting for advice from the governor’s office about how to amend the bill to avoid a second veto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monday’s press release from Holden’s office cited the support for AB 280 as a reason the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation released new solitary confinement guidelines in 2023 because the bill brought heightened awareness to issues with solitary confinement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The legislation is there. The language is written. I believe that it is important to move on this with urgency once the new information has been considered,” Holden said. “My hope is that AB 280 is the seed that will sprout into actionable change next session and that with a new fiscal year, this bill can make it to the finish line.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Is a California Prison Union Losing Ground in the Face of Changing Prison Dynamics?",
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"content": "\u003cp>A year after he took the top job in 2019, the president of one of California’s largest and most powerful unions \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article246020620.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">said in a newsletter\u003c/a> that he wanted to be “the 800-pound gorilla” in Sacramento politics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since then, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the union known as CCPOA representing 26,000 state prison guards, has spent and spent in a way it never did before. Its biggest recipient is Gov. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/tag/gavin-newsom/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gavin Newsom\u003c/a>, who has taken $2.9 million from the union since he was elected governor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s 31% of all political spending by the union since 2001.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The union, under \u003ca href=\"http://www.ccpoa.org/\">President Glen Stailey,\u003c/a> gave $1.75 million to Newsom’s anti-recall campaign in 2021 — the largest single contribution to that effort — and another $1 million to support Proposition 1, Newsom’s treatment and housing plan for people experiencing serious mental illness, which \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/elections/2024/03/election-result-proposition-1/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">passed by the narrowest of margins this year.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s a noted contrast to the union’s relationship with the three governors who preceded Newsom, especially former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Prison-guards-union-chief-in-leadership-fight-3195334.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">who fought the union’s proposed raises \u003c/a>and was the target of an \u003ca href=\"https://www.dailynews.com/2008/10/17/guards-give-up-effort-to-recall-gov-arnold-schwarzenegger/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">aborted recall campaign\u003c/a> launched by the union.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.datawrapper.de/_/r3OSp/\" width=\"800\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prior to the Newsom administration, the prison union’s biggest political expense came in 2005, when it joined other labor organizations in fighting a package of ballot measures sponsored by Schwarzenegger that would have curbed state spending and weakened public employee unions. The unions won, \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-nov-09-me-election9-story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dealing Schwarzenegger a major defeat\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Campaign finance records show the union largely stayed out of political fights during former Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration. It avoided the ballot measures that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11975692/prop-47s-impact-on-californias-criminal-justice-system\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">lowered criminal sentences\u003c/a> for nonviolent crimes and gave inmates \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11081078/gov-brown-sees-prop-57-as-key-to-ending-court-prison-oversight\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">more opportunities for parole\u003c/a> — propositions that voters passed and that contributed to declining headcounts in state prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then Newsom took office, and the union’s pocketbook opened wide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are two ways to look at that spending, according to interviews with legislators, labor leaders, former prison officials and budget watchdogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one, it’s a naked display of power: one of the richest unions in a labor-friendly state reminding its top politicians that it can spend with them — or against them. That’s primarily the view from outside the Capitol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the other view, from inside the Capitol, it’s a reflection of the union’s anxiety in the face of waning influence as California’s future almost certainly includes fewer prisons and fewer union-represented prison guards to staff them. The numbers don’t lie: \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/publication/realignment-incarceration-and-crime-trends-in-california/#:~:text=In%20September%202011%2C%20the%20month,355%20inmates%20per%20100%2C000%20residents).\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">California is housing 70,000 fewer inmates\u003c/a> in state prisons than it did in 2011.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the outset of his first term, Newsom floated the idea of closing a single-state prison. He’s since closed three and canceled a contract on another private prison, collectively saving hundreds of millions of dollars. However, facing a budget deficit and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2024/01/Fall-2023-Population-Projections-Publication.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">4,000 fewer inmates\u003c/a> projected to be in prison by the end of his term in 2026, Newsom demurred this year from shutting down another institution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a year of budget scarcity, when \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/justice/2024/01/california-prison-cost-per-inmate/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">each inmate costs about $132,000\u003c/a> to house annually and the Legislative Analyst’s Office has said the state has space to close five more prisons, Newsom has been stubborn about keeping prisons open. He has said he wants to keep some additional capacity in the system and that he wants to build up \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/03/17/san-quentin-transformation/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">rehabilitative programs\u003c/a> that can help inmates reintegrate into society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, in a written statement said that the governor has tried to balance potential budget savings with public safety needs inside prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Saving taxpayers billions of dollars without impacting public safety, Gov. Newsom has closed more prisons than any of his predecessors,” he wrote. “The governor’s decisions have been based exclusively on meeting the evolving needs of our criminal justice system in a manner that maximizes public safety and the judicious use of taxpayer dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nathan Ballard, an adviser to the union and a longtime Newsom ally, said in written responses to questions from CalMatters that the union and the governor had “respectful and substantive” discussions about potential prison closures this budget cycle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Union leaders clearly aired their views and listened very carefully to the administration’s priorities,” Ballard said. “The governor made it known that he valued the union’s input. Ultimately, Gov. Newsom’s process is his own, and it would be irresponsible to speculate about how he arrives at any particular decision.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The millions of dollars the union shoveled into Newsom’s most significant projects were a reflection of the union’s priorities, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When the union and the governor are in alignment policy-wise, as they were during Proposition 1, the CCPOA does not hesitate to fight hard for the governor’s initiatives,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even while grappling with policy areas where they are less aligned, there is a strong commitment to finding areas of agreement and progress.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>CCPOA’s big contracts in Newsom years\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Spending lots of money to support the most powerful executive in the state is perhaps not surprising. So what happens to the politicians who cross the prison guard union?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the union wanted to get rid of John Moorlach, a Republican state senator who was \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article146516764.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">questioning pension benefits\u003c/a> for California public employees, it spent more than $1 million against him in his Orange County race. Then, the flyers started popping up, sponsored by the union, tying the Never Trumper senator to the policies and personal predilections of Donald Trump.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was cartoonish,” said Lance Christensen, Moorloch’s campaign manager in that 2020 race. “You would think that the public safety unions whose job it is to serve and defend and protect Californians would want a guy like John Moorlach, who was law and order and supportive generally of public safety programs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11994026\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11994026\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17.jpg\" alt=\"A white man wearing a business suit sits down with a name marker in front of him with a microphone.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1300\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17-800x520.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17-1020x663.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17-160x104.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17-1536x998.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17-1920x1248.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sen. John Moorlach poses a question to State Auditor Elaine Howle during a Joint Committee on Legislative Audit hearing on workers’ compensation on January 7, 2020. \u003ccite>(Anne Wernikoff / CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The prison guard union has spent $3.8 million across 32 state legislative races in this century — $1.2 million of that was spent to defeat Moorlach. He lost to Democrat Dave Min, 51%–49%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They decided that it was time to go hammer and tong after him and take him out,” Christensen said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The union, which represents about 10% of all state workers, has undoubtedly gotten good deals for its members, arguably none more so than last year, when it negotiated \u003ca href=\"https://www.calhr.ca.gov/labor-relations/Documents/Summary%20of%20Agreement%20with%20Unit%206%20July%203,%202023%20through%20July%202,%202025.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a $1 billion raise\u003c/a> over three years. Correctional officers also got a \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/justice/2023/08/ccpoa-contract-2023-california-prisons/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">new state-funded retirement perk\u003c/a> out of the deal, in addition to their California Public Employees’ Retirement System pensions. And when the state mandated COVID-19 vaccinations for state employees, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/justice/2023/08/ccpoa-contract-2023-california-prisons/\">prison guards were permitted to skip them\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That spending has consistently come under fire from the Legislative Analyst’s Office, which found in 2019 and 2021 that the Newsom administration offered \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4078\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">“no evidence to justify (a) pay increase”\u003c/a> in an unusually harsh analysis of proposed prison guard raises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The analysis found that California prison guards have neither a recruitment nor a retention problem and that their salaries were already in line with the salaries in the counties where they work — if not more than 5% higher than comparable job classifications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, the Legislative Analyst’s Office \u003ca href=\"https://www.lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4800\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">excoriated Newsom’s administration\u003c/a> for repeatedly refusing to make public a 2018 compensation study on prison guard salaries and benefits. The administration regularly publishes compensation studies regarding its \u003ca href=\"https://www.calhr.ca.gov/state-hr-professionals/Pages/salary-surveys-main.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">18 other employee bargaining units\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the administration provided a 2022 compensation study, which the Legislative Analyst’s Office called “flawed” for its failure to account for overtime pay and its selection of large, metropolitan counties as pay comparison points rather than the rural areas where most prison guards work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The study is flawed to the point that it is not helpful in meeting its stated objective and we recommend policymakers not use it to assess whether the state’s compensation package for correctional officers is appropriate to attract and retain qualified workers,” according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those raises, said Brian Kaneda, deputy director for Californians United for a Responsible Budget, put the state’s budget crisis in sharper relief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The CCPOA has a stranglehold on Sacramento politics,” Kaneda said. “Everyone’s struggling right now, but prison guards are getting a $1 billion raise. Explain how this could possibly be the right move for California as we tussle with this historic budget deficit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked to gauge the union’s influence in Sacramento and the diverging views on its power, Ballard said union leadership concentrates on its members more than its lobby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The union’s leaders are focused on matters of character, not reputation,” he said. “The CCPOA’s leaders are street-smart correctional officers who have worked in very tough conditions for decades, and as a group, they are not terribly concerned with perceived status.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Is CCPOA a factor in Newsom’s prison closures?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Newsom began identifying prisons to close in 2020. More followed in 2022. Then, Newsom stopped naming additional prisons to close even though they have thousands of empty beds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What changed? For one, people’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/blog/solid-majorities-of-californians-view-crime-as-a-problem/\">perception of crime\u003c/a> spiked in the pandemic — though the kind of crimes that would merit prison time mostly went down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a governor who perhaps has \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/elections/2024/07/gavin-newsom-for-president-assets-liabilities/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ambitions beyond Sacramento\u003c/a>, that’s important, said one Democratic legislator who did not want their name used for fear of retaliation by both the governor’s office and the prison guard union.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think the CCPOA is the reason we’ve stalled on prison closures,” the legislator said. “I think it’s the governor himself or someone in the governor’s office protecting (the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My presumption is the governor is moderating his views on public safety because of where he wants to go nationally. And so he’s super careful about any perception of being soft on crime.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11994027\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11994027\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37.jpg\" alt='A white man wearing a business suit stand in front of a podium and microphone with a sign that reads \"San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at San Quentin State Prison, announcing that the facility will be transformed to focus on training and rehabilitation on March 17, 2023. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In its heyday during the prison building boom of the 1990s and 2000s, the prison guard union would never have had to account for such calculations, former Corrections Secretary Matt Cate said. Back then, both parties had incentives to make nice with the union.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At the time, the Democrats were more moderate than they are now, and they were doing everything to support labor generally,” said Cate, who was appointed corrections secretary in 2008 by Schwarzenegger and stayed for two years under Brown, leaving the office in 2011. “Meanwhile, Republicans were staunchly in favor of law enforcement and long sentences because they didn’t believe in rehabilitation and reentry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So CCPOA had an open field. It was just a much easier job than what the CCPOA faces today. It’s not as easy today to be an 800-pound gorilla as it would have been 20 years ago.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cate doubts the union is the sole reason, or even the main reason, that Newsom stopped designating prisons for closure. Closing a prison is like closing “a small city,” Cate said, with 3,000 inmates and 800–1,000 employees represented by a dozen or more different unions. The \u003ca href=\"https://cchcs.ca.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">prison system’s health care\u003c/a> is managed by a federal monitor, and another federal monitor oversees \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/dhcs/smhp-coleman/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the state’s prison mental health care.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.datawrapper.de/_/vMFSK/\" width=\"800\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Taking on a Democrat and losing\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One legislator who crossed the prison union and whose career survived was Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Los Angeles Democrat, who said the sharp-elbowed tactics employed by the union under Stailey, its president, were reflective of the union’s approach in the 1990s, a time when the union’s power was at its height.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they sneezed,” he said, “people got a cold.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2020, Jones-Sawyer fell into their crosshairs, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article245822830.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">literally\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The union ran an online ad against Jones-Sawyer that showed Stailey \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article245822830.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">pointing at a wall of photos\u003c/a> of legislators. Over Jones-Sawyer’s photo was a piece of white paper with crosshairs and a red dot. Jones-Sawyer \u003ca href=\"https://a57.asmdc.org/video/20200918-jones-sawyer-calls-investigation-ccpoa-advertisement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">took that as a threat\u003c/a>, and the union pledged to pull the ad down and re-edit it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It became clear that if they wanted to get back the power, they needed to take somebody out to put the fear into everybody,” said Jones-Sawyer, who won reelection that year. “They thought I was an easy target to take out. They learned that was not the case.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jones-Sawyer notes that the union didn’t spend much under former Gov. Brown — not until the threat of prison closures became a reality after Newsom’s election in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Once they started talking about closing prisons, that’s when the fear from the CCPOA came up,” Jones-Sawyer said. “That’s when they started writing double max-out checks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jones-Sawyer said he’s frustrated by what he sees as abuses within the prison system, especially guards with multiple infractions keeping their jobs. The Office of the Inspector General earlier this year found that the corrections department had \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/OIG-Special-Review-No-SR-23-01.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reclassified a backlog of staff misconduct complaints\u003c/a> as “routine grievances” and allowed the statute of limitations to expire in 127 complaints between 2022 and 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Jones-Sawyer said, he’s considering calling for an audit of the prison system’s facilities and spending.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When (the corrections department) comes back and says this is the best way to do it, we try to see their logic and a lot of times we don’t,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Are those hard-charging tactics isolating the prison union? One bill introduced this year may be an indication. The bill would limit the number of \u003ca href=\"https://digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_202320240ab2178?slug=CA_202320240AB2178\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">empty beds available in the prison system \u003c/a>to account for the declining inmate population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the bill’s registered supporters are immigration advocates, the California Public Defenders Association and anti-incarceration lobbies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was just one group registered in opposition: the CCPOA.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A year after he took the top job in 2019, the president of one of California’s largest and most powerful unions \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article246020620.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">said in a newsletter\u003c/a> that he wanted to be “the 800-pound gorilla” in Sacramento politics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since then, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the union known as CCPOA representing 26,000 state prison guards, has spent and spent in a way it never did before. Its biggest recipient is Gov. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/tag/gavin-newsom/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gavin Newsom\u003c/a>, who has taken $2.9 million from the union since he was elected governor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s 31% of all political spending by the union since 2001.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The union, under \u003ca href=\"http://www.ccpoa.org/\">President Glen Stailey,\u003c/a> gave $1.75 million to Newsom’s anti-recall campaign in 2021 — the largest single contribution to that effort — and another $1 million to support Proposition 1, Newsom’s treatment and housing plan for people experiencing serious mental illness, which \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/elections/2024/03/election-result-proposition-1/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">passed by the narrowest of margins this year.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s a noted contrast to the union’s relationship with the three governors who preceded Newsom, especially former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Prison-guards-union-chief-in-leadership-fight-3195334.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">who fought the union’s proposed raises \u003c/a>and was the target of an \u003ca href=\"https://www.dailynews.com/2008/10/17/guards-give-up-effort-to-recall-gov-arnold-schwarzenegger/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">aborted recall campaign\u003c/a> launched by the union.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.datawrapper.de/_/r3OSp/\" width=\"800\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prior to the Newsom administration, the prison union’s biggest political expense came in 2005, when it joined other labor organizations in fighting a package of ballot measures sponsored by Schwarzenegger that would have curbed state spending and weakened public employee unions. The unions won, \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-nov-09-me-election9-story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dealing Schwarzenegger a major defeat\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Campaign finance records show the union largely stayed out of political fights during former Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration. It avoided the ballot measures that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11975692/prop-47s-impact-on-californias-criminal-justice-system\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">lowered criminal sentences\u003c/a> for nonviolent crimes and gave inmates \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11081078/gov-brown-sees-prop-57-as-key-to-ending-court-prison-oversight\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">more opportunities for parole\u003c/a> — propositions that voters passed and that contributed to declining headcounts in state prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then Newsom took office, and the union’s pocketbook opened wide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are two ways to look at that spending, according to interviews with legislators, labor leaders, former prison officials and budget watchdogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one, it’s a naked display of power: one of the richest unions in a labor-friendly state reminding its top politicians that it can spend with them — or against them. That’s primarily the view from outside the Capitol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the other view, from inside the Capitol, it’s a reflection of the union’s anxiety in the face of waning influence as California’s future almost certainly includes fewer prisons and fewer union-represented prison guards to staff them. The numbers don’t lie: \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/publication/realignment-incarceration-and-crime-trends-in-california/#:~:text=In%20September%202011%2C%20the%20month,355%20inmates%20per%20100%2C000%20residents).\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">California is housing 70,000 fewer inmates\u003c/a> in state prisons than it did in 2011.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the outset of his first term, Newsom floated the idea of closing a single-state prison. He’s since closed three and canceled a contract on another private prison, collectively saving hundreds of millions of dollars. However, facing a budget deficit and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2024/01/Fall-2023-Population-Projections-Publication.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">4,000 fewer inmates\u003c/a> projected to be in prison by the end of his term in 2026, Newsom demurred this year from shutting down another institution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a year of budget scarcity, when \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/justice/2024/01/california-prison-cost-per-inmate/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">each inmate costs about $132,000\u003c/a> to house annually and the Legislative Analyst’s Office has said the state has space to close five more prisons, Newsom has been stubborn about keeping prisons open. He has said he wants to keep some additional capacity in the system and that he wants to build up \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/03/17/san-quentin-transformation/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">rehabilitative programs\u003c/a> that can help inmates reintegrate into society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, in a written statement said that the governor has tried to balance potential budget savings with public safety needs inside prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Saving taxpayers billions of dollars without impacting public safety, Gov. Newsom has closed more prisons than any of his predecessors,” he wrote. “The governor’s decisions have been based exclusively on meeting the evolving needs of our criminal justice system in a manner that maximizes public safety and the judicious use of taxpayer dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nathan Ballard, an adviser to the union and a longtime Newsom ally, said in written responses to questions from CalMatters that the union and the governor had “respectful and substantive” discussions about potential prison closures this budget cycle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Union leaders clearly aired their views and listened very carefully to the administration’s priorities,” Ballard said. “The governor made it known that he valued the union’s input. Ultimately, Gov. Newsom’s process is his own, and it would be irresponsible to speculate about how he arrives at any particular decision.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The millions of dollars the union shoveled into Newsom’s most significant projects were a reflection of the union’s priorities, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When the union and the governor are in alignment policy-wise, as they were during Proposition 1, the CCPOA does not hesitate to fight hard for the governor’s initiatives,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even while grappling with policy areas where they are less aligned, there is a strong commitment to finding areas of agreement and progress.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>CCPOA’s big contracts in Newsom years\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Spending lots of money to support the most powerful executive in the state is perhaps not surprising. So what happens to the politicians who cross the prison guard union?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the union wanted to get rid of John Moorlach, a Republican state senator who was \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article146516764.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">questioning pension benefits\u003c/a> for California public employees, it spent more than $1 million against him in his Orange County race. Then, the flyers started popping up, sponsored by the union, tying the Never Trumper senator to the policies and personal predilections of Donald Trump.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was cartoonish,” said Lance Christensen, Moorloch’s campaign manager in that 2020 race. “You would think that the public safety unions whose job it is to serve and defend and protect Californians would want a guy like John Moorlach, who was law and order and supportive generally of public safety programs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11994026\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11994026\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17.jpg\" alt=\"A white man wearing a business suit sits down with a name marker in front of him with a microphone.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1300\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17-800x520.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17-1020x663.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17-160x104.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17-1536x998.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/010720_WorkersCompAudit_AW_CM_17-1920x1248.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sen. John Moorlach poses a question to State Auditor Elaine Howle during a Joint Committee on Legislative Audit hearing on workers’ compensation on January 7, 2020. \u003ccite>(Anne Wernikoff / CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The prison guard union has spent $3.8 million across 32 state legislative races in this century — $1.2 million of that was spent to defeat Moorlach. He lost to Democrat Dave Min, 51%–49%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They decided that it was time to go hammer and tong after him and take him out,” Christensen said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The union, which represents about 10% of all state workers, has undoubtedly gotten good deals for its members, arguably none more so than last year, when it negotiated \u003ca href=\"https://www.calhr.ca.gov/labor-relations/Documents/Summary%20of%20Agreement%20with%20Unit%206%20July%203,%202023%20through%20July%202,%202025.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a $1 billion raise\u003c/a> over three years. Correctional officers also got a \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/justice/2023/08/ccpoa-contract-2023-california-prisons/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">new state-funded retirement perk\u003c/a> out of the deal, in addition to their California Public Employees’ Retirement System pensions. And when the state mandated COVID-19 vaccinations for state employees, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/justice/2023/08/ccpoa-contract-2023-california-prisons/\">prison guards were permitted to skip them\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That spending has consistently come under fire from the Legislative Analyst’s Office, which found in 2019 and 2021 that the Newsom administration offered \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4078\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">“no evidence to justify (a) pay increase”\u003c/a> in an unusually harsh analysis of proposed prison guard raises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The analysis found that California prison guards have neither a recruitment nor a retention problem and that their salaries were already in line with the salaries in the counties where they work — if not more than 5% higher than comparable job classifications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, the Legislative Analyst’s Office \u003ca href=\"https://www.lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4800\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">excoriated Newsom’s administration\u003c/a> for repeatedly refusing to make public a 2018 compensation study on prison guard salaries and benefits. The administration regularly publishes compensation studies regarding its \u003ca href=\"https://www.calhr.ca.gov/state-hr-professionals/Pages/salary-surveys-main.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">18 other employee bargaining units\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the administration provided a 2022 compensation study, which the Legislative Analyst’s Office called “flawed” for its failure to account for overtime pay and its selection of large, metropolitan counties as pay comparison points rather than the rural areas where most prison guards work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The study is flawed to the point that it is not helpful in meeting its stated objective and we recommend policymakers not use it to assess whether the state’s compensation package for correctional officers is appropriate to attract and retain qualified workers,” according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those raises, said Brian Kaneda, deputy director for Californians United for a Responsible Budget, put the state’s budget crisis in sharper relief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The CCPOA has a stranglehold on Sacramento politics,” Kaneda said. “Everyone’s struggling right now, but prison guards are getting a $1 billion raise. Explain how this could possibly be the right move for California as we tussle with this historic budget deficit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked to gauge the union’s influence in Sacramento and the diverging views on its power, Ballard said union leadership concentrates on its members more than its lobby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The union’s leaders are focused on matters of character, not reputation,” he said. “The CCPOA’s leaders are street-smart correctional officers who have worked in very tough conditions for decades, and as a group, they are not terribly concerned with perceived status.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Is CCPOA a factor in Newsom’s prison closures?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Newsom began identifying prisons to close in 2020. More followed in 2022. Then, Newsom stopped naming additional prisons to close even though they have thousands of empty beds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What changed? For one, people’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/blog/solid-majorities-of-californians-view-crime-as-a-problem/\">perception of crime\u003c/a> spiked in the pandemic — though the kind of crimes that would merit prison time mostly went down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a governor who perhaps has \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/elections/2024/07/gavin-newsom-for-president-assets-liabilities/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ambitions beyond Sacramento\u003c/a>, that’s important, said one Democratic legislator who did not want their name used for fear of retaliation by both the governor’s office and the prison guard union.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think the CCPOA is the reason we’ve stalled on prison closures,” the legislator said. “I think it’s the governor himself or someone in the governor’s office protecting (the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My presumption is the governor is moderating his views on public safety because of where he wants to go nationally. And so he’s super careful about any perception of being soft on crime.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11994027\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11994027\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37.jpg\" alt='A white man wearing a business suit stand in front of a podium and microphone with a sign that reads \"San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/031723-SAN-QUENTIN-REHABILITATION-CENTER-MHN-CM-37-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at San Quentin State Prison, announcing that the facility will be transformed to focus on training and rehabilitation on March 17, 2023. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In its heyday during the prison building boom of the 1990s and 2000s, the prison guard union would never have had to account for such calculations, former Corrections Secretary Matt Cate said. Back then, both parties had incentives to make nice with the union.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At the time, the Democrats were more moderate than they are now, and they were doing everything to support labor generally,” said Cate, who was appointed corrections secretary in 2008 by Schwarzenegger and stayed for two years under Brown, leaving the office in 2011. “Meanwhile, Republicans were staunchly in favor of law enforcement and long sentences because they didn’t believe in rehabilitation and reentry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So CCPOA had an open field. It was just a much easier job than what the CCPOA faces today. It’s not as easy today to be an 800-pound gorilla as it would have been 20 years ago.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cate doubts the union is the sole reason, or even the main reason, that Newsom stopped designating prisons for closure. Closing a prison is like closing “a small city,” Cate said, with 3,000 inmates and 800–1,000 employees represented by a dozen or more different unions. The \u003ca href=\"https://cchcs.ca.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">prison system’s health care\u003c/a> is managed by a federal monitor, and another federal monitor oversees \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/dhcs/smhp-coleman/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the state’s prison mental health care.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.datawrapper.de/_/vMFSK/\" width=\"800\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Taking on a Democrat and losing\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One legislator who crossed the prison union and whose career survived was Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Los Angeles Democrat, who said the sharp-elbowed tactics employed by the union under Stailey, its president, were reflective of the union’s approach in the 1990s, a time when the union’s power was at its height.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they sneezed,” he said, “people got a cold.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2020, Jones-Sawyer fell into their crosshairs, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article245822830.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">literally\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The union ran an online ad against Jones-Sawyer that showed Stailey \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article245822830.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">pointing at a wall of photos\u003c/a> of legislators. Over Jones-Sawyer’s photo was a piece of white paper with crosshairs and a red dot. Jones-Sawyer \u003ca href=\"https://a57.asmdc.org/video/20200918-jones-sawyer-calls-investigation-ccpoa-advertisement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">took that as a threat\u003c/a>, and the union pledged to pull the ad down and re-edit it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It became clear that if they wanted to get back the power, they needed to take somebody out to put the fear into everybody,” said Jones-Sawyer, who won reelection that year. “They thought I was an easy target to take out. They learned that was not the case.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jones-Sawyer notes that the union didn’t spend much under former Gov. Brown — not until the threat of prison closures became a reality after Newsom’s election in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Once they started talking about closing prisons, that’s when the fear from the CCPOA came up,” Jones-Sawyer said. “That’s when they started writing double max-out checks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jones-Sawyer said he’s frustrated by what he sees as abuses within the prison system, especially guards with multiple infractions keeping their jobs. The Office of the Inspector General earlier this year found that the corrections department had \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/OIG-Special-Review-No-SR-23-01.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reclassified a backlog of staff misconduct complaints\u003c/a> as “routine grievances” and allowed the statute of limitations to expire in 127 complaints between 2022 and 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Jones-Sawyer said, he’s considering calling for an audit of the prison system’s facilities and spending.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When (the corrections department) comes back and says this is the best way to do it, we try to see their logic and a lot of times we don’t,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Are those hard-charging tactics isolating the prison union? One bill introduced this year may be an indication. The bill would limit the number of \u003ca href=\"https://digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_202320240ab2178?slug=CA_202320240AB2178\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">empty beds available in the prison system \u003c/a>to account for the declining inmate population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the bill’s registered supporters are immigration advocates, the California Public Defenders Association and anti-incarceration lobbies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/global-news-podcast/id135067274?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/26099305-72af-4542-9dde-ac1807fe36d5/kqed-s-the-california-report",
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}
},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Magazine-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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}
},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/4s8b",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"here-and-now": {
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"info": "One of public radio's most dynamic voices, Sam Sanders helped launch The NPR Politics Podcast and hosted NPR's hit show It's Been A Minute. Now, the award-winning host returns with something brand new, The Sam Sanders Show. Every week, Sam Sanders and friends dig into the culture that shapes our lives: what's driving the biggest trends, how artists really think, and even the memes you can't stop scrolling past. Sam is beloved for his way of unpacking the world and bringing you up close to fresh currents and engaging conversations. The Sam Sanders Show is smart, funny and always a good time.",
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