The Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a formal notice to California last week, signaling that the state’s multi-decade failure to safeguard incarcerated women in two state prisons from widespread sexual abuse is likely in violation of the Constitution.
An August 13 report by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division determined that there was an “unbroken pattern of often violent, sexual misconduct by staff against prisoners from 2000 through 2024, continuing to the present” at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino. While the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) repeatedly substantiated allegations of sexual abuse by correctional officers at the two prisons, Justice Department investigators found that CDCR officials failed to protect victims or hold correctional officers accountable, and that women who attempted to report abuse faced retaliation.
The DOJ asserts that the ongoing abuse and the failure to halt it violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), a federal statute establishing zero-tolerance for sexual abuse within prisons.
“Female prisoners have the constitutional right to be free from sexual assault and harassment by prison staff,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a press release. “The Department of Justice’s investigation revealed that California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation knew of repeated incidents of sexual assault and harassment against female prisoners, and failed to protect them. This deliberate indifference to the suffering of female prisoners at the hands of prison staff is illegal, and the Civil Rights Division, in partnership with the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices for the Eastern and Central Districts of California, will end this brutal abuse.”
Yet the report is only the latest inquiry to describe a nationwide issue. The sexual abuse of incarcerated individuals remains a persistent scourge in jails and prisons across local, state, and federal systems. In 2024, the federal Bureau of Prisons announced the closure of a California women’s prison that had become known as the “rape club.” A 2021 Reason investigation outlined how a cadre of corrupt guards at a federal women’s prison in Florida were allowed to retire and avoid prosecution, despite giving sworn statements to investigators admitting to sexually assaulting inmates.
The Justice Department Civil Rights Division launched its investigation into the Central California Women’s Facility and the California Institution for Women in 2024, prompted by lawsuits filed by hundreds of incarcerated women and the arrest of a former correctional officer, Gregory Rodriguez, on charges of sexually abusing at least 22 women. The DOJ report states investigators identified more than 65 alleged victims of Rodriguez.
The report found that between 2023 and 2025, women incarcerated at the two prisons filed more than 375 accusations of staff sexual misconduct. However, the DOJ concluded that CDCR delays investigations, fails to thoroughly investigate those allegations, and does not protect women who report misconduct from retaliation in a pattern dating back to at least 2000.
Advocates for incarcerated women in California say the conclusions merely confirm what they have been saying for years.
“Nothing in the Department of Justice’s report should come as a surprise to anyone who has listened to incarcerated survivors,” Amika Mota, executive director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition said in a press release. “For years, women and gender-diverse people inside California prisons have reported ongoing sexual abuse, harassment, retaliation, intimidation, and a system that too often protects the people causing harm rather than the people reporting it. Survivors have been telling the truth. This report confirms what they have risked their safety to expose: the abuse is not isolated—it is structural and systemic.”
In one of the most dramatic episodes of alleged retaliation, guards at the Chowchilla state prison forced inmates into the cafeteria one day in August 2024 and then pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed them, allegedly as punishment for filing reports of sexual misconduct against officers.
“Leaked video appeared to confirm that dozens of prisoners were held in a cafeteria while their cells were searched,” the report says. “They were pepper-sprayed while being held in the cafeteria. Some were later pepper-sprayed while outside with their hands restrained behind their backs.”
The CDCR paid $1.9 million this April to settle a lawsuit filed by 13 of the women in the cafeteria that day.
That same month, a former CDCR sergeant, Ralph Contreras Jr., pleaded guilty to child pornography charges. The report notes that “investigators discovered rape scenes that depicted adult men assaulting girls as young as six in Contreras’s possession.” Contreras was part of the prison’s Investigative Services Unit, which conducts initial investigations of alleged staff sexual misconduct.
