Judge Considers Federal Oversight for Dublin Women's Prison Notorious for Sexual Abuse
Survivors from California’s Period of Forced Sterilization Denied Reparations
California Prisons Fail to Uphold Transgender Rights Despite State Law
When California Downsizes Prisons, Incarcerated People Are Shuffled Out of Community College Classes
Immigrant Advocates Make Final Push to Pass Bill Ending Prison-to-ICE Transfers in California
Documents Show How California Dept. of Corrections Handles Racism Among Officers
Why a California Program Allowing Prosecutors to Shorten Prison Sentences Is Catching on in Red and Blue Counties
California Prison Authorities Have Yet to Learn Lessons From Major COVID-19 Outbreaks, Advocates Warn
State Lawmakers Urge Newsom to Stop Transferring People in Prison to ICE in Pandemic
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master to oversee reforms at Federal Correctional Institution Dublin, an all-women’s facility facing more than 45 civil lawsuits over sexual assault and retaliation. \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/two-more-dublin-federal-correctional-officers-plead-guilty-sexually-abusing-multiple\">Eight correctional officers\u003c/a> at FCI Dublin have been charged already, including the facility’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11934639/ex-warden-of-dublin-womens-prison-convicted-of-sexually-abusing-inmates\">former warden\u003c/a> and chaplain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Survivors of abuse at the prison, along with staff, are expected to testify this week in order for the judge to review whether federal oversight is needed or whether the government has improved conditions at the prison, which has become notoriously known as a “rape club.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a lot of misconduct, rampant, throughout the institution,” said Erika Quezada, deputy captain FCI Dublin, who is in charge of correctional services at Dublin, testifying on Wednesday about conditions she saw when she started working there in 2022. There was “a lot of ignorance when it came to what policy really was,” and that many staff lacked proper training, she said, because they started during the COVID-19 pandemic when in-person training was suspended.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Quezada claimed that conditions at the facility have improved. “Once the new team of executive staff arrived, we had a meeting internally and discussed exactly what the allegations were,” she told the judge. “We are establishing zero-tolerance from here on out. It’s unacceptable, and every single allegation is going to be sent up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But attorneys representing plaintiffs in the case said any changes have been insufficient. Survivors are expected to testify later this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the persistence of the problem over many years. It’s how widespread it is in the facility,” Ernest Galvan, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, told KQED. “It’s the fact that the highest investigative officials within the facility, whose job it is to investigate both staff and incarcerated persons misconduct, just allowed this to go on and on for years.” [aside postID=news_11958308 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-14-KQED-1020x680.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If appointed, the special master for FCI Dublin would be a first in the history of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. It would entail bringing in a neutral third party to monitor the prison and any potential policy changes, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ktvu.com/news/facing-more-than-40-sex-abuse-suits-judge-could-appoint-special-master-over-fci-dublin-prison\">KTVU reports\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our clients rightly perceive that they are at imminent risk of serious harm because the Bureau of Prisons is still out of control with regard to protecting female prisoners from sexual assault and abuse,” Galvan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP, Rights Behind Bars, the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, and attorneys from the law firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP represent plaintiffs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In August, attorneys filed a potential class action lawsuit on behalf of eight women incarcerated at FCI Dublin who allege sexual abuse and retaliation from FCI Dublin officials and several individual officers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also asked the court for a preliminary injunction and to order immediate changes at the facility, including an end to solitary confinement, unless there is sufficient evidence that it’s not used for retaliation against people who report abuse. They are simultaneously seeking improved access to adequate off-site medical and mental health care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a December court hearing, attorneys representing the U.S. government argued that specific people working at FCI Dublin were the problem, rather than broader policies in the Bureau of Prisons and practices at the facility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Judge Gonzalez Rogers was unconvinced and requested the four-day hearing before deciding whether to order changes at FCI Dublin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During Wednesday’s hearing, the federal district judge challenged assertions that the facility’s high-security isolation cell, called a Special Housing Unit or SHU, was not used as a disciplinary response to safety concerns and reports.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s hard to say [Special Housing Unit] is not punitive,” Gonzalez Rogers said. “You’re treating them just like someone who is being disciplined.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The court previously found that multiple women were sent to the isolation unit after reporting sexual violence. Quezada said that the response was intended to protect the women who were put in the segregated unit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It seems there should be something that is not SHU that protects the inmates,” the judge asked. “Is there anything in between?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is not,” Quezada replied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week’s hearing started on Jan. 3 and is scheduled to continue through Jan. 5, with the possibility of added days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>KQED reporter April Dembosky contributed to this story.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Plaintiffs say a culture of sexualization and abuse at FCI Dublin persists, even after some officials have been charged.\r\n","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1709919504,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":23,"wordCount":816},"headData":{"title":"Judge Considers Federal Oversight for Dublin Women's Prison Notorious for Sexual Abuse | KQED","description":"Plaintiffs say a culture of sexualization and abuse at FCI Dublin persists, even after some officials have been charged.\r\n","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Judge Considers Federal Oversight for Dublin Women's Prison Notorious for Sexual Abuse","datePublished":"2024-01-03T22:58:39.000Z","dateModified":"2024-03-08T17:38:24.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png","isAccessibleForFree":"Y","publisher":{"@type":"NewsMediaOrganization","@id":"https://www.kqed.org/#organization","name":"KQED","url":"https://www.kqed.org","logo":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}}},"sticky":false,"excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","articleAge":"0","path":"/news/11971511/judge-considers-federal-oversight-for-dublin-womens-prison-notorious-for-sexual-abuse","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A federal judge is hearing testimony this week over an \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11958308/dublin-womens-prison-faces-class-action-lawsuit-over-sexual-abuse-scandal\">East Bay federal women’s prison\u003c/a> where inmates have alleged rampant and ongoing sexual abuse by correctional officers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is now considering whether to appoint a special master to oversee reforms at Federal Correctional Institution Dublin, an all-women’s facility facing more than 45 civil lawsuits over sexual assault and retaliation. \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/two-more-dublin-federal-correctional-officers-plead-guilty-sexually-abusing-multiple\">Eight correctional officers\u003c/a> at FCI Dublin have been charged already, including the facility’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11934639/ex-warden-of-dublin-womens-prison-convicted-of-sexually-abusing-inmates\">former warden\u003c/a> and chaplain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Survivors of abuse at the prison, along with staff, are expected to testify this week in order for the judge to review whether federal oversight is needed or whether the government has improved conditions at the prison, which has become notoriously known as a “rape club.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a lot of misconduct, rampant, throughout the institution,” said Erika Quezada, deputy captain FCI Dublin, who is in charge of correctional services at Dublin, testifying on Wednesday about conditions she saw when she started working there in 2022. There was “a lot of ignorance when it came to what policy really was,” and that many staff lacked proper training, she said, because they started during the COVID-19 pandemic when in-person training was suspended.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Quezada claimed that conditions at the facility have improved. “Once the new team of executive staff arrived, we had a meeting internally and discussed exactly what the allegations were,” she told the judge. “We are establishing zero-tolerance from here on out. It’s unacceptable, and every single allegation is going to be sent up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But attorneys representing plaintiffs in the case said any changes have been insufficient. Survivors are expected to testify later this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the persistence of the problem over many years. It’s how widespread it is in the facility,” Ernest Galvan, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, told KQED. “It’s the fact that the highest investigative officials within the facility, whose job it is to investigate both staff and incarcerated persons misconduct, just allowed this to go on and on for years.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"postid":"news_11958308","hero":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-14-KQED-1020x680.jpg","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If appointed, the special master for FCI Dublin would be a first in the history of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. It would entail bringing in a neutral third party to monitor the prison and any potential policy changes, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ktvu.com/news/facing-more-than-40-sex-abuse-suits-judge-could-appoint-special-master-over-fci-dublin-prison\">KTVU reports\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our clients rightly perceive that they are at imminent risk of serious harm because the Bureau of Prisons is still out of control with regard to protecting female prisoners from sexual assault and abuse,” Galvan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP, Rights Behind Bars, the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, and attorneys from the law firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP represent plaintiffs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In August, attorneys filed a potential class action lawsuit on behalf of eight women incarcerated at FCI Dublin who allege sexual abuse and retaliation from FCI Dublin officials and several individual officers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also asked the court for a preliminary injunction and to order immediate changes at the facility, including an end to solitary confinement, unless there is sufficient evidence that it’s not used for retaliation against people who report abuse. They are simultaneously seeking improved access to adequate off-site medical and mental health care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a December court hearing, attorneys representing the U.S. government argued that specific people working at FCI Dublin were the problem, rather than broader policies in the Bureau of Prisons and practices at the facility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Judge Gonzalez Rogers was unconvinced and requested the four-day hearing before deciding whether to order changes at FCI Dublin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During Wednesday’s hearing, the federal district judge challenged assertions that the facility’s high-security isolation cell, called a Special Housing Unit or SHU, was not used as a disciplinary response to safety concerns and reports.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s hard to say [Special Housing Unit] is not punitive,” Gonzalez Rogers said. “You’re treating them just like someone who is being disciplined.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The court previously found that multiple women were sent to the isolation unit after reporting sexual violence. Quezada said that the response was intended to protect the women who were put in the segregated unit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It seems there should be something that is not SHU that protects the inmates,” the judge asked. “Is there anything in between?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is not,” Quezada replied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week’s hearing started on Jan. 3 and is scheduled to continue through Jan. 5, with the possibility of added days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>KQED reporter April Dembosky contributed to this story.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/news/11971511/judge-considers-federal-oversight-for-dublin-womens-prison-notorious-for-sexual-abuse","authors":["11840"],"categories":["news_6188","news_8"],"tags":["news_3149","news_32047","news_33723","news_1527"],"featImg":"news_11971397","label":"news"},"news_11965926":{"type":"posts","id":"news_11965926","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"news","id":"11965926","score":null,"sort":[1698836430000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"survivors-of-californias-forced-sterilization-denied-reparations","title":"Survivors from California’s Period of Forced Sterilization Denied Reparations","publishDate":1698836430,"format":"standard","headTitle":"Survivors from California’s Period of Forced Sterilization Denied Reparations | KQED","labelTerm":{"site":"news"},"content":"\u003cp>In March 2006, Sharon Fennix, then incarcerated at Valley State Prison in California’s Central Valley, was transported to Madera Community Hospital for surgery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A prison doctor had recommended that she have non-cancerous growths removed from her uterus and, according to Fennix, she was told that the procedure wouldn’t have lasting impacts and recovery would be quick. She was given a dose of anesthesia, and the last thing she remembers was counting backward while two correctional officers wheeled her gurney down a hallway. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Sharon Fennix, a survivor who applied for reparations\"]‘My hope and my dream was always to have a child and be free. To give my son a sister or brother.’[/pullquote]When she woke up from the operation, she said her entire hospital gown was soaked with sweat. She remembers turning to the correctional officer in the room and saying, “I feel like something’s wrong.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Approximately two weeks later, the follow-up visit with the prison doctor who ordered the surgery, Dr. James Heinrich, also left her deeply unsettled. The conversation is carved into her mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was sweating, bleeding and pain,” Fennix recently told KQED. “It plunged me into menopause.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She asked Heinrich how long her side effects would last. Fennix said she was told what she was experiencing was normal and the growths on her uterus might return. Puzzled and upset, she wondered why surgery was necessary if the growths could come back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Fennix, she demanded to know what happened to her body during surgery. But the more she probed, the more Heinrich tried to rush her out of his office. Finally, he explained that a surgeon had put a boiling solution in her uterus. Toward the end of the appointment, Fennix said he looked at her file and remarked on the fact that she was serving a life sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She would never get out, she recalled Heinrich saying, so she didn’t need children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was very cunning the way he said that to me,” Fennix said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would take nearly a decade for Fennix to fully understand what had happened to her. Before she was released from prison, another doctor explained that she had undergone an endometrial ablation, a procedure that damages the uterine lining.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My hope and my dream was always to have a child and be free,” Fennix said. “To give my son a sister or brother.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But pregnancy would be unlikely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, if a pregnancy occurs after the procedure, “the risks of miscarriage and other problems are greatly increased.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964883\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11964883\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A person hold a photo of a family in an ornate frame.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED-800x534.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED-1920x1281.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sharon Fennix holds a photo of her son, Dontay Pickettay, center, his wife and their four children. Pickettay hoped for siblings, she said. “My hope and my dream was always to have a child and be free. To give my son a sister or brother,” Fennix said. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Florence Middleton)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I would make sure that [a person is] 110% sure that they do not want children before we discuss an ablation,” said Kavita Shah Arora, division director of General Obstetrics, Gynecology and Midwifery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and former chair of the ACOG’s national ethics committee. “I think it really boils down to, what informed consent was given? Were patients aware of the impact on future fertility?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fennix said she never provided informed consent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the state passed historic legislation in 2021 that provided financial reparations to people who were forcibly or involuntarily sterilized, an advocate from the California Coalition for Women Prisoners thought Fennix had a clear-cut case and persuaded her to apply. Fennix submitted her first application on Jan. 3, 2022, two days after applications opened. Seven months later, she received a denial letter from the state’s Victim Compensation Board, which administers the program. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Kavita Shah Arora, division director, General Obstetrics, Gynecology and Midwifery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill\"]‘I think it really boils down to, what informed consent was given? Were patients aware of the impact on future fertility?’[/pullquote]Fennix, who was 43 when she had the surgery, said she felt insulted by the rejection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You dehumanized me,” she said. “You took my body. How dare you later on tell me that I don’t deserve to be one of the ones that gets reparations for it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the application period for the reparations program \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11965672/forced-sterilization-survivors-of-california-prisons-face-reparations-deadline\">winds to a close in December\u003c/a>, Fennix and those who received endometrial ablations are at the heart of a dispute over who should be recognized as a survivor of a shameful chapter in California’s history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A year-long investigation by UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program and KQED found that the compensation board has denied a majority of applicants and repeatedly rejected ablations as a procedure worthy of recognition. The investigation included 30 public records requests, the review of more than 3,000 pages of documents — and interviews with survivors, advocates, medical experts and lawmakers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the applicants who volunteered their demographic information, the majority self-identified as Black or African American. Approximately 47% self-identified as male, 40% female and 4% transgender. While reporting this story, KQED spoke with six ablation survivors who were denied reparations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It feels so clear — based on the spirit of the law, based on the idea of who is perpetuating the harm — that if someone says, ‘I’m not able to have children’ and it’s documented that they had a procedure that limits your ability to have children, that feels like it should be sufficient,” said Jennifer James, an associate professor of sociology at UCSF and member of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, or CCWP, who has assisted survivors with their applications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, since 2014, California’s prison health care services have categorized ablations and dozens of other treatments as potentially sterilizing, according to a memo circulated among prison health care leadership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The board declined to respond to specific questions but said in a statement that it has worked “to meet the requirements established in the law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fennix appealed her case. That, too, was rejected. She went through the application and appeals process a second time. She was denied at every stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In rejecting Fennix’s first appeal, the board said that ablations don’t qualify as sterilizations under the law and cited the Mayo Clinic website, writing that pregnancy “can and does occur after an endometrial ablation.” The board left out what followed on the website: “The pregnancy is higher risk to you and the baby.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next week, Fennix and another formerly incarcerated woman who received an ablation will file a petition in state courts aimed at testing the state’s implementation of the reparations law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her case, Fennix said, reflects a hole in the state’s efforts to compensate survivors of state-sponsored sterilization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not able to reproduce,” she said. “And so, how am I not sterilized?”\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: line-through\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘It’s another betrayal’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When legislators passed the reparations law, California became the first and only state in the country to publicly recognize its role in prison sterilizations. Through monetary compensation and memorialization efforts, the state aimed to “raise public awareness about the discriminatory harms” survivors of forced sterilization had faced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state allocated $7.5 million to the two-year program, with $4.5 million earmarked for compensation, $1 million for memorialization and $2 million for program administration and outreach. Each individual whose application is approved receives $15,000. A second and final payment of $20,000, \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB143\">signed\u003c/a> into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September, will be processed by October 2024. Up to $1 million of any remaining compensation funds could be extended for survivors if legislation is passed in the next few years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of Oct. 25, 108 out of 510 applications had been approved. [aside postID=news_11965672 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_0468-1020x659.jpg']Those who championed the legislation estimated that there were roughly 600 living survivors of forced or involuntary sterilization. The actual number of survivors, however, may never be known due to various limitations, such as medical records retention policies. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.auditor.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2013-120.pdf\">2014 state audit\u003c/a> found that at least 794 people in state prisons underwent various procedures that “could have resulted in sterilization” between 2005 and 2013.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who had been forcibly or involuntarily sterilized while incarcerated in state prisons after 1979 or at state-run hospitals, homes and institutions during the eugenics era between 1909 and 1979 could qualify for reparations. But advocates, like CCWP, say that the board is looking for a level of proof that’s unreasonably difficult to meet. For example, they say medical records are more heavily weighted than a personal statement from the survivor, even though the board is required by law to accept multiple forms of documentation to prove that sterilization was more likely than not forcible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It isn’t gray to us because the stories are so convincing about how people were just pressured into signing the consent and didn’t understand what they were signing,” said Diana Block, a legal advocate at CCWP. “But those are all things that are so difficult and challenging to prove.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A significant hurdle has been the lack of consistency and clarity around the compensation board’s definition of sterilization. According to its own guidelines, which KQED obtained through a public records request, the board describes the condition as “the removal of one’s ability to have biological children through medical procedures.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the only method medical experts use for sterilization — or what is now called permanent contraception due to the coercive history of sterilization — is a vasectomy or tubal procedure, which cuts, burns, occludes or removes the fallopian tubes. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Carolyn Sufrin, associate professor and OBGYN, Johns Hopkins University\"]‘I believe that people who had this procedure should receive reparations because this is a procedure that, after it, all medical recommendations say, ‘Do not get pregnant after this.’[/pullquote]Medical experts such as Carolyn Sufrin, an associate professor and OBGYN at Johns Hopkins University, also agree that various treatments can profoundly affect fertility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Endometrial ablations, for example, are typically offered when a person is experiencing abnormal uterine bleeding, such as heavy or irregular periods that are not caused by cancer. While experts say an ablation is not clinically defined as sterilization, they contend the procedure should not be done for people who have any desire for future childbearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Chances of a pregnancy at all or healthy pregnancy are vastly reduced,” Sufrin said. “I believe that people who had this procedure should receive reparations because this is a procedure that, after it, all medical recommendations say, ‘Do not get pregnant after this.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sufrin referenced a patient brochure for NovaSure, one of the most common mechanisms used to perform an endometrial ablation, which states, “A pregnancy after an ablation is very dangerous for both the mother and the fetus since the uterine lining would not be able to properly support fetal development.” Contraception is recommended after ablation because of the dangers associated with a possible pregnancy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the denial of Fennix’s second appeal, the compensation board rejected her application because the legislation did not define “sterilization,” so it relied on the “ordinary plain meaning, which is the permanent inability to produce offspring.” The board cited Black’s Law Dictionary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The board also cited a 2014 criminal law that banned procedures that “render an individual permanently incapable of reproducing” except for in a life-or-death situation or when medically necessary. Based on the language of that law, the board said it believed ablations don’t meet the criteria for reparations because legislators “intended sterilization to mean a permanent form of birth control.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Former state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, who authored the 2014 law in response to the state audit on coercive sterilizations, said she suspected the board was narrowly interpreting the reparations law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If a procedure is so overwhelmingly likely to lead to sterilization, in my opinion, that should entitle someone to reparations,” she said. “But if it means that you have to go back in and identify all of the procedures that could lead to sterilization, then so be it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Emails obtained through a public records request show the compensation board staff has also questioned how it determines who should receive compensation: “We went round and round about ablations, and we are not doctors. We always felt there should be more medical evidence to support our decision.” [aside postID=news_11964027 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_0434-1020x659.jpg']Cynthia Chandler, the policy chief for Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price and a lawyer who helped draft the reparations law, first heard about ablations in the early 2000s when her legal organization was contacted by a cluster of people who described a “grotesque” procedure that was sometimes performed without anesthesia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Chandler, people reported “the most painful, terrifying experience of their life … and even if some of them were medically necessary, people had no information about what was happening to them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To Chandler, ablations were an example of the many procedures used to limit incarcerated people’s fertility by a group of unethical physicians. When a coalition of reparation advocates asked her to help draft the bill, she said that she and her colleagues consciously decided not to define sterilization nor list specific qualifying medical procedures because they knew they would not be able to capture them all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Chandler and her colleagues listed a number of criteria to qualify for compensation. Among the requirements, applicants needed to show that they had been sterilized while incarcerated and that the procedure wasn’t a medical response to a life-or-death situation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chandler said that if she had known that the board would define sterilization in a way that wasn’t based on “medical realities,” she would have written the legislation differently.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the state’s one and only opportunity to make amends, and this is how they’re behaving with it,” said Chandler, who also drafted the 2014 law that the compensation board referenced in Fennix’s appeal denial. “I’m horrified at how language that I actually wrote could be so weaponized to remove it so far from its actual meaning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the compensation board has declined to view ablations as a form of sterilization for the purposes of reparations, state officials have been aware of its sterilizing potential for at least a decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On March 19, 2014, three months before the state concluded its audit on forced sterilization in California prisons, Dr. Ricki Barnett, then the deputy medical executive at the California Correctional Health Care Services, sent a memo to top prison health care officials. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Cynthia Chandler, a lawyer who helped draft the reparations law\"]‘This is the state’s one and only opportunity to make amends, and this is how they’re behaving with it. I’m horrified at how language that I actually wrote could be so weaponized to remove it so far from its actual meaning.’[/pullquote]In 2006, the California Department of Corrections division of health care services was put under federal oversight for the state’s 33 institutions after a class-action lawsuit, Plata v. Schwarzenegger. The case brought to light the dire environment of prison medical care in California, which the court ruled was a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Twelve of the state’s institutions remain under federal oversight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The subject line of Barnett’s 2014 memo read, “Prospective Review for Procedures that have Sterilization Risks.” What followed was an urgent message: Effective immediately, all of the procedures that [the health care services] deemed to have “the potential for sterilization or diminished capacity for future conception” must go through a heightened level of review. Ablations were included in this list, along with nearly 50 other procedures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CCHCS and CDCR declined to respond to questions about the memo but said in a statement that when they became aware that “non-medically necessary procedures resulting in sterilization were being performed on patients, the procedures were stopped.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the memo was issued, the doctor who ordered Fennix’s ablation, Heinrich, signed off on tubal ligations, hysterectomies, the removal of ovaries and endometrial ablations between 2006 and 2012, \u003ca href=\"https://revealnews.org/article/calif-prison-doctor-linked-to-sterilizations-no-stranger-to-controversy-2/\">according to The Center for Investigative Reporting\u003c/a>, which first reported the illegal sterilizations. According to state prison medical records obtained by KQED, he ordered at least 80 ablations during that time, as the one performed on Fennix.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heinrich told The Center for Investigative Reporting that the state wasn’t paying doctors a significant amount of money for the sterilizations “compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children — as they procreated more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heinrich did not respond to repeated attempts for comment. When a reporter recently knocked on the door of his Castro Valley home, a woman who answered slammed it in the reporter’s face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clairreatha Brown, who is incarcerated at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, said Heinrich pressured her into an ablation in 2008 when she was 30. He never mentioned that the procedure would impact her fertility, she said, though his secretary told her she would not have children because of the procedure. But Brown said she was made to feel that there were no other options.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown’s application for reparations was also denied, catching her off guard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s another betrayal,” Brown said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘I’m going to need a second opinion’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Despite Heinrich’s expectations, Fennix was released from prison in 2017. Four years later, she completed her parole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I am just so ecstatic with this world and not being in that box,” she said. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Sharon Fennix, a survivor who applied for reparations\"]‘These are the times I can cry for the little girl who spent 38 years in prison.’[/pullquote]Fennix, now 60, is the director at a community wellness center and a coordinator at a health care organization for formerly incarcerated people in Northern California. She begins her day at 3 a.m. The morning is the most gratifying time of day because she said she can sit on her porch and watch the sunrise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are the times I can cry for the little girl who spent 38 years in prison,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Fennix was incarcerated, she met Chandler, the attorney who helped write the reparations law, when she had come to the prison to meet with her clients. After Fennix’s first reparations application and appeal were both denied, Chandler introduced her to WookSun Hong, an attorney at the Bay Area Legal Incubator, an organization that supports attorneys who serve underrepresented communities. Hong helped her file a second application.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964881\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1334px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11964881\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/003_Sharon_230929_056-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A person in a pink blouse looks out of a window.\" width=\"1334\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/003_Sharon_230929_056-KQED.jpg 1334w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/003_Sharon_230929_056-KQED-800x1199.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/003_Sharon_230929_056-KQED-1020x1529.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/003_Sharon_230929_056-KQED-160x240.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/003_Sharon_230929_056-KQED-1025x1536.jpg 1025w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1334px) 100vw, 1334px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sharon Fennix, now 60, is the director of a community wellness center and a coordinator at a health care organization for formerly incarcerated people in Northern California. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Florence Middleton)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This time, the application included a declaration from Amy Huibonhoa, a board-certified OBGYN who noted the serious risks associated with pregnancy after ablation. Huibonhoa stated that it is “imperative” for informed consent to cover those risks, along with its negative impact on fertility. Fennix was still denied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hong suggested they petition the state court, arguing that the government isn’t adhering to the law. It is slated to be filed next week. According to Hong, the petition is important because he believes the compensation board’s grounds for denials are arbitrary and not based on the law or science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The whole purpose of the Victim Compensation Board is to compensate the victims,” Hong said. “But it’s almost like they’re acting like insurance adjusters. They are trying to find the excuse to deny the claim.” [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"WookSun Hong, attorney, Bay Area Legal Incubator\"]‘The whole purpose of the Victim Compensation Board is to compensate the victims. But it’s almost like they’re acting like insurance adjusters. They are trying to find the excuse to deny the claim.’[/pullquote]Continuing to push is Fennix’s way of demanding that the board begin to fully comprehend the extent of the damage that was done to people like her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m hoping [the compensation board] realizes that they sterilized a lot of us and that they should give people options, not just do what they want to do with our bodies,” she said. “It’s not about the money more than it is about the fact that these people don’t want to take accountability, and they don’t want to say that they actually ruined my body based on a procedure that didn’t have to happen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fennix said her body continues to feel off-kilter and the symptoms she experienced after having an ablation have largely remained the same. Now, anytime she needs to have a procedure done, she takes extra time and caution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m going to ask a thousand questions,” she said. “I’m going to need a second opinion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Cayla Mihalovich is a reporter with the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>More information on how to apply for compensation for involuntary sterilization can be found at the California Victim Compensation Board \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://victims.ca.gov/for-victims/fiscp/#How_to_apply\">\u003cem>website\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. Applications are available in English and Spanish. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Anyone needing assistance with the application can call the compensation board’s toll-free helpline at 1-800-777-9229 from 8 a.m.–5 p.m. Monday-Friday.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"As of Oct. 25, 70% of applicants were denied reparations. Who qualifies as a survivor in this dark chapter of California's history?","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1698854476,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":72,"wordCount":3810},"headData":{"title":"Survivors from California’s Period of Forced Sterilization Denied Reparations | KQED","description":"As of Oct. 25, 70% of applicants were denied reparations. Who qualifies as a survivor in this dark chapter of California's history?","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Survivors from California’s Period of Forced Sterilization Denied Reparations","datePublished":"2023-11-01T11:00:30.000Z","dateModified":"2023-11-01T16:01:16.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png","isAccessibleForFree":"Y","publisher":{"@type":"NewsMediaOrganization","@id":"https://www.kqed.org/#organization","name":"KQED","url":"https://www.kqed.org","logo":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}}},"nprByline":"\u003ca href=\"https://caylamihalovich.com/\">Cayla Mihalovich\u003c/a>","excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","showOnAuthorArchivePages":"No","articleAge":"0","path":"/news/11965926/survivors-of-californias-forced-sterilization-denied-reparations","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In March 2006, Sharon Fennix, then incarcerated at Valley State Prison in California’s Central Valley, was transported to Madera Community Hospital for surgery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A prison doctor had recommended that she have non-cancerous growths removed from her uterus and, according to Fennix, she was told that the procedure wouldn’t have lasting impacts and recovery would be quick. She was given a dose of anesthesia, and the last thing she remembers was counting backward while two correctional officers wheeled her gurney down a hallway. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘My hope and my dream was always to have a child and be free. To give my son a sister or brother.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Sharon Fennix, a survivor who applied for reparations","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>When she woke up from the operation, she said her entire hospital gown was soaked with sweat. She remembers turning to the correctional officer in the room and saying, “I feel like something’s wrong.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Approximately two weeks later, the follow-up visit with the prison doctor who ordered the surgery, Dr. James Heinrich, also left her deeply unsettled. The conversation is carved into her mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was sweating, bleeding and pain,” Fennix recently told KQED. “It plunged me into menopause.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She asked Heinrich how long her side effects would last. Fennix said she was told what she was experiencing was normal and the growths on her uterus might return. Puzzled and upset, she wondered why surgery was necessary if the growths could come back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Fennix, she demanded to know what happened to her body during surgery. But the more she probed, the more Heinrich tried to rush her out of his office. Finally, he explained that a surgeon had put a boiling solution in her uterus. Toward the end of the appointment, Fennix said he looked at her file and remarked on the fact that she was serving a life sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She would never get out, she recalled Heinrich saying, so she didn’t need children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was very cunning the way he said that to me,” Fennix said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would take nearly a decade for Fennix to fully understand what had happened to her. Before she was released from prison, another doctor explained that she had undergone an endometrial ablation, a procedure that damages the uterine lining.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My hope and my dream was always to have a child and be free,” Fennix said. “To give my son a sister or brother.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But pregnancy would be unlikely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, if a pregnancy occurs after the procedure, “the risks of miscarriage and other problems are greatly increased.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964883\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11964883\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A person hold a photo of a family in an ornate frame.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED-800x534.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/009_Sharon_230929_125-KQED-1920x1281.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sharon Fennix holds a photo of her son, Dontay Pickettay, center, his wife and their four children. Pickettay hoped for siblings, she said. “My hope and my dream was always to have a child and be free. To give my son a sister or brother,” Fennix said. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Florence Middleton)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I would make sure that [a person is] 110% sure that they do not want children before we discuss an ablation,” said Kavita Shah Arora, division director of General Obstetrics, Gynecology and Midwifery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and former chair of the ACOG’s national ethics committee. “I think it really boils down to, what informed consent was given? Were patients aware of the impact on future fertility?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fennix said she never provided informed consent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the state passed historic legislation in 2021 that provided financial reparations to people who were forcibly or involuntarily sterilized, an advocate from the California Coalition for Women Prisoners thought Fennix had a clear-cut case and persuaded her to apply. Fennix submitted her first application on Jan. 3, 2022, two days after applications opened. Seven months later, she received a denial letter from the state’s Victim Compensation Board, which administers the program. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘I think it really boils down to, what informed consent was given? Were patients aware of the impact on future fertility?’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Kavita Shah Arora, division director, General Obstetrics, Gynecology and Midwifery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Fennix, who was 43 when she had the surgery, said she felt insulted by the rejection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You dehumanized me,” she said. “You took my body. How dare you later on tell me that I don’t deserve to be one of the ones that gets reparations for it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the application period for the reparations program \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11965672/forced-sterilization-survivors-of-california-prisons-face-reparations-deadline\">winds to a close in December\u003c/a>, Fennix and those who received endometrial ablations are at the heart of a dispute over who should be recognized as a survivor of a shameful chapter in California’s history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A year-long investigation by UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program and KQED found that the compensation board has denied a majority of applicants and repeatedly rejected ablations as a procedure worthy of recognition. The investigation included 30 public records requests, the review of more than 3,000 pages of documents — and interviews with survivors, advocates, medical experts and lawmakers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the applicants who volunteered their demographic information, the majority self-identified as Black or African American. Approximately 47% self-identified as male, 40% female and 4% transgender. While reporting this story, KQED spoke with six ablation survivors who were denied reparations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It feels so clear — based on the spirit of the law, based on the idea of who is perpetuating the harm — that if someone says, ‘I’m not able to have children’ and it’s documented that they had a procedure that limits your ability to have children, that feels like it should be sufficient,” said Jennifer James, an associate professor of sociology at UCSF and member of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, or CCWP, who has assisted survivors with their applications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, since 2014, California’s prison health care services have categorized ablations and dozens of other treatments as potentially sterilizing, according to a memo circulated among prison health care leadership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The board declined to respond to specific questions but said in a statement that it has worked “to meet the requirements established in the law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fennix appealed her case. That, too, was rejected. She went through the application and appeals process a second time. She was denied at every stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In rejecting Fennix’s first appeal, the board said that ablations don’t qualify as sterilizations under the law and cited the Mayo Clinic website, writing that pregnancy “can and does occur after an endometrial ablation.” The board left out what followed on the website: “The pregnancy is higher risk to you and the baby.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next week, Fennix and another formerly incarcerated woman who received an ablation will file a petition in state courts aimed at testing the state’s implementation of the reparations law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her case, Fennix said, reflects a hole in the state’s efforts to compensate survivors of state-sponsored sterilization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not able to reproduce,” she said. “And so, how am I not sterilized?”\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: line-through\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘It’s another betrayal’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When legislators passed the reparations law, California became the first and only state in the country to publicly recognize its role in prison sterilizations. Through monetary compensation and memorialization efforts, the state aimed to “raise public awareness about the discriminatory harms” survivors of forced sterilization had faced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state allocated $7.5 million to the two-year program, with $4.5 million earmarked for compensation, $1 million for memorialization and $2 million for program administration and outreach. Each individual whose application is approved receives $15,000. A second and final payment of $20,000, \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB143\">signed\u003c/a> into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September, will be processed by October 2024. Up to $1 million of any remaining compensation funds could be extended for survivors if legislation is passed in the next few years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of Oct. 25, 108 out of 510 applications had been approved. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"postid":"news_11965672","hero":"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_0468-1020x659.jpg","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Those who championed the legislation estimated that there were roughly 600 living survivors of forced or involuntary sterilization. The actual number of survivors, however, may never be known due to various limitations, such as medical records retention policies. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.auditor.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2013-120.pdf\">2014 state audit\u003c/a> found that at least 794 people in state prisons underwent various procedures that “could have resulted in sterilization” between 2005 and 2013.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who had been forcibly or involuntarily sterilized while incarcerated in state prisons after 1979 or at state-run hospitals, homes and institutions during the eugenics era between 1909 and 1979 could qualify for reparations. But advocates, like CCWP, say that the board is looking for a level of proof that’s unreasonably difficult to meet. For example, they say medical records are more heavily weighted than a personal statement from the survivor, even though the board is required by law to accept multiple forms of documentation to prove that sterilization was more likely than not forcible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It isn’t gray to us because the stories are so convincing about how people were just pressured into signing the consent and didn’t understand what they were signing,” said Diana Block, a legal advocate at CCWP. “But those are all things that are so difficult and challenging to prove.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A significant hurdle has been the lack of consistency and clarity around the compensation board’s definition of sterilization. According to its own guidelines, which KQED obtained through a public records request, the board describes the condition as “the removal of one’s ability to have biological children through medical procedures.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the only method medical experts use for sterilization — or what is now called permanent contraception due to the coercive history of sterilization — is a vasectomy or tubal procedure, which cuts, burns, occludes or removes the fallopian tubes. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘I believe that people who had this procedure should receive reparations because this is a procedure that, after it, all medical recommendations say, ‘Do not get pregnant after this.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Carolyn Sufrin, associate professor and OBGYN, Johns Hopkins University","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Medical experts such as Carolyn Sufrin, an associate professor and OBGYN at Johns Hopkins University, also agree that various treatments can profoundly affect fertility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Endometrial ablations, for example, are typically offered when a person is experiencing abnormal uterine bleeding, such as heavy or irregular periods that are not caused by cancer. While experts say an ablation is not clinically defined as sterilization, they contend the procedure should not be done for people who have any desire for future childbearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Chances of a pregnancy at all or healthy pregnancy are vastly reduced,” Sufrin said. “I believe that people who had this procedure should receive reparations because this is a procedure that, after it, all medical recommendations say, ‘Do not get pregnant after this.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sufrin referenced a patient brochure for NovaSure, one of the most common mechanisms used to perform an endometrial ablation, which states, “A pregnancy after an ablation is very dangerous for both the mother and the fetus since the uterine lining would not be able to properly support fetal development.” Contraception is recommended after ablation because of the dangers associated with a possible pregnancy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the denial of Fennix’s second appeal, the compensation board rejected her application because the legislation did not define “sterilization,” so it relied on the “ordinary plain meaning, which is the permanent inability to produce offspring.” The board cited Black’s Law Dictionary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The board also cited a 2014 criminal law that banned procedures that “render an individual permanently incapable of reproducing” except for in a life-or-death situation or when medically necessary. Based on the language of that law, the board said it believed ablations don’t meet the criteria for reparations because legislators “intended sterilization to mean a permanent form of birth control.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Former state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, who authored the 2014 law in response to the state audit on coercive sterilizations, said she suspected the board was narrowly interpreting the reparations law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If a procedure is so overwhelmingly likely to lead to sterilization, in my opinion, that should entitle someone to reparations,” she said. “But if it means that you have to go back in and identify all of the procedures that could lead to sterilization, then so be it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Emails obtained through a public records request show the compensation board staff has also questioned how it determines who should receive compensation: “We went round and round about ablations, and we are not doctors. We always felt there should be more medical evidence to support our decision.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"postid":"news_11964027","hero":"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_0434-1020x659.jpg","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Cynthia Chandler, the policy chief for Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price and a lawyer who helped draft the reparations law, first heard about ablations in the early 2000s when her legal organization was contacted by a cluster of people who described a “grotesque” procedure that was sometimes performed without anesthesia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Chandler, people reported “the most painful, terrifying experience of their life … and even if some of them were medically necessary, people had no information about what was happening to them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To Chandler, ablations were an example of the many procedures used to limit incarcerated people’s fertility by a group of unethical physicians. When a coalition of reparation advocates asked her to help draft the bill, she said that she and her colleagues consciously decided not to define sterilization nor list specific qualifying medical procedures because they knew they would not be able to capture them all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Chandler and her colleagues listed a number of criteria to qualify for compensation. Among the requirements, applicants needed to show that they had been sterilized while incarcerated and that the procedure wasn’t a medical response to a life-or-death situation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chandler said that if she had known that the board would define sterilization in a way that wasn’t based on “medical realities,” she would have written the legislation differently.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the state’s one and only opportunity to make amends, and this is how they’re behaving with it,” said Chandler, who also drafted the 2014 law that the compensation board referenced in Fennix’s appeal denial. “I’m horrified at how language that I actually wrote could be so weaponized to remove it so far from its actual meaning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the compensation board has declined to view ablations as a form of sterilization for the purposes of reparations, state officials have been aware of its sterilizing potential for at least a decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On March 19, 2014, three months before the state concluded its audit on forced sterilization in California prisons, Dr. Ricki Barnett, then the deputy medical executive at the California Correctional Health Care Services, sent a memo to top prison health care officials. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘This is the state’s one and only opportunity to make amends, and this is how they’re behaving with it. I’m horrified at how language that I actually wrote could be so weaponized to remove it so far from its actual meaning.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Cynthia Chandler, a lawyer who helped draft the reparations law","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In 2006, the California Department of Corrections division of health care services was put under federal oversight for the state’s 33 institutions after a class-action lawsuit, Plata v. Schwarzenegger. The case brought to light the dire environment of prison medical care in California, which the court ruled was a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Twelve of the state’s institutions remain under federal oversight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The subject line of Barnett’s 2014 memo read, “Prospective Review for Procedures that have Sterilization Risks.” What followed was an urgent message: Effective immediately, all of the procedures that [the health care services] deemed to have “the potential for sterilization or diminished capacity for future conception” must go through a heightened level of review. Ablations were included in this list, along with nearly 50 other procedures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CCHCS and CDCR declined to respond to questions about the memo but said in a statement that when they became aware that “non-medically necessary procedures resulting in sterilization were being performed on patients, the procedures were stopped.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the memo was issued, the doctor who ordered Fennix’s ablation, Heinrich, signed off on tubal ligations, hysterectomies, the removal of ovaries and endometrial ablations between 2006 and 2012, \u003ca href=\"https://revealnews.org/article/calif-prison-doctor-linked-to-sterilizations-no-stranger-to-controversy-2/\">according to The Center for Investigative Reporting\u003c/a>, which first reported the illegal sterilizations. According to state prison medical records obtained by KQED, he ordered at least 80 ablations during that time, as the one performed on Fennix.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heinrich told The Center for Investigative Reporting that the state wasn’t paying doctors a significant amount of money for the sterilizations “compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children — as they procreated more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heinrich did not respond to repeated attempts for comment. When a reporter recently knocked on the door of his Castro Valley home, a woman who answered slammed it in the reporter’s face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clairreatha Brown, who is incarcerated at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, said Heinrich pressured her into an ablation in 2008 when she was 30. He never mentioned that the procedure would impact her fertility, she said, though his secretary told her she would not have children because of the procedure. But Brown said she was made to feel that there were no other options.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown’s application for reparations was also denied, catching her off guard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s another betrayal,” Brown said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘I’m going to need a second opinion’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Despite Heinrich’s expectations, Fennix was released from prison in 2017. Four years later, she completed her parole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I am just so ecstatic with this world and not being in that box,” she said. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘These are the times I can cry for the little girl who spent 38 years in prison.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Sharon Fennix, a survivor who applied for reparations","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Fennix, now 60, is the director at a community wellness center and a coordinator at a health care organization for formerly incarcerated people in Northern California. She begins her day at 3 a.m. The morning is the most gratifying time of day because she said she can sit on her porch and watch the sunrise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are the times I can cry for the little girl who spent 38 years in prison,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Fennix was incarcerated, she met Chandler, the attorney who helped write the reparations law, when she had come to the prison to meet with her clients. After Fennix’s first reparations application and appeal were both denied, Chandler introduced her to WookSun Hong, an attorney at the Bay Area Legal Incubator, an organization that supports attorneys who serve underrepresented communities. Hong helped her file a second application.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964881\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1334px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11964881\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/003_Sharon_230929_056-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A person in a pink blouse looks out of a window.\" width=\"1334\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/003_Sharon_230929_056-KQED.jpg 1334w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/003_Sharon_230929_056-KQED-800x1199.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/003_Sharon_230929_056-KQED-1020x1529.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/003_Sharon_230929_056-KQED-160x240.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/003_Sharon_230929_056-KQED-1025x1536.jpg 1025w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1334px) 100vw, 1334px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sharon Fennix, now 60, is the director of a community wellness center and a coordinator at a health care organization for formerly incarcerated people in Northern California. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Florence Middleton)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This time, the application included a declaration from Amy Huibonhoa, a board-certified OBGYN who noted the serious risks associated with pregnancy after ablation. Huibonhoa stated that it is “imperative” for informed consent to cover those risks, along with its negative impact on fertility. Fennix was still denied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hong suggested they petition the state court, arguing that the government isn’t adhering to the law. It is slated to be filed next week. According to Hong, the petition is important because he believes the compensation board’s grounds for denials are arbitrary and not based on the law or science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The whole purpose of the Victim Compensation Board is to compensate the victims,” Hong said. “But it’s almost like they’re acting like insurance adjusters. They are trying to find the excuse to deny the claim.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘The whole purpose of the Victim Compensation Board is to compensate the victims. But it’s almost like they’re acting like insurance adjusters. They are trying to find the excuse to deny the claim.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"WookSun Hong, attorney, Bay Area Legal Incubator","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Continuing to push is Fennix’s way of demanding that the board begin to fully comprehend the extent of the damage that was done to people like her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m hoping [the compensation board] realizes that they sterilized a lot of us and that they should give people options, not just do what they want to do with our bodies,” she said. “It’s not about the money more than it is about the fact that these people don’t want to take accountability, and they don’t want to say that they actually ruined my body based on a procedure that didn’t have to happen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fennix said her body continues to feel off-kilter and the symptoms she experienced after having an ablation have largely remained the same. Now, anytime she needs to have a procedure done, she takes extra time and caution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m going to ask a thousand questions,” she said. “I’m going to need a second opinion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Cayla Mihalovich is a reporter with the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>More information on how to apply for compensation for involuntary sterilization can be found at the California Victim Compensation Board \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://victims.ca.gov/for-victims/fiscp/#How_to_apply\">\u003cem>website\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. Applications are available in English and Spanish. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Anyone needing assistance with the application can call the compensation board’s toll-free helpline at 1-800-777-9229 from 8 a.m.–5 p.m. Monday-Friday.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/news/11965926/survivors-of-californias-forced-sterilization-denied-reparations","authors":["byline_news_11965926"],"categories":["news_6188","news_8"],"tags":["news_18538","news_32222","news_616","news_3149","news_30652","news_27626","news_32261","news_32212","news_30638","news_2923","news_32043"],"featImg":"news_11964882","label":"news"},"news_11964027":{"type":"posts","id":"news_11964027","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"news","id":"11964027","score":null,"sort":[1697209258000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"california-prisons-fail-to-uphold-transgender-rights-despite-state-law","title":"California Prisons Fail to Uphold Transgender Rights Despite State Law","publishDate":1697209258,"format":"standard","headTitle":"California Prisons Fail to Uphold Transgender Rights Despite State Law | KQED","labelTerm":{"term":26731,"site":"news"},"content":"\u003cp>\u003cem>Warning: There are descriptions of physical and sexual violence in this piece. Also, where legal names and chosen names differ, we’re using chosen names.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]S[/dropcap]yiaah Skylit had been stuck in solitary confinement at a maximum-security men’s prison for months when, in the fall of 2020, she got the news that gave her hope: Gov. Gavin Newsom had signed the \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB132\">Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), the law requires California prison staff to use the chosen pronouns of incarcerated people who are intersex or identify as nonbinary or transgender, as Skylit does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It allows those incarcerated people to \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/prea/sb-132-faqs/\">select a gender preference for the guards who search them\u003c/a>. Most significantly, it mandates that prison officials, under most circumstances, honor requests to be housed at the type of facility — male or female — that aligns with the incarcerated person’s gender identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For six years, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation bounced Skylit from one men’s prison to another. At each, safety proved elusive. By 2020, she was isolated in a cell for her own protection after brutal attacks by people she was incarcerated with and, \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23991903-syiaahkvsp2ndamendedcomplaint2022-03-03\">a lawsuit alleges (PDF)\u003c/a>, by guards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The prospect of serving out her remaining sentence in a women’s facility seemed nothing short of a miracle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For me, what it felt like was a sanctuary,” she said in one of several dozen interviews with KQED over the course of a year. “A place to be who you were meant to be without any retaliation, without any violence, without any judgment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Decades have passed since simply \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11917624/how-a-young-gay-man-survived-one-of-the-darkest-eras-in-california-queer-history\">being LGBTQ+ was considered a crime and a mental illness\u003c/a>. But bias and marginalization still lead to high rates of criminalization, especially for \u003ca href=\"https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/resources/NTDS_Report.pdf\">Black trans women (PDF)\u003c/a> like Skylit. Once incarcerated, harsh prison conditions take a serious toll on mental health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://cpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.uci.edu/dist/0/1149/files/2013/06/BulletinVol2Issue2.pdf\">Studies (PDF)\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS%20Full%20Report%20-%20FINAL%201.6.17.pdf\">surveys (PDF)\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/pdca15.pdf\">federal data (PDF)\u003c/a> show that trans women held in men’s prisons are sexually and physically assaulted at rates as much as 13 times higher than cisgender men. When they report assaults or fears for their safety, they’re often met with \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23991938-tni-coalition-letter-to-governor-newsom-71723pdf-2\">staff retaliation (PDF)\u003c/a>. It’s not uncommon for trans women to harm themselves — just to get to the safety of a prison mental health bed. Skylit had lived that, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Syiaah Skylit, transgender woman in California prison\"]‘For me, what it felt like was a sanctuary. A place to be who you were meant to be without any retaliation, without any violence, without any judgment.’[/pullquote]The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act promised an end to those nightmares.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No more having to hide in fear,” Skylit said. “No more having to be quiet about who I really am. I was excited. I couldn’t wait.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This story is a result of a year-long investigation into the effectiveness of the legislation that aimed to reduce the trauma of transgender women in California’s prisons. KQED’s reporters interviewed a dozen incarcerated people and reviewed data along with several hundred pages of prison grievances, disciplinary records and legal filings. The reporting revealed that trans women like Skylit and many others transferred to a women’s prison under the new law have not found the sanctuary they were seeking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Skylit, the nightmares have only gotten worse.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Living with secrets\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Skylit grew up in Compton. When she was 5, she and her siblings entered the foster care system after their mother suffered a mental health break. When Skylit was 14, her mother died by apparent suicide, and the following year, she said, “I tried to kill myself by running in front of a moving train.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was physically uninjured but sent to a psychiatric hospital. It wouldn’t be the last time she’d tried to take her own life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964099\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964099\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Free-Syiaah-social-KQED-800x949.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"949\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Free-Syiaah-social-KQED-800x949.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Free-Syiaah-social-KQED-1020x1210.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Free-Syiaah-social-KQED-160x190.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Free-Syiaah-social-KQED-1295x1536.jpg 1295w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Free-Syiaah-social-KQED.jpg 1686w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In August 2020, as Syiaah Skylit sat in solitary confinement at Kern Valley State Prison for her own protection, transgender advocates launched a Change.org campaign urging clemency for her. She helped with the design of the artwork. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Syiaah Skylit, Micah Bazant and Freddie Francis)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Skylit is a slight 5 feet, 5 inches tall with a big, dimpled smile. As a teen and living as a boy, she was bullied for being a flashy dresser, for the way she carried herself. She experimented with a gay relationship, but it left her feeling “confused.” The adults in her life were religious and viewed LGBTQ+ people as sinners. Her brothers were gang members. She did what they asked of her, she said, because “I didn’t want to look weak.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I couldn’t come out and be myself around people like my family and my friends that I grew up with,” Skylit said. “I grew up in a hard-ass neighborhood. That ain’t about to fly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, she harbored a secret she never shared with her brothers, one even she didn’t fully comprehend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I would dress up. I would put makeup on. All I understood as a person was, ‘Hey, I like this,’” she said. “So if I like this, why is it so bad? Am I a bad person?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A stint in juvenile detention didn’t stop Skylit from setting her sights on a bright future. She finished high school on time, enrolled in community college, worked multiple jobs and, for a while, paid her rent. But anxiety, depression and drug use interrupted her stability. She’d already been homeless once when, facing eviction in 2012, she and a friend robbed a convenience store in San Bernardino County. It yielded little, so they robbed a Los Angeles County jewelry store — and got caught.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 22, Skylit was facing criminal trials in both counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Syiaah Skylit, transgender woman in California prison\"]‘I couldn’t come out and be myself around people like my family and my friends that I grew up with. I grew up in a hard-ass neighborhood. That ain’t about to fly.’[/pullquote]Her first stop was a San Bernardino County jail, where she came out as gay to get to the relative safety of what was then called the “alternative lifestyles tank.” According to a \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23999484-syiaah2015sanbernardinocolawsuit\">class-action lawsuit (DOC)\u003c/a>, the conditions were distressing: discrimination by staff and denial of basic services. Skylit, under her legal name, was among the named plaintiffs. A settlement led to \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24002812-sanbernardinoinjunctiverelief\">significant reforms (DOC)\u003c/a>. It was in that jail, she said, where she first learned to advocate for her rights, even in the face of retaliation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also where she first encountered openly transgender women and was blown away by their courage and joyful confidence. In their midst, Skylit said, she at last felt free of judgment, open to self-acceptance. Her next stop — a stint in the segregated LGBTQ+ tank at the Los Angeles County jail — only reinforced those feelings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s when I got a taste of all the ‘T’ and I was just living it,” she said of the ‘T’ for Transgender in the alphabet soup of LGBTQ+. “It was like discovering myself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was sentenced to 16 years in prison. It may seem paradoxical, but incarceration gave Skylit breathing room to explore her gender identity. In court, she apologized to her robbery victims. Then, she made a promise to herself to use “every second, every minute” of her time inside “to really find out who I am. I mean, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I felt I had.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit entered California’s prison system for men in December 2015. Soon, she chose her new name. “Syiaah” is an acronym — sexy, young, intelligent, ambitious, authentic and heroic. She picked “Sky” as “an inspiration to reach higher limits.” And “lit” is a nod to her hip-hop Compton roots “to be vibrant, live.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Put it together, it’s ‘I keep the sky lit’,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In keeping with the up-to-date \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24002874-ama-medical-spectrum-of-gender-d-295312\">medical (DOC)\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/diversity/education/transgender-and-gender-nonconforming-patients\">psychiatric\u003c/a> understanding of gender identity, the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act doesn’t require incarcerated people to be on hormone replacement therapy or to be interested in gender-affirming surgeries to be transferred to housing that aligns with their sense of safety. During Skylit’s early years in prison, that wasn’t the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11957664 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/110822-KernValleyPrison-LV_CM_04-1020x680.jpg']The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation \u003cem>did\u003c/em> consider such transfer requests. The federal Prison Rape Elimination Act had since 2012 \u003ca href=\"https://www.prearesourcecenter.org/frequently-asked-questions/does-policy-houses-transgender-or-intersex-inmates-based-exclusively\">forbidden\u003c/a> the department from housing prisoners based solely on external genital anatomy. But the CDCR did it on a case-by-case basis, and the tiny number granted all happened to be for trans women who’d had gender-affirming genital surgery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not everybody wants that. Gender identity and gender transition are deeply personal. Skylit’s records show she declared her transgender identity on a special CDCR form about a year after arrival — and soon after started \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24018578-skylit-2019-housing-complaint\">asking to be transferred to a women’s prison (DOC)\u003c/a>. That went nowhere. So Skylit worked to stay true to her transition, even as she was funneled through a series of men’s prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I tapped into it, despite the long time I was facing, I was happy,” she said. “But that happiness turned into survival real fast.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Met by violence\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Almost immediately, Skylit’s gender identity and small stature made her a target. On several occasions, she said, correctional officers placed her in cells with large men who specifically requested her and then pressured her for sex. When she filed grievances in an attempt to switch cells or responded to physical assaults by fighting, she said, staff responded with Rule Violation Reports, known as RVRs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The more I would push back,” she said, “the more they would attack me with RVRs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Skylit pressed on. She requested hormone replacement therapy, and by the time those treatments started, in 2018, she’d been moved to Mule Creek State Prison near the small Sierra foothills town of Ione. It’s one of a dozen or so facilities in the state designated as “transgender hubs.” That means, medical and mental services for trans prisoners are concentrated there, as are prison commissary items unavailable elsewhere, such as sports bras and makeup for trans women, and boxer shorts for trans men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit could finally stop MacGyvering her fashion looks. She could style her hair, wear makeup and earrings. On the prison yard, she said she found a sense of belonging with her trans sisters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were out there,” she said. “Having fun, protecting each other.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even at men’s prisons designated as transgender hubs, trans women were mixed with cisgender men in common areas and their assigned cells. The truer Skylit felt to herself, she said, the greater the danger she experienced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yeah, it’s OK to come out and you got a nice little outfit on, but guess what you just did?” she said. “You just called attention to yourself and now you have certain people who are making sexual advances towards you, and some of them don’t stop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of her trans sisters exchanged sex for safety. But even that was no guarantee of safety. Skylit wept while recounting how a close friend staggered out of her cell “with a huge gash in her skull, busted lip, trying to get out of the room that she placed herself in because she wanted to be \u003cem>herself\u003c/em>. And she couldn’t complain to the officers, because they’re not gonna do anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Syiaah Skylit, transgender woman in California prison\"]‘Either I’m gonna be who I wanna be or I’m gonna end up dead. Girl, I can’t be dead and be myself at the same time.’[/pullquote]So Skylit found herself facing a soul-crushing choice between her safety and her identity. Skylit drew a line against assault. That meant more fights and more disciplinary write-ups. The hormone treatments caused muscle weakness, so she made another compromise. She began stopping and starting the medications depending on the danger she was facing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Either I’m gonna be who I wanna be or I’m gonna end up dead,” she said. “Girl, I can’t be dead and be myself at the same time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a survival strategy it made sense, but abruptly going on and off hormones brings on acute mood swings. It also heightens \u003ca href=\"https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/diversity/education/transgender-and-gender-nonconforming-patients/gender-dysphoria-diagnosis\">gender dysphoria\u003c/a>, a mental health diagnosis associated with distress a person can feel at being a gender other than the one assigned at birth. Skylit had experienced that for most of her life, as she hid her true gender identity, and it caused depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Skylit juggled these stressors, prison officials transferred her again — this time to Kern Valley State Prison, a maximum-security facility in the Central Valley town of Delano that houses some of the state’s most violent offenders. Among them, transgender advocates \u003ca href=\"https://prisonhealth.news/2021/10/29/lgbtq-prison-testimonies-dakota-rose-in-california/\">note\u003c/a>, are gang members known to target LGBTQ+ people in prisons. That’s where she \u003ca href=\"https://sfbayview.com/2021/05/trans-woman-seeks-release-from-cdcr-custody-after-attacks/\">hit a new low\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Skylit and a \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23991903-syiaahkvsp2ndamendedcomplaint2022-03-03\">lawsuit filed on her behalf (DOC),\u003c/a> she was assaulted twice by incarcerated men and witnessed gruesome attacks on two other trans women. Terrified, she says she asked to speak to a sergeant about her safety concerns. Instead, she alleges, two officers followed her into her cell. One pulled down her pants, ran a baton along her bottom and threatened to rape her with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And I’m just sitting there like this can’t be real,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11954055 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/230626-CALIFORNIA-PRISONERS-AP-RP-KQED-1020x735.jpg']That night, she drank from a bottle of laundry detergent in a desperate attempt to get sent to a mental health crisis unit. An officer stripped her of her clothes and left her lying naked in her cell next to the empty bottle. The next day, an officer pepper sprayed her at close range. Others beat her with batons. CDCR does not comment on active litigation. In legal filings, the named officers have denied wrongdoing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, Skylit said, a sergeant agreed to isolate her for her protection. That’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.vera.org/news/violence-torture-and-isolation-what-its-like-to-be-trans-in-prison\">a common fate for trans women\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s sad to be thankful for complete solitary confinement, isolation,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She would stay there for seven months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit had sought help from various attorneys. One responded. Jen Orthwein is a forensic psychologist who once treated transgender clients behind prison walls. They later co-founded a queer-owned law firm to challenge the harsh conditions they’d witnessed. Orthwein worked with other transgender advocates to launch a \u003ca href=\"https://www.change.org/p/gavin-newsom-call-for-the-immediate-release-of-syiaah-skylit-from-cdcr-custody-blacktranslivesmatter?utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=custom_url&recruited_by_id=cc830240-3ea3-11e9-a4df-e5579d49cec9\">petition\u003c/a> for clemency on Skylit’s behalf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, with colored pencils and paper, Skylit got to work crafting a series of illustrated \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24018571-its-a-colorful-world-by-syiaah-skylit\">children’s books (DOC)\u003c/a> featuring gender-non-conforming characters. Among them is a rainbow-colored kid named Unique, who is fully embraced by loving parents but bullied on the playground for delighting in toys conventionally meant for both boys and girls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The project helped Skylit reimagine her traumatic past. She also hoped her books might make their way into the world and change the mindset of young readers “to where they’re not growing into hatred, but actually out of it.” She finished two, got started on a third. And that’s where she was when Orthewin gave her the good news. The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act was state law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964104\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964104\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Scans of two pages of drawing and text from a hand written book.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Excerpts from ‘It’s a Colorful World.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Syiaah Skylit)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It was like a prayer had been answered,” Skylit said. “Like, ‘This is it!’ This is going to be the beginning of Syiaah Skylit at her best, at completely being herself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>New perils\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Wiener’s bill was years in the making, and he’s quick to note that top CDCR officials were on board. They welcomed advocates to join a working group to brainstorm solutions to unsafe conditions and sought input directly from incarcerated transgender people. The Office of Inspector General detailed in \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Special-Review-Incarcerated-Transgender-Nonbinary-Intersex-Individuals.pdf\">a 2020 report (PDF)\u003c/a> the painful responses to those surveys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laws in \u003ca href=\"https://www.acluct.org/en/know-your-rights/know-your-rights-trans-people-who-are-incarcerated-connecticut\">Connecticut\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23991974-952-management-of-gender-diverse-and-intersex-inmates-final-version\">Rhode Island (DOC)\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://lgbtqbar.org/bar-news/tiproject/ma/\">Massachusetts\u003c/a> call for similar reforms, while \u003ca href=\"https://www.aclu-nj.org/en/press-releases/settlement-nj-civil-rights-suit-promises-necessary-reform-affirming-transgender\">New Jersey\u003c/a> has made comparable policy changes in response to litigation. But advocates who helped craft California’s law say it is the most expansive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wiener said in an interview that he knew at the start that the magnitude of changes mandated by the law required patience and that it would take time to implement. More recently, though, he’s grown deeply concerned about the way his legislation has played out on the ground. Because, he said, even with senior CDCR management on board, “the culture in the individual prisons is just so challenging that it doesn’t translate.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964100\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964100\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED-800x539.jpg\" alt='A group of people, most wearing the same uniform of blue shirts and pants, stand together holding signs and joined by a person wearing a suit helping to hold a banner reading \"trans lives matter.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"539\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED-800x539.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED-1020x687.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED-160x108.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED-1536x1035.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED-1920x1294.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) attends CDCR’s first Transgender Remembrance Day in 2019, organized jointly by trans and cisgender incarcerated people. Wiener had already authored the bill that would become the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, with buy-in from top CDCR officials. \u003ccite>(California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Officials chose the Central California Women’s Facility, or CCWF, in Chowchilla as the prison where all the trans women would go first. It’s a facility with a \u003ca href=\"https://prisonlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/16.08.18-Prison-Law-Office-report-on-CCWF.pdf\">troubled history (PDF)\u003c/a> when it comes to staff accountability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of a dozen CCWF prisoners interviewed by KQED, all said they heard correctional staff express hostility to the new law even before the transfers began, warning the cisgender population that fakers and sexual predators were heading their way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tasha Brown, a cisgender woman, said she heard guards say, “The doors were going to be open for people to come in to violate us, to rape us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tomas Green, a transgender man, said he heard guards “telling women here that the trans women were men and that they were gonna get raped.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11936438 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/12/1920px-CentralCaliforniaWomensFacility-1020x816.jpeg']Alexanne Danis, a cisgender woman, said she heard a lieutenant openly state that the transfers “don’t belong here, that they have to leave.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Officers and fellow cisgender incarcerated people, Danis said, also spoke about driving the new transfers out, “saying that they were gonna stage stuff and that they were gonna make it sound worse than it was if anything did happen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michelle Calvin was one of the first transgender women to arrive at CCWF. She helped work on Wiener’s legislation and has since transferred to the lower-security California Institution for Women. She heard the characterizations by staff that trans women were “gonna come over here and rape y’all and beat y’all up and take y’all stuff.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The power to reverse the law, she heard officers tell incarcerated people, rested in their hands: “Take your house back. Take your prison back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates who helped craft the law were well aware of this toxic environment. They say they pressed officials to allow them to hold a town hall at the women’s prison to defuse these narratives before the transfers began. It never happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the trans women who began arriving in the first half of 2021 had no idea what they were stepping into.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Orthwein, Skylit’s attorney, was part of the working group that informed the new law and said key CDCR decisions around implementation proved harmful. The new arrivals were held in segregation for their first month. There, they were issued new prison identification numbers beginning with a distinctive two-letter combination. Instead of “some semblance of privacy about their transgender status,” which advocates had pressed for, this immediately outed them, feeding hostility and rejection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CCWF houses people in dorms, as many as eight to a room. Without exception, the trans women interviewed by KQED said they have been refused entry to dorms by prisoners who viewed them as “men.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Skylit’s first day in the general population, in mid-July 2021, guards started writing her up for minor violations. Within a month, she was in solitary confinement, accused of having a consensual relationship with her cisgender female bunkmate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sex is against prison rules systemwide, but every CCWF prisoner interviewed for this piece said it’s extremely common, especially in women’s prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Tomas Green, transgender man in California prison\"]‘At the end of the day, we’re humans. I’m not saying every relationship in here is just peachy perfect, no. You have a lot of relationships in here that are toxic — fight, argue. But that’s life in the free world.’[/pullquote]“Yes, you’re not supposed to have sex but it happens. It’s natural and there’s nothing that’s gonna stop it from happening,” said Giovanni Gonzales, a transgender man who runs a group to educate peers about gender identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Relationships form quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At the end of the day, we’re humans,” Green said. “I’m not saying every relationship in here is just peachy perfect, no. You have a lot of relationships in here that are toxic — fight, argue. But that’s life in the free world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, while sex and intimacy may be universal, punishment is not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gonzales and Green said staff often turn a blind eye to cisgender women who couple up, especially if they express their gender in stereotypically feminine ways. If a transgender man is caught being amorous, they said, a rule violation is more likely. As for the trans women who were just arriving at CCWF, a harsher set of unwritten rules seemed to apply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One cisgender couple in Skylit’s dorm had been having regular sex without consequence, she said. As Skylit was handcuffed and written up for her relationship, she asked an officer why she was going to isolation and the bunkmate wasn’t. He replied, “Because you’re a man and she’s a woman.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a hearing to discuss her situation, records show that Acting Warden Michael Pallares told her he would push to send her back to men’s prison. She claimed he was hostile, “calling me a predator, saying that I’m preying on women.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In men’s prison, Skylit had lived in constant fear of sexual assault. Now \u003cem>she \u003c/em>was cast as a sexual predator. Her disciplinary paperwork relied on “confidential sources” to suggest she was faking her status because she “displays very masculine behavior when with the inmate population.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In isolation, according to grievances and a government claim filed by Orthwein, Skylit’s gender identity was undermined. She had trouble accessing her hormones and was denied a razor for 40 days straight. She grew a full beard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People screaming at me, yelling at me, calling me a man, and I need to go back to the men’s prison,” she said. “‘Look at the hair on yo’ face.’ [I was] pleading, pleading, pleading, ‘Please give me a razor, please give me a razor,’ and denied every time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A psychologist misgendered Skylit in a report, yet \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24018435-psychologist-note-razors-clothing\">noted (DOC)\u003c/a> that an extended stay in isolation would likely increase her mental health symptoms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the months that followed, Skylit was sent multiple times to a mental health unit for being suicidal. She was bumped up to a more intensive level of mental health care. Yet she remained in solitary confinement for eight months. Then, without explanation, Pallares released her to the general population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her freedom wouldn’t last.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘What did you all do to our homegirl?’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Skylit’s time in isolation had taken a toll. On the yard, she said she made enemies when she responded to threats and harassment with aggressive posturing and language. She said she tried not to engage, hanging out and playing cards every day with a couple of other trans women and one cisgender woman who was sweet on her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We would hold hands,” she said. “We would hug, we would kiss.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prison officials aren’t supposed to penalize trans women more harshly for breaking rules that cisgender prisoners also break, like the one forbidding any behavior that could lead to sex. But the atmosphere around these relationships, interviews and records reveal, was tense and complex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While some cisgender women feared or lashed out at the new arrivals, others were eager to partner with them. Of a half-dozen transgender women at CCWF who were interviewed by KQED, the five who have not had gender-affirming genital surgery, said they’ve been subject to sexual advances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11955680 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/07/GettyImages-180517172-1020x680.jpg']Meanwhile, \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24016207-mossgroup-sb132-cdcr-assessment-report\">a report (DOC)\u003c/a> on the implementation of the new law commissioned by CDCR found that a “sexualized environment, including being sexually pressured or pursued,” was among the reasons given by transgender women who voluntarily returned to men’s prison. Other reasons included “hostile reception from staff or incarcerated individuals,” “false allegations to be removed from room” and “issues with getting hygiene items, such as razors.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In men’s prison, Skylit said, consensual sex generally went unpunished. That made it hard for her to imagine just how much the bond with her new “bestie” would cost her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 19, 2022, Skylit and her friends were on the yard drinking prison-made wine, disciplinary records show. Skylit and her girlfriend were kissing. A few minutes after Skylit went to use the porta-potty, she said, the girlfriend followed her in and started throwing up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit said she was holding her hair back when Calvin, one of the trans friends she played cards with, let her know a guard was approaching. Skylit stepped out and asked a couple of other people to check on the girlfriend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They “opened the door and they say, ‘What did you all do to our homegirl? We don’t know what you two doing, we don’t know what’s going on over here,’” Skylit recounted. “And I said, ‘We just been drinking and she was in the thing throwing up.’ But now, it’s a commotion. It’s a crowd coming up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Skylit and two other witnesses, the girlfriend came out, and the guard scolded them. “She was like, ‘I’m OK bestie, I love you so much,’ and I hugged her and I walked away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rumors about a rape started circulating. Skylit said she heard it “from like one or two people. It wasn’t \u003cem>big\u003c/em> until the next day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Syiaah Skylit, transgender woman in California prison\"]‘They were surrounding me and pushing me and spitting on me and swinging at me.’[/pullquote]By then, a fictional narrative had taken shape: In those few moments inside the porta-potty, Skylit had committed rape, while Calvin stood guard. To be clear, prison officials never accused her of rape or sexual assault. The girlfriend told them — and KQED — that it never happened. Still, the rumors proved to be Skylit’s undoing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That next day, according to Skylit and five witnesses, as she was returning from a mental health appointment, she was roughed up on the yard by 12 to 15 incarcerated people who called her “nothing but a rapist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were surrounding me and pushing me and spitting on me and swinging at me,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED obtained video of the incident through a public records request. There’s no audio, but the grainy image shows Skylit, who had a pass to be on the yard, doing an about-face as a group of incarcerated people in civilian clothes approached her. One appears to throw liquid at her. A few shove and punch her. She gets agitated. At one point, it’s clear that she’s yelling. But she mostly keeps her arms crossed. She never hits back. Still, she is the only one punished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/nS5qpi-NXfE\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>As Syiaah Skylit, wearing a long-sleeved white shirt under her prison blues, walked through the yard at Central California Women’s Facility in May 2022, she was accosted by incarcerated people who accused her of being a rapist. Courtesy of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’d been out of solitary confinement for just four weeks. She went right back in — and she hasn’t come out in more than a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A sergeant who, the video shows, does not walk out to the yard until Skylit is handcuffed, wrote her \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24018553-referring-to-sexual-intercourse-through-rape\">rule violation report (DOC)\u003c/a>. He states that he heard her yell, “I’m gonna f- you bitches,” and a few variations on that theme. Then, using her legal name, he adds an editorial aside: “It should be known that when [Skylit] mentioned f-, [Skylit] was referring to sexual intercourse through rape.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CCWF initially accused Skylit of “threatening the life of a prisoner,” and referred her to the local district attorney for felony prosecution. It didn’t stick. Ultimately, her writeup was reduced to “behavior which could lead to violence.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Syiaah Skylit, transgender woman in California prison\"]‘It’s sad to be thankful for complete solitary confinement, isolation.’[/pullquote]In her defense, Skylit pointed to the video as evidence that she wasn’t the aggressor and that others had committed violence against \u003cem>her.\u003c/em> Records show that the senior hearing officer called the video “irrelevant.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CDCR does not comment on specific incarcerated people. Asked to respond to the behavior of the sergeant, it said state regulations forbid discrimination by staff and grant incarcerated people the right to be treated “respectfully, impartially, and fairly by all employees.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit was far from alone in experiencing false allegations. Of the trans women at CCWF interviewed by KQED, each said they had been similarly targeted by others who were incarcerated and even by staff. Most were sent to solitary confinement pending investigations. Some were already there when they said they were framed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fancy Lipsey, records show, spent seven months in isolation after she was physically assaulted by other incarcerated people. As soon as she got out, a cisgender woman “went over to the officers and told them that I touched her vagina and her breasts in the dayroom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They reviewed the video on the spot “and saw that I was nowhere near this woman.” Still, they told Lipsey they were taking her back to solitary confinement. That’s when she cut her wrists, ending up on suicide watch instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Calvin said she was punished after a roommate “went up to the program office and said I supposedly choked” another cisgender woman in their dorm in the middle of the night. The allegation came days after the alleged assault, which no one witnessed or reported at the time. Calvin said it took months to clear her name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tremayne Carroll, a trans woman who uses a wheelchair, said that after she rebuffed sexual advances from a cisgender woman, that woman yelled to guards that Carroll had sexually assaulted her. When that went nowhere, the woman changed her story and said the two had had consensual sex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Freddy Fox, an intersex prisoner who identifies as a trans woman and goes by “Foxy,” said she landed in solitary confinement after being assaulted. Alone in her cell in the weeks that followed, she was verbally harassed and accused of sexual impropriety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They would allege that I had exposed myself, then I’d have to go to the cameras to show that I did not expose myself,” Foxy said. The officers would then reduce the write-up to a lesser violation, she said, “but it’s still a sexual misconduct! That was the go-to thing in 2021 when we first arrived.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Porta-potty rapist’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Skylit’s case stands out in one crucial way: The false rape allegation went viral. Her chosen and legal names ended up all \u003ca href=\"https://reduxx.info/exclusive-female-inmate-reports-rape-occurred-in-california-womens-prison/\">over the internet.\u003c/a> One outlet called her the perpetrator of a “\u003ca href=\"https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/alleged-port-potty-rape-throws-harsh-glare-california-coed-prison-law-after\">port-a-potty rape\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because, as soon as the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act went into effect, an anti-trans organization called the Women’s Liberation Front started working to roll it back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In November 2021, it filed \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22276203-chandlervcdcrcomplaint\">a lawsuit (DOC)\u003c/a> in federal court alleging the law violates the constitutional rights of cisgender women by forcing them to be housed with trans women who still have male genitalia. Simply having them there, the pending suit alleges, “substantially” increases the risk “of sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape, and physical violence, and to psychological fear of such harms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Women’s Liberation Front was looking for a villain. The rumors about Skylit fit its narrative perfectly. Even though there were no eyewitnesses, no prison investigation and a girlfriend who \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22276218-43-3-asia-davis-declaration\">said the rape never happened (DOC)\u003c/a>, attorneys for the organization gathered hearsay declarations. The attorney handed them over to anti-trans websites and \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22276220-decl-of-plaintiff-supporter-mimi-lee-alleging-rape-of-ad-in-opposition-to-dismissal-033113109979\">attached them to a motion in the legal docket (DOC)\u003c/a>, making the declarations public record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the tier in solitary confinement, the taunts of “porta-potty rapist” have been endless.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label='More on LGBTQI+ Rights' tag='transgender-rights']“I tell people, stop calling me that,” Skylit said. “Then, I’m a problem because I say things like, ‘Well, if I’m a rapist, then you a rapist,’ and then it’s like, ‘Oh, now he’s a threat, he’s arguing, he’s aggressive.’ I’m in a cage. By myself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit said cisgender incarcerated people have threatened to stab her, even chop off her penis. They’ve done it in front of officers without consequence. Yet just about every time she has erupted with verbal threats, she is written up. Prison officials have used the outbursts, and the enemies she’s made, as justification to keep her in solitary confinement, labeling her a “threat to the management and security of the institution.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some prisoners in solitary confinement — what CDCR calls restricted housing — are allowed cellmates for company. Skylit has had to cell alone. Some are allowed onto an open yard. But Skylit was designated a potential threat to others, so she has had to exercise in a cage that’s about 12-by-8 feet, often surrounded by other incarcerated people who insult her. When she attends her mental health groups, she is among those who must sit in a cage the size of a telephone booth called a “therapeutic module.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Multiple \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6987940/\">studies \u003c/a>confirm how damaging long-term solitary confinement is to mental health. So it’s no surprise that Skylit has struggled. Records show she has harmed herself on several occasions, once punching the wall until her hand bled. After that incident, for a few weeks in August 2022, she was medicated against her will with high doses of antipsychotic drugs. Too drugged to mount a defense, she was found guilty of multiple rule violations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A judge determined the prison violated her civil rights by force-medicating her. For Skylit, it was an important victory. But the whole experience eroded her faith in the prison mental health system. As the months ticked by, she went off all her medications — not just the hormones, but also the ones that treat depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Shattered trust\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s important to note that many cisgender incarcerated people at CCWF with histories of sexual victimization were truly scared of the newly arriving transgender women. Some still are. The fear-mongering from staff and outside anti-trans groups has not helped. But those fears appear to be unfounded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED requested discipline data from CCWF. In the two years after the new law took effect, staff did not issue a single rule violation for physical or sexual violence to the trans women who came over from men’s prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, write-ups for violence were common in the rest of the prison population, including for fighting, assault and battery on prisoners and staff, and even inciting a riot. The data also show that the new arrivals under the law were six times more likely than other CCWF prisoners to be punished for behavior that could lead to consensual sex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it happens, there was a violent predator at CCWF. Allegedly, there was more than one and they weren’t transgender women. They were cisgender men, employees of the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In May 2023, as Skylit struggled to hold onto herself in her solitary cell, she heard the news that Gregory Rodriguez, a longtime guard at CCWF, was facing a 96-count criminal complaint for allegedly sexually assaulting more than a dozen incarcerated women over the course of years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’d been allowed to retire in August 2022 while under investigation. In addition to those charges, six women filed lawsuits under Jane Roe or Jane Doe pseudonyms against Rodriguez in federal court, contending he lured them to a suite of offices where there are no cameras and forcibly raped them. One of these alleged assaults took place on May 20, 2022, the same day that the crowd surrounded Skylit and called \u003cem>her\u003c/em> a rapist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CDCR \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article280162624.html\">settled those suits\u003c/a> earlier this month for $3.7 million. More lawsuits have been filed alleging sexual assaults by CCWF employees. Four of the named victims are transgender women, Skylit among them. Her \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24018568-skylitsexabusecomplaintaug14_2023\">lawsuit (DOC)\u003c/a> contends that Rodriguez and Pallares, the warden who called her a predator, each demanded sexual favors from her in the spring of 2022 “for the purpose of humiliating, degrading and demeaning” her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For him to have me come into that room, it’s just so dirty,” Skylit said. “I feel dirty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pallares was demoted in January after the Rodriguez scandal broke. Currently, an associate warden at Pleasant Valley State Prison, he declined comment. Prison officials wouldn’t say whether Pallares was under investigation. But in a statement, officials said CDCR investigates all sexual assault allegations, and “resolutely condemns any staff member who violates their oath and shatters the trust of the public.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Syiaah Skylit, transgender woman in California prison\"]‘I don’t even understand who I am anymore. I’m full of anger. Hatred, ooh, hatred is huge for me right now. I’m lost, I’m completely lost.’[/pullquote]The totality of Skylit’s experience has left \u003cem>her \u003c/em>shattered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They come to my door every day asking me if I want to take my hormones. No, I don’t want to take no hormones,” she told KQED in March after 10 months of isolation. “I don’t even understand who I am anymore. I’m full of anger. Hatred, ooh, hatred is huge for me right now. I’m lost, I’m completely lost.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spending more than two years in solitary confinement means she hasn’t had access to the kind of programming that would earn her good-time credits and earlier release, like school, work and vocational training. She has never laid a finger on another prisoner or an officer, but her disciplinary write-ups have nevertheless added more than a year to her original 16-year sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prison officials are again recommending that Skylit be returned to a men’s prison. It requires a hearing that’s already been postponed for 17 months. She’s flip-flopped on whether to go back voluntarily. Being stuck in a box is destroying her, she said, and getting back into the general population may help her get out sooner. But with being falsely labeled a rapist, she’s terrified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They will kill me,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If she does end up back in men’s prison, she shared in an emotional phone call, she plans to keep her gender identity secret. To prepare for the possibility, she started working out so she could fight for her life. She sold her earrings. And she cut off all her hair. She’d been growing it out for more than eight years, ever since those trans women in county jail lit a fire inside her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Making herself “bald-headed” as she said, was a painful act of surrender.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit also threw away the trans-friendly children’s books she’d worked so hard to bring to life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I told myself, I’m not gonna get emotional or emo with this stuff no more,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A path forward\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California’s law was meant to protect transgender women, but the culture at CCWF and rising anti-trans fervor all over the country have exposed them to new traumas. Implementation has been slow. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Special-Review-No.-22-01.pdf\">report (PDF)\u003c/a> issued in late August by the current inspector general noted a “significant backlog” in transfer requests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of nearly 400 incarcerated people who’ve requested housing transfers under the law — the vast majority transgender women asking to move to women’s prison — more than 300 are still waiting for a committee to hear their case. Many live in daily fear of sexual and physical assault, said A.D. Lewis, an attorney who runs Trans Beyond Bars, a project for the Berkeley-based Prison Law Office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A transgender man, Lewis regularly communicates with trans-incarcerated people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The three dozen or so trans women who made it to CCWF — most during the first six months of implementation — are the vanguard. Many, like Skylit, have suffered. A small number have been transferred to the California Institution for Women, a lower security prison in San Bernardino County, where they say conditions are slightly better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Jen Orthwein, forensic psychologist, co-founder of Medina Orthwein LLP\"]‘These systems are so built to destroy people, and if they survive and get out, they’re not better and they’re often much worse.’[/pullquote]In a statement, CDCR said it is working to implement some of the changes \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24016207-mossgroup-sb132-cdcr-assessment-report\">recommended by outside consultants (DOC)\u003c/a> earlier this year and is committed to providing “a safe, humane, respectful and rehabilitative environment for all incarcerated people, including the transgender, non-binary and intersex community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates acknowledge that the cycles of harm continue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Instead of respecting trans people’s self-determination and prioritizing their safety, as the law requires,” Lewis said, correctional staff and other incarcerated people have used it “to put a target on trans peoples’ back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shortly after prison officials received KQED’s questions for this story in September, CCWF revoked all phone privileges for Skylit and others in solitary confinement. In an email to KQED after the initial publication of this story, a CDCR official said the revocation of phone privileges was a policy change ending what had been a temporary, more liberal phone privileges policy instituted in the early days of the COVID pandemic. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit’s attorney worries about the impact of the trauma on her future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These systems are so built to destroy people, and if they survive and get out, they’re not better and they’re often much worse,” Orthwein said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a letter sent in July 2023 to Newsom, nearly two-dozen advocacy and legal organizations pressing for better treatment for transgender, nonbinary and intersex prisoners \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23991938-tni-coalition-letter-to-governor-newsom-71723pdf-2\">urged clemency (DOC)\u003c/a> for those who have experienced harm in prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wiener, meanwhile, expressed deep frustration with the pace of implementation. In response to KQED’s findings, he said he was “horrified to hear how trans women are being treated in women’s prison, both by the prisons and by other inmates. The fact that they’re being treated harshly and slandered, called rapists when they’re not, it’s terrifying and we’re not going to just let this go.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lee Romney is a longtime journalist who spent 23 years at the \u003c/em>Los Angeles Times\u003cem>. Jennifer Johnson is a former career public defender who helped launch San Francisco’s Behavioral Health Court. This reporting, supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the California Health Care Foundation, is part of a forthcoming podcast they’re co-creating. Called \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.novemberinmysoul.com/\">\u003cem>November In My Soul\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, it explores the way bias makes its way into our intertwined mental health and criminal legal systems.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story has been updated.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"California’s Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act was meant to protect transgender people, but the culture at state prisons and rising anti-trans fervor throughout the country have exposed them to new traumas.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1698096184,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":155,"wordCount":7792},"headData":{"title":"California Prisons Fail to Uphold Transgender Rights Despite State Law | KQED","description":"California’s Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act was meant to protect transgender people, but the culture at state prisons and rising anti-trans fervor throughout the country have exposed them to new traumas.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"California Prisons Fail to Uphold Transgender Rights Despite State Law","datePublished":"2023-10-13T15:00:58.000Z","dateModified":"2023-10-23T21:23:04.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png","isAccessibleForFree":"Y","publisher":{"@type":"NewsMediaOrganization","@id":"https://www.kqed.org/#organization","name":"KQED","url":"https://www.kqed.org","logo":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}}},"audioUrl":"https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/chrt.fm/track/G6C7C3/traffic.megaphone.fm/KQINC2105203052.mp3?updated=1697154277","nprByline":"\u003ca href=\"https://www.novemberinmysoul.com/about/#62b093f21c801819ce513743\">Lee Romney and Jenny Johnson\u003c/a>","excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","showOnAuthorArchivePages":"No","articleAge":"0","path":"/news/11964027/california-prisons-fail-to-uphold-transgender-rights-despite-state-law","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Warning: There are descriptions of physical and sexual violence in this piece. Also, where legal names and chosen names differ, we’re using chosen names.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">S\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>yiaah Skylit had been stuck in solitary confinement at a maximum-security men’s prison for months when, in the fall of 2020, she got the news that gave her hope: Gov. Gavin Newsom had signed the \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB132\">Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), the law requires California prison staff to use the chosen pronouns of incarcerated people who are intersex or identify as nonbinary or transgender, as Skylit does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It allows those incarcerated people to \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/prea/sb-132-faqs/\">select a gender preference for the guards who search them\u003c/a>. Most significantly, it mandates that prison officials, under most circumstances, honor requests to be housed at the type of facility — male or female — that aligns with the incarcerated person’s gender identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For six years, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation bounced Skylit from one men’s prison to another. At each, safety proved elusive. By 2020, she was isolated in a cell for her own protection after brutal attacks by people she was incarcerated with and, \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23991903-syiaahkvsp2ndamendedcomplaint2022-03-03\">a lawsuit alleges (PDF)\u003c/a>, by guards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The prospect of serving out her remaining sentence in a women’s facility seemed nothing short of a miracle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For me, what it felt like was a sanctuary,” she said in one of several dozen interviews with KQED over the course of a year. “A place to be who you were meant to be without any retaliation, without any violence, without any judgment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Decades have passed since simply \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11917624/how-a-young-gay-man-survived-one-of-the-darkest-eras-in-california-queer-history\">being LGBTQ+ was considered a crime and a mental illness\u003c/a>. But bias and marginalization still lead to high rates of criminalization, especially for \u003ca href=\"https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/resources/NTDS_Report.pdf\">Black trans women (PDF)\u003c/a> like Skylit. Once incarcerated, harsh prison conditions take a serious toll on mental health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://cpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.uci.edu/dist/0/1149/files/2013/06/BulletinVol2Issue2.pdf\">Studies (PDF)\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS%20Full%20Report%20-%20FINAL%201.6.17.pdf\">surveys (PDF)\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/pdca15.pdf\">federal data (PDF)\u003c/a> show that trans women held in men’s prisons are sexually and physically assaulted at rates as much as 13 times higher than cisgender men. When they report assaults or fears for their safety, they’re often met with \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23991938-tni-coalition-letter-to-governor-newsom-71723pdf-2\">staff retaliation (PDF)\u003c/a>. It’s not uncommon for trans women to harm themselves — just to get to the safety of a prison mental health bed. Skylit had lived that, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘For me, what it felt like was a sanctuary. A place to be who you were meant to be without any retaliation, without any violence, without any judgment.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Syiaah Skylit, transgender woman in California prison","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act promised an end to those nightmares.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No more having to hide in fear,” Skylit said. “No more having to be quiet about who I really am. I was excited. I couldn’t wait.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This story is a result of a year-long investigation into the effectiveness of the legislation that aimed to reduce the trauma of transgender women in California’s prisons. KQED’s reporters interviewed a dozen incarcerated people and reviewed data along with several hundred pages of prison grievances, disciplinary records and legal filings. The reporting revealed that trans women like Skylit and many others transferred to a women’s prison under the new law have not found the sanctuary they were seeking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Skylit, the nightmares have only gotten worse.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Living with secrets\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Skylit grew up in Compton. When she was 5, she and her siblings entered the foster care system after their mother suffered a mental health break. When Skylit was 14, her mother died by apparent suicide, and the following year, she said, “I tried to kill myself by running in front of a moving train.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was physically uninjured but sent to a psychiatric hospital. It wouldn’t be the last time she’d tried to take her own life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964099\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964099\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Free-Syiaah-social-KQED-800x949.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"949\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Free-Syiaah-social-KQED-800x949.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Free-Syiaah-social-KQED-1020x1210.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Free-Syiaah-social-KQED-160x190.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Free-Syiaah-social-KQED-1295x1536.jpg 1295w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Free-Syiaah-social-KQED.jpg 1686w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In August 2020, as Syiaah Skylit sat in solitary confinement at Kern Valley State Prison for her own protection, transgender advocates launched a Change.org campaign urging clemency for her. She helped with the design of the artwork. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Syiaah Skylit, Micah Bazant and Freddie Francis)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Skylit is a slight 5 feet, 5 inches tall with a big, dimpled smile. As a teen and living as a boy, she was bullied for being a flashy dresser, for the way she carried herself. She experimented with a gay relationship, but it left her feeling “confused.” The adults in her life were religious and viewed LGBTQ+ people as sinners. Her brothers were gang members. She did what they asked of her, she said, because “I didn’t want to look weak.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I couldn’t come out and be myself around people like my family and my friends that I grew up with,” Skylit said. “I grew up in a hard-ass neighborhood. That ain’t about to fly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, she harbored a secret she never shared with her brothers, one even she didn’t fully comprehend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I would dress up. I would put makeup on. All I understood as a person was, ‘Hey, I like this,’” she said. “So if I like this, why is it so bad? Am I a bad person?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A stint in juvenile detention didn’t stop Skylit from setting her sights on a bright future. She finished high school on time, enrolled in community college, worked multiple jobs and, for a while, paid her rent. But anxiety, depression and drug use interrupted her stability. She’d already been homeless once when, facing eviction in 2012, she and a friend robbed a convenience store in San Bernardino County. It yielded little, so they robbed a Los Angeles County jewelry store — and got caught.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 22, Skylit was facing criminal trials in both counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘I couldn’t come out and be myself around people like my family and my friends that I grew up with. I grew up in a hard-ass neighborhood. That ain’t about to fly.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Syiaah Skylit, transgender woman in California prison","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Her first stop was a San Bernardino County jail, where she came out as gay to get to the relative safety of what was then called the “alternative lifestyles tank.” According to a \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23999484-syiaah2015sanbernardinocolawsuit\">class-action lawsuit (DOC)\u003c/a>, the conditions were distressing: discrimination by staff and denial of basic services. Skylit, under her legal name, was among the named plaintiffs. A settlement led to \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24002812-sanbernardinoinjunctiverelief\">significant reforms (DOC)\u003c/a>. It was in that jail, she said, where she first learned to advocate for her rights, even in the face of retaliation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also where she first encountered openly transgender women and was blown away by their courage and joyful confidence. In their midst, Skylit said, she at last felt free of judgment, open to self-acceptance. Her next stop — a stint in the segregated LGBTQ+ tank at the Los Angeles County jail — only reinforced those feelings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s when I got a taste of all the ‘T’ and I was just living it,” she said of the ‘T’ for Transgender in the alphabet soup of LGBTQ+. “It was like discovering myself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was sentenced to 16 years in prison. It may seem paradoxical, but incarceration gave Skylit breathing room to explore her gender identity. In court, she apologized to her robbery victims. Then, she made a promise to herself to use “every second, every minute” of her time inside “to really find out who I am. I mean, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I felt I had.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit entered California’s prison system for men in December 2015. Soon, she chose her new name. “Syiaah” is an acronym — sexy, young, intelligent, ambitious, authentic and heroic. She picked “Sky” as “an inspiration to reach higher limits.” And “lit” is a nod to her hip-hop Compton roots “to be vibrant, live.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Put it together, it’s ‘I keep the sky lit’,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In keeping with the up-to-date \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24002874-ama-medical-spectrum-of-gender-d-295312\">medical (DOC)\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/diversity/education/transgender-and-gender-nonconforming-patients\">psychiatric\u003c/a> understanding of gender identity, the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act doesn’t require incarcerated people to be on hormone replacement therapy or to be interested in gender-affirming surgeries to be transferred to housing that aligns with their sense of safety. During Skylit’s early years in prison, that wasn’t the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"postid":"news_11957664","hero":"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/110822-KernValleyPrison-LV_CM_04-1020x680.jpg","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation \u003cem>did\u003c/em> consider such transfer requests. The federal Prison Rape Elimination Act had since 2012 \u003ca href=\"https://www.prearesourcecenter.org/frequently-asked-questions/does-policy-houses-transgender-or-intersex-inmates-based-exclusively\">forbidden\u003c/a> the department from housing prisoners based solely on external genital anatomy. But the CDCR did it on a case-by-case basis, and the tiny number granted all happened to be for trans women who’d had gender-affirming genital surgery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not everybody wants that. Gender identity and gender transition are deeply personal. Skylit’s records show she declared her transgender identity on a special CDCR form about a year after arrival — and soon after started \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24018578-skylit-2019-housing-complaint\">asking to be transferred to a women’s prison (DOC)\u003c/a>. That went nowhere. So Skylit worked to stay true to her transition, even as she was funneled through a series of men’s prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I tapped into it, despite the long time I was facing, I was happy,” she said. “But that happiness turned into survival real fast.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Met by violence\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Almost immediately, Skylit’s gender identity and small stature made her a target. On several occasions, she said, correctional officers placed her in cells with large men who specifically requested her and then pressured her for sex. When she filed grievances in an attempt to switch cells or responded to physical assaults by fighting, she said, staff responded with Rule Violation Reports, known as RVRs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The more I would push back,” she said, “the more they would attack me with RVRs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Skylit pressed on. She requested hormone replacement therapy, and by the time those treatments started, in 2018, she’d been moved to Mule Creek State Prison near the small Sierra foothills town of Ione. It’s one of a dozen or so facilities in the state designated as “transgender hubs.” That means, medical and mental services for trans prisoners are concentrated there, as are prison commissary items unavailable elsewhere, such as sports bras and makeup for trans women, and boxer shorts for trans men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit could finally stop MacGyvering her fashion looks. She could style her hair, wear makeup and earrings. On the prison yard, she said she found a sense of belonging with her trans sisters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were out there,” she said. “Having fun, protecting each other.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even at men’s prisons designated as transgender hubs, trans women were mixed with cisgender men in common areas and their assigned cells. The truer Skylit felt to herself, she said, the greater the danger she experienced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yeah, it’s OK to come out and you got a nice little outfit on, but guess what you just did?” she said. “You just called attention to yourself and now you have certain people who are making sexual advances towards you, and some of them don’t stop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of her trans sisters exchanged sex for safety. But even that was no guarantee of safety. Skylit wept while recounting how a close friend staggered out of her cell “with a huge gash in her skull, busted lip, trying to get out of the room that she placed herself in because she wanted to be \u003cem>herself\u003c/em>. And she couldn’t complain to the officers, because they’re not gonna do anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘Either I’m gonna be who I wanna be or I’m gonna end up dead. Girl, I can’t be dead and be myself at the same time.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Syiaah Skylit, transgender woman in California prison","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>So Skylit found herself facing a soul-crushing choice between her safety and her identity. Skylit drew a line against assault. That meant more fights and more disciplinary write-ups. The hormone treatments caused muscle weakness, so she made another compromise. She began stopping and starting the medications depending on the danger she was facing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Either I’m gonna be who I wanna be or I’m gonna end up dead,” she said. “Girl, I can’t be dead and be myself at the same time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a survival strategy it made sense, but abruptly going on and off hormones brings on acute mood swings. It also heightens \u003ca href=\"https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/diversity/education/transgender-and-gender-nonconforming-patients/gender-dysphoria-diagnosis\">gender dysphoria\u003c/a>, a mental health diagnosis associated with distress a person can feel at being a gender other than the one assigned at birth. Skylit had experienced that for most of her life, as she hid her true gender identity, and it caused depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Skylit juggled these stressors, prison officials transferred her again — this time to Kern Valley State Prison, a maximum-security facility in the Central Valley town of Delano that houses some of the state’s most violent offenders. Among them, transgender advocates \u003ca href=\"https://prisonhealth.news/2021/10/29/lgbtq-prison-testimonies-dakota-rose-in-california/\">note\u003c/a>, are gang members known to target LGBTQ+ people in prisons. That’s where she \u003ca href=\"https://sfbayview.com/2021/05/trans-woman-seeks-release-from-cdcr-custody-after-attacks/\">hit a new low\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Skylit and a \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23991903-syiaahkvsp2ndamendedcomplaint2022-03-03\">lawsuit filed on her behalf (DOC),\u003c/a> she was assaulted twice by incarcerated men and witnessed gruesome attacks on two other trans women. Terrified, she says she asked to speak to a sergeant about her safety concerns. Instead, she alleges, two officers followed her into her cell. One pulled down her pants, ran a baton along her bottom and threatened to rape her with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And I’m just sitting there like this can’t be real,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"postid":"news_11954055","hero":"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/230626-CALIFORNIA-PRISONERS-AP-RP-KQED-1020x735.jpg","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>That night, she drank from a bottle of laundry detergent in a desperate attempt to get sent to a mental health crisis unit. An officer stripped her of her clothes and left her lying naked in her cell next to the empty bottle. The next day, an officer pepper sprayed her at close range. Others beat her with batons. CDCR does not comment on active litigation. In legal filings, the named officers have denied wrongdoing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, Skylit said, a sergeant agreed to isolate her for her protection. That’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.vera.org/news/violence-torture-and-isolation-what-its-like-to-be-trans-in-prison\">a common fate for trans women\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s sad to be thankful for complete solitary confinement, isolation,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She would stay there for seven months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit had sought help from various attorneys. One responded. Jen Orthwein is a forensic psychologist who once treated transgender clients behind prison walls. They later co-founded a queer-owned law firm to challenge the harsh conditions they’d witnessed. Orthwein worked with other transgender advocates to launch a \u003ca href=\"https://www.change.org/p/gavin-newsom-call-for-the-immediate-release-of-syiaah-skylit-from-cdcr-custody-blacktranslivesmatter?utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=custom_url&recruited_by_id=cc830240-3ea3-11e9-a4df-e5579d49cec9\">petition\u003c/a> for clemency on Skylit’s behalf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, with colored pencils and paper, Skylit got to work crafting a series of illustrated \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24018571-its-a-colorful-world-by-syiaah-skylit\">children’s books (DOC)\u003c/a> featuring gender-non-conforming characters. Among them is a rainbow-colored kid named Unique, who is fully embraced by loving parents but bullied on the playground for delighting in toys conventionally meant for both boys and girls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The project helped Skylit reimagine her traumatic past. She also hoped her books might make their way into the world and change the mindset of young readers “to where they’re not growing into hatred, but actually out of it.” She finished two, got started on a third. And that’s where she was when Orthewin gave her the good news. The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act was state law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964104\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964104\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Scans of two pages of drawing and text from a hand written book.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231011-ITS-A-COLORFUL-WORLD-2-KQED.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Excerpts from ‘It’s a Colorful World.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Syiaah Skylit)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It was like a prayer had been answered,” Skylit said. “Like, ‘This is it!’ This is going to be the beginning of Syiaah Skylit at her best, at completely being herself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>New perils\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Wiener’s bill was years in the making, and he’s quick to note that top CDCR officials were on board. They welcomed advocates to join a working group to brainstorm solutions to unsafe conditions and sought input directly from incarcerated transgender people. The Office of Inspector General detailed in \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Special-Review-Incarcerated-Transgender-Nonbinary-Intersex-Individuals.pdf\">a 2020 report (PDF)\u003c/a> the painful responses to those surveys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laws in \u003ca href=\"https://www.acluct.org/en/know-your-rights/know-your-rights-trans-people-who-are-incarcerated-connecticut\">Connecticut\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23991974-952-management-of-gender-diverse-and-intersex-inmates-final-version\">Rhode Island (DOC)\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://lgbtqbar.org/bar-news/tiproject/ma/\">Massachusetts\u003c/a> call for similar reforms, while \u003ca href=\"https://www.aclu-nj.org/en/press-releases/settlement-nj-civil-rights-suit-promises-necessary-reform-affirming-transgender\">New Jersey\u003c/a> has made comparable policy changes in response to litigation. But advocates who helped craft California’s law say it is the most expansive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wiener said in an interview that he knew at the start that the magnitude of changes mandated by the law required patience and that it would take time to implement. More recently, though, he’s grown deeply concerned about the way his legislation has played out on the ground. Because, he said, even with senior CDCR management on board, “the culture in the individual prisons is just so challenging that it doesn’t translate.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964100\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964100\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED-800x539.jpg\" alt='A group of people, most wearing the same uniform of blue shirts and pants, stand together holding signs and joined by a person wearing a suit helping to hold a banner reading \"trans lives matter.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"539\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED-800x539.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED-1020x687.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED-160x108.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED-1536x1035.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED-1920x1294.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/SenWienerAtSanQuentinTransRemembranceDay-2019-KQED.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) attends CDCR’s first Transgender Remembrance Day in 2019, organized jointly by trans and cisgender incarcerated people. Wiener had already authored the bill that would become the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, with buy-in from top CDCR officials. \u003ccite>(California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Officials chose the Central California Women’s Facility, or CCWF, in Chowchilla as the prison where all the trans women would go first. It’s a facility with a \u003ca href=\"https://prisonlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/16.08.18-Prison-Law-Office-report-on-CCWF.pdf\">troubled history (PDF)\u003c/a> when it comes to staff accountability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of a dozen CCWF prisoners interviewed by KQED, all said they heard correctional staff express hostility to the new law even before the transfers began, warning the cisgender population that fakers and sexual predators were heading their way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tasha Brown, a cisgender woman, said she heard guards say, “The doors were going to be open for people to come in to violate us, to rape us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tomas Green, a transgender man, said he heard guards “telling women here that the trans women were men and that they were gonna get raped.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"postid":"news_11936438","hero":"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/12/1920px-CentralCaliforniaWomensFacility-1020x816.jpeg","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Alexanne Danis, a cisgender woman, said she heard a lieutenant openly state that the transfers “don’t belong here, that they have to leave.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Officers and fellow cisgender incarcerated people, Danis said, also spoke about driving the new transfers out, “saying that they were gonna stage stuff and that they were gonna make it sound worse than it was if anything did happen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michelle Calvin was one of the first transgender women to arrive at CCWF. She helped work on Wiener’s legislation and has since transferred to the lower-security California Institution for Women. She heard the characterizations by staff that trans women were “gonna come over here and rape y’all and beat y’all up and take y’all stuff.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The power to reverse the law, she heard officers tell incarcerated people, rested in their hands: “Take your house back. Take your prison back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates who helped craft the law were well aware of this toxic environment. They say they pressed officials to allow them to hold a town hall at the women’s prison to defuse these narratives before the transfers began. It never happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the trans women who began arriving in the first half of 2021 had no idea what they were stepping into.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Orthwein, Skylit’s attorney, was part of the working group that informed the new law and said key CDCR decisions around implementation proved harmful. The new arrivals were held in segregation for their first month. There, they were issued new prison identification numbers beginning with a distinctive two-letter combination. Instead of “some semblance of privacy about their transgender status,” which advocates had pressed for, this immediately outed them, feeding hostility and rejection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CCWF houses people in dorms, as many as eight to a room. Without exception, the trans women interviewed by KQED said they have been refused entry to dorms by prisoners who viewed them as “men.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Skylit’s first day in the general population, in mid-July 2021, guards started writing her up for minor violations. Within a month, she was in solitary confinement, accused of having a consensual relationship with her cisgender female bunkmate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sex is against prison rules systemwide, but every CCWF prisoner interviewed for this piece said it’s extremely common, especially in women’s prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘At the end of the day, we’re humans. I’m not saying every relationship in here is just peachy perfect, no. You have a lot of relationships in here that are toxic — fight, argue. But that’s life in the free world.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Tomas Green, transgender man in California prison","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Yes, you’re not supposed to have sex but it happens. It’s natural and there’s nothing that’s gonna stop it from happening,” said Giovanni Gonzales, a transgender man who runs a group to educate peers about gender identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Relationships form quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At the end of the day, we’re humans,” Green said. “I’m not saying every relationship in here is just peachy perfect, no. You have a lot of relationships in here that are toxic — fight, argue. But that’s life in the free world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, while sex and intimacy may be universal, punishment is not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gonzales and Green said staff often turn a blind eye to cisgender women who couple up, especially if they express their gender in stereotypically feminine ways. If a transgender man is caught being amorous, they said, a rule violation is more likely. As for the trans women who were just arriving at CCWF, a harsher set of unwritten rules seemed to apply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One cisgender couple in Skylit’s dorm had been having regular sex without consequence, she said. As Skylit was handcuffed and written up for her relationship, she asked an officer why she was going to isolation and the bunkmate wasn’t. He replied, “Because you’re a man and she’s a woman.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a hearing to discuss her situation, records show that Acting Warden Michael Pallares told her he would push to send her back to men’s prison. She claimed he was hostile, “calling me a predator, saying that I’m preying on women.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In men’s prison, Skylit had lived in constant fear of sexual assault. Now \u003cem>she \u003c/em>was cast as a sexual predator. Her disciplinary paperwork relied on “confidential sources” to suggest she was faking her status because she “displays very masculine behavior when with the inmate population.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In isolation, according to grievances and a government claim filed by Orthwein, Skylit’s gender identity was undermined. She had trouble accessing her hormones and was denied a razor for 40 days straight. She grew a full beard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People screaming at me, yelling at me, calling me a man, and I need to go back to the men’s prison,” she said. “‘Look at the hair on yo’ face.’ [I was] pleading, pleading, pleading, ‘Please give me a razor, please give me a razor,’ and denied every time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A psychologist misgendered Skylit in a report, yet \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24018435-psychologist-note-razors-clothing\">noted (DOC)\u003c/a> that an extended stay in isolation would likely increase her mental health symptoms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the months that followed, Skylit was sent multiple times to a mental health unit for being suicidal. She was bumped up to a more intensive level of mental health care. Yet she remained in solitary confinement for eight months. Then, without explanation, Pallares released her to the general population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her freedom wouldn’t last.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘What did you all do to our homegirl?’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Skylit’s time in isolation had taken a toll. On the yard, she said she made enemies when she responded to threats and harassment with aggressive posturing and language. She said she tried not to engage, hanging out and playing cards every day with a couple of other trans women and one cisgender woman who was sweet on her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We would hold hands,” she said. “We would hug, we would kiss.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prison officials aren’t supposed to penalize trans women more harshly for breaking rules that cisgender prisoners also break, like the one forbidding any behavior that could lead to sex. But the atmosphere around these relationships, interviews and records reveal, was tense and complex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While some cisgender women feared or lashed out at the new arrivals, others were eager to partner with them. Of a half-dozen transgender women at CCWF who were interviewed by KQED, the five who have not had gender-affirming genital surgery, said they’ve been subject to sexual advances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"postid":"news_11955680","hero":"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/07/GettyImages-180517172-1020x680.jpg","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Meanwhile, \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24016207-mossgroup-sb132-cdcr-assessment-report\">a report (DOC)\u003c/a> on the implementation of the new law commissioned by CDCR found that a “sexualized environment, including being sexually pressured or pursued,” was among the reasons given by transgender women who voluntarily returned to men’s prison. Other reasons included “hostile reception from staff or incarcerated individuals,” “false allegations to be removed from room” and “issues with getting hygiene items, such as razors.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In men’s prison, Skylit said, consensual sex generally went unpunished. That made it hard for her to imagine just how much the bond with her new “bestie” would cost her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 19, 2022, Skylit and her friends were on the yard drinking prison-made wine, disciplinary records show. Skylit and her girlfriend were kissing. A few minutes after Skylit went to use the porta-potty, she said, the girlfriend followed her in and started throwing up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit said she was holding her hair back when Calvin, one of the trans friends she played cards with, let her know a guard was approaching. Skylit stepped out and asked a couple of other people to check on the girlfriend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They “opened the door and they say, ‘What did you all do to our homegirl? We don’t know what you two doing, we don’t know what’s going on over here,’” Skylit recounted. “And I said, ‘We just been drinking and she was in the thing throwing up.’ But now, it’s a commotion. It’s a crowd coming up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Skylit and two other witnesses, the girlfriend came out, and the guard scolded them. “She was like, ‘I’m OK bestie, I love you so much,’ and I hugged her and I walked away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rumors about a rape started circulating. Skylit said she heard it “from like one or two people. It wasn’t \u003cem>big\u003c/em> until the next day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘They were surrounding me and pushing me and spitting on me and swinging at me.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Syiaah Skylit, transgender woman in California prison","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>By then, a fictional narrative had taken shape: In those few moments inside the porta-potty, Skylit had committed rape, while Calvin stood guard. To be clear, prison officials never accused her of rape or sexual assault. The girlfriend told them — and KQED — that it never happened. Still, the rumors proved to be Skylit’s undoing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That next day, according to Skylit and five witnesses, as she was returning from a mental health appointment, she was roughed up on the yard by 12 to 15 incarcerated people who called her “nothing but a rapist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were surrounding me and pushing me and spitting on me and swinging at me,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED obtained video of the incident through a public records request. There’s no audio, but the grainy image shows Skylit, who had a pass to be on the yard, doing an about-face as a group of incarcerated people in civilian clothes approached her. One appears to throw liquid at her. A few shove and punch her. She gets agitated. At one point, it’s clear that she’s yelling. But she mostly keeps her arms crossed. She never hits back. Still, she is the only one punished.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/nS5qpi-NXfE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/nS5qpi-NXfE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>As Syiaah Skylit, wearing a long-sleeved white shirt under her prison blues, walked through the yard at Central California Women’s Facility in May 2022, she was accosted by incarcerated people who accused her of being a rapist. Courtesy of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’d been out of solitary confinement for just four weeks. She went right back in — and she hasn’t come out in more than a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A sergeant who, the video shows, does not walk out to the yard until Skylit is handcuffed, wrote her \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24018553-referring-to-sexual-intercourse-through-rape\">rule violation report (DOC)\u003c/a>. He states that he heard her yell, “I’m gonna f- you bitches,” and a few variations on that theme. Then, using her legal name, he adds an editorial aside: “It should be known that when [Skylit] mentioned f-, [Skylit] was referring to sexual intercourse through rape.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CCWF initially accused Skylit of “threatening the life of a prisoner,” and referred her to the local district attorney for felony prosecution. It didn’t stick. Ultimately, her writeup was reduced to “behavior which could lead to violence.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘It’s sad to be thankful for complete solitary confinement, isolation.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Syiaah Skylit, transgender woman in California prison","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In her defense, Skylit pointed to the video as evidence that she wasn’t the aggressor and that others had committed violence against \u003cem>her.\u003c/em> Records show that the senior hearing officer called the video “irrelevant.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CDCR does not comment on specific incarcerated people. Asked to respond to the behavior of the sergeant, it said state regulations forbid discrimination by staff and grant incarcerated people the right to be treated “respectfully, impartially, and fairly by all employees.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit was far from alone in experiencing false allegations. Of the trans women at CCWF interviewed by KQED, each said they had been similarly targeted by others who were incarcerated and even by staff. Most were sent to solitary confinement pending investigations. Some were already there when they said they were framed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fancy Lipsey, records show, spent seven months in isolation after she was physically assaulted by other incarcerated people. As soon as she got out, a cisgender woman “went over to the officers and told them that I touched her vagina and her breasts in the dayroom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They reviewed the video on the spot “and saw that I was nowhere near this woman.” Still, they told Lipsey they were taking her back to solitary confinement. That’s when she cut her wrists, ending up on suicide watch instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Calvin said she was punished after a roommate “went up to the program office and said I supposedly choked” another cisgender woman in their dorm in the middle of the night. The allegation came days after the alleged assault, which no one witnessed or reported at the time. Calvin said it took months to clear her name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tremayne Carroll, a trans woman who uses a wheelchair, said that after she rebuffed sexual advances from a cisgender woman, that woman yelled to guards that Carroll had sexually assaulted her. When that went nowhere, the woman changed her story and said the two had had consensual sex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Freddy Fox, an intersex prisoner who identifies as a trans woman and goes by “Foxy,” said she landed in solitary confinement after being assaulted. Alone in her cell in the weeks that followed, she was verbally harassed and accused of sexual impropriety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They would allege that I had exposed myself, then I’d have to go to the cameras to show that I did not expose myself,” Foxy said. The officers would then reduce the write-up to a lesser violation, she said, “but it’s still a sexual misconduct! That was the go-to thing in 2021 when we first arrived.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Porta-potty rapist’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Skylit’s case stands out in one crucial way: The false rape allegation went viral. Her chosen and legal names ended up all \u003ca href=\"https://reduxx.info/exclusive-female-inmate-reports-rape-occurred-in-california-womens-prison/\">over the internet.\u003c/a> One outlet called her the perpetrator of a “\u003ca href=\"https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/alleged-port-potty-rape-throws-harsh-glare-california-coed-prison-law-after\">port-a-potty rape\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because, as soon as the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act went into effect, an anti-trans organization called the Women’s Liberation Front started working to roll it back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In November 2021, it filed \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22276203-chandlervcdcrcomplaint\">a lawsuit (DOC)\u003c/a> in federal court alleging the law violates the constitutional rights of cisgender women by forcing them to be housed with trans women who still have male genitalia. Simply having them there, the pending suit alleges, “substantially” increases the risk “of sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape, and physical violence, and to psychological fear of such harms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Women’s Liberation Front was looking for a villain. The rumors about Skylit fit its narrative perfectly. Even though there were no eyewitnesses, no prison investigation and a girlfriend who \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22276218-43-3-asia-davis-declaration\">said the rape never happened (DOC)\u003c/a>, attorneys for the organization gathered hearsay declarations. The attorney handed them over to anti-trans websites and \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22276220-decl-of-plaintiff-supporter-mimi-lee-alleging-rape-of-ad-in-opposition-to-dismissal-033113109979\">attached them to a motion in the legal docket (DOC)\u003c/a>, making the declarations public record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the tier in solitary confinement, the taunts of “porta-potty rapist” have been endless.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"label":"More on LGBTQI+ Rights ","tag":"transgender-rights"},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“I tell people, stop calling me that,” Skylit said. “Then, I’m a problem because I say things like, ‘Well, if I’m a rapist, then you a rapist,’ and then it’s like, ‘Oh, now he’s a threat, he’s arguing, he’s aggressive.’ I’m in a cage. By myself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit said cisgender incarcerated people have threatened to stab her, even chop off her penis. They’ve done it in front of officers without consequence. Yet just about every time she has erupted with verbal threats, she is written up. Prison officials have used the outbursts, and the enemies she’s made, as justification to keep her in solitary confinement, labeling her a “threat to the management and security of the institution.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some prisoners in solitary confinement — what CDCR calls restricted housing — are allowed cellmates for company. Skylit has had to cell alone. Some are allowed onto an open yard. But Skylit was designated a potential threat to others, so she has had to exercise in a cage that’s about 12-by-8 feet, often surrounded by other incarcerated people who insult her. When she attends her mental health groups, she is among those who must sit in a cage the size of a telephone booth called a “therapeutic module.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Multiple \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6987940/\">studies \u003c/a>confirm how damaging long-term solitary confinement is to mental health. So it’s no surprise that Skylit has struggled. Records show she has harmed herself on several occasions, once punching the wall until her hand bled. After that incident, for a few weeks in August 2022, she was medicated against her will with high doses of antipsychotic drugs. Too drugged to mount a defense, she was found guilty of multiple rule violations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A judge determined the prison violated her civil rights by force-medicating her. For Skylit, it was an important victory. But the whole experience eroded her faith in the prison mental health system. As the months ticked by, she went off all her medications — not just the hormones, but also the ones that treat depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Shattered trust\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s important to note that many cisgender incarcerated people at CCWF with histories of sexual victimization were truly scared of the newly arriving transgender women. Some still are. The fear-mongering from staff and outside anti-trans groups has not helped. But those fears appear to be unfounded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED requested discipline data from CCWF. In the two years after the new law took effect, staff did not issue a single rule violation for physical or sexual violence to the trans women who came over from men’s prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, write-ups for violence were common in the rest of the prison population, including for fighting, assault and battery on prisoners and staff, and even inciting a riot. The data also show that the new arrivals under the law were six times more likely than other CCWF prisoners to be punished for behavior that could lead to consensual sex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it happens, there was a violent predator at CCWF. Allegedly, there was more than one and they weren’t transgender women. They were cisgender men, employees of the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In May 2023, as Skylit struggled to hold onto herself in her solitary cell, she heard the news that Gregory Rodriguez, a longtime guard at CCWF, was facing a 96-count criminal complaint for allegedly sexually assaulting more than a dozen incarcerated women over the course of years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’d been allowed to retire in August 2022 while under investigation. In addition to those charges, six women filed lawsuits under Jane Roe or Jane Doe pseudonyms against Rodriguez in federal court, contending he lured them to a suite of offices where there are no cameras and forcibly raped them. One of these alleged assaults took place on May 20, 2022, the same day that the crowd surrounded Skylit and called \u003cem>her\u003c/em> a rapist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CDCR \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article280162624.html\">settled those suits\u003c/a> earlier this month for $3.7 million. More lawsuits have been filed alleging sexual assaults by CCWF employees. Four of the named victims are transgender women, Skylit among them. Her \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24018568-skylitsexabusecomplaintaug14_2023\">lawsuit (DOC)\u003c/a> contends that Rodriguez and Pallares, the warden who called her a predator, each demanded sexual favors from her in the spring of 2022 “for the purpose of humiliating, degrading and demeaning” her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For him to have me come into that room, it’s just so dirty,” Skylit said. “I feel dirty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pallares was demoted in January after the Rodriguez scandal broke. Currently, an associate warden at Pleasant Valley State Prison, he declined comment. Prison officials wouldn’t say whether Pallares was under investigation. But in a statement, officials said CDCR investigates all sexual assault allegations, and “resolutely condemns any staff member who violates their oath and shatters the trust of the public.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘I don’t even understand who I am anymore. I’m full of anger. Hatred, ooh, hatred is huge for me right now. I’m lost, I’m completely lost.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Syiaah Skylit, transgender woman in California prison","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The totality of Skylit’s experience has left \u003cem>her \u003c/em>shattered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They come to my door every day asking me if I want to take my hormones. No, I don’t want to take no hormones,” she told KQED in March after 10 months of isolation. “I don’t even understand who I am anymore. I’m full of anger. Hatred, ooh, hatred is huge for me right now. I’m lost, I’m completely lost.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spending more than two years in solitary confinement means she hasn’t had access to the kind of programming that would earn her good-time credits and earlier release, like school, work and vocational training. She has never laid a finger on another prisoner or an officer, but her disciplinary write-ups have nevertheless added more than a year to her original 16-year sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prison officials are again recommending that Skylit be returned to a men’s prison. It requires a hearing that’s already been postponed for 17 months. She’s flip-flopped on whether to go back voluntarily. Being stuck in a box is destroying her, she said, and getting back into the general population may help her get out sooner. But with being falsely labeled a rapist, she’s terrified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They will kill me,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If she does end up back in men’s prison, she shared in an emotional phone call, she plans to keep her gender identity secret. To prepare for the possibility, she started working out so she could fight for her life. She sold her earrings. And she cut off all her hair. She’d been growing it out for more than eight years, ever since those trans women in county jail lit a fire inside her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Making herself “bald-headed” as she said, was a painful act of surrender.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit also threw away the trans-friendly children’s books she’d worked so hard to bring to life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I told myself, I’m not gonna get emotional or emo with this stuff no more,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A path forward\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California’s law was meant to protect transgender women, but the culture at CCWF and rising anti-trans fervor all over the country have exposed them to new traumas. Implementation has been slow. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Special-Review-No.-22-01.pdf\">report (PDF)\u003c/a> issued in late August by the current inspector general noted a “significant backlog” in transfer requests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of nearly 400 incarcerated people who’ve requested housing transfers under the law — the vast majority transgender women asking to move to women’s prison — more than 300 are still waiting for a committee to hear their case. Many live in daily fear of sexual and physical assault, said A.D. Lewis, an attorney who runs Trans Beyond Bars, a project for the Berkeley-based Prison Law Office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A transgender man, Lewis regularly communicates with trans-incarcerated people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The three dozen or so trans women who made it to CCWF — most during the first six months of implementation — are the vanguard. Many, like Skylit, have suffered. A small number have been transferred to the California Institution for Women, a lower security prison in San Bernardino County, where they say conditions are slightly better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘These systems are so built to destroy people, and if they survive and get out, they’re not better and they’re often much worse.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Jen Orthwein, forensic psychologist, co-founder of Medina Orthwein LLP","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In a statement, CDCR said it is working to implement some of the changes \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24016207-mossgroup-sb132-cdcr-assessment-report\">recommended by outside consultants (DOC)\u003c/a> earlier this year and is committed to providing “a safe, humane, respectful and rehabilitative environment for all incarcerated people, including the transgender, non-binary and intersex community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates acknowledge that the cycles of harm continue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Instead of respecting trans people’s self-determination and prioritizing their safety, as the law requires,” Lewis said, correctional staff and other incarcerated people have used it “to put a target on trans peoples’ back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shortly after prison officials received KQED’s questions for this story in September, CCWF revoked all phone privileges for Skylit and others in solitary confinement. In an email to KQED after the initial publication of this story, a CDCR official said the revocation of phone privileges was a policy change ending what had been a temporary, more liberal phone privileges policy instituted in the early days of the COVID pandemic. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skylit’s attorney worries about the impact of the trauma on her future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These systems are so built to destroy people, and if they survive and get out, they’re not better and they’re often much worse,” Orthwein said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a letter sent in July 2023 to Newsom, nearly two-dozen advocacy and legal organizations pressing for better treatment for transgender, nonbinary and intersex prisoners \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23991938-tni-coalition-letter-to-governor-newsom-71723pdf-2\">urged clemency (DOC)\u003c/a> for those who have experienced harm in prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wiener, meanwhile, expressed deep frustration with the pace of implementation. In response to KQED’s findings, he said he was “horrified to hear how trans women are being treated in women’s prison, both by the prisons and by other inmates. The fact that they’re being treated harshly and slandered, called rapists when they’re not, it’s terrifying and we’re not going to just let this go.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lee Romney is a longtime journalist who spent 23 years at the \u003c/em>Los Angeles Times\u003cem>. Jennifer Johnson is a former career public defender who helped launch San Francisco’s Behavioral Health Court. This reporting, supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the California Health Care Foundation, is part of a forthcoming podcast they’re co-creating. Called \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.novemberinmysoul.com/\">\u003cem>November In My Soul\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, it explores the way bias makes its way into our intertwined mental health and criminal legal systems.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story has been updated.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/news/11964027/california-prisons-fail-to-uphold-transgender-rights-despite-state-law","authors":["byline_news_11964027"],"programs":["news_72","news_26731"],"categories":["news_6188","news_8"],"tags":["news_18538","news_32222","news_2729","news_616","news_3149","news_1629","news_19984","news_28871","news_27626","news_20004","news_25373","news_24732","news_2717","news_1527","news_30804","news_20851","news_30162","news_2486","news_29386"],"featImg":"news_11964041","label":"news_26731"},"news_11949943":{"type":"posts","id":"news_11949943","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"news","id":"11949943","score":null,"sort":[1684444747000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"when-california-downsizes-prisons-incarcerated-people-are-shuffled-out-of-community-college-classes","title":"When California Downsizes Prisons, Incarcerated People Are Shuffled Out of Community College Classes","publishDate":1684444747,"format":"standard","headTitle":"When California Downsizes Prisons, Incarcerated People Are Shuffled Out of Community College Classes | KQED","labelTerm":{},"content":"\u003cp>As California closes three more prisons and downsizes six others, some people incarcerated there aren’t ready to go. They are worried about the future of their educations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For more than 1,500 incarcerated people who attend college in these facilities, closures mean they could be transferred to a new prison where the courses may not line up or where they’re unable to continue their classes, leaving some students a few credits short of a degree. Education can offer tangible, real-world benefits to incarcerated people: They can earn degrees and gain merit credits that chip off time from a sentence. Research shows that \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-and-education-departments-announce-new-research-showing-prison-education-reduces\">prison education also reduces recidivism\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/prisons/2023/02/how-many-prisons-does-california-need/\">California’s shrinking prison population\u003c/a> — the state had \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\">160,000 people incarcerated in 2011\u003c/a>, down to just \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2023/05/Tpop1d230510.pdf\">96,000 as of May 10, 2023 (PDF)\u003c/a> — has also created an unexpected problem for the state’s community college system, which has developed special programs to help those in prisons earn degrees. Palo Verde Community College in Blythe, for example, draws almost half of its students from the nearby prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the prisons close down, at least three community colleges stand to lose more than 10% of their student enrollment and millions of dollars in state funding, collectively.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11950004\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1568px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2023/05/18/when-california-downsizes-prisons-incarcerated-people-are-shuffled-out-of-community-college-classes/051023-inmate-students-lv_07/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11950004\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11950004\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_07.jpg\" alt=\"the exterior of a prison fence, with a sign that says California City Correctional Facility\" width=\"1568\" height=\"1045\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_07.jpg 1568w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_07-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_07-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_07-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_07-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1568px) 100vw, 1568px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The California City Correctional Facility just outside California City is one of the prisons set to close soon. \u003ccite>(Larry Valenzuela/CalMatters/CatchLight Local)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom has been interested in closing prisons since at least 2019. Since then, the state has closed one in Tracy and nearly finished closing another Susanville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last December, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said it would close a prison in Blythe and end the contract with a private prison company in California City. The corrections department also said it would close parts of six other prisons throughout the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement to CalMatters, the corrections department said that it is committed to preventing “academic disruption” for students at the closing prisons and pointed to the work of the \u003ca href=\"https://risingscholarsnetwork.org/#:~:text=We%20are%20a%20network%20of,experienced%20the%20criminal%20justice%20system.\">Rising Scholars Network\u003c/a> at the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, which oversees various higher education programs across all of the state’s 34 adult prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But local community college administrators say communication from the corrections department is limited and that they have few resources to help incarcerated people who fall through the cracks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Learning in the D yard\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Formerly incarcerated David Zemp, a self-described nerd, gets wistful when he talks about prison education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He spent seven years locked up in the D yard at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi. By the time he was released in 2022, he said the prison unit looked more like a college campus than a prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those incarcerated in the prison made their own salsa at the nearby garden and covered the white walls with murals: a dinosaur fossil, an astronaut and, at the entrance, the March of Progress in which a monkey evolves into man with a cap and gown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was falling apart, but the people who were investing in it were in love with it,” he said. He earned five degrees while incarcerated, which ultimately knocked off roughly three years of his 12-year prison sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11950001\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1568px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2023/05/18/when-california-downsizes-prisons-incarcerated-people-are-shuffled-out-of-community-college-classes/051023-inmate-students-lv_18/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11950001\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11950001\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_18.jpg\" alt=\"the side view of a middle-aged woman with her hair pulled back, filing a stack of white books on a shelf\" width=\"1568\" height=\"1045\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_18.jpg 1568w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_18-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_18-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_18-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_18-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1568px) 100vw, 1568px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anna Carlson, program director for the incarcerated education program, looks over books meant for incarcerated students at the Cerro Coso office in Tehachapi on May 10, 2023. \u003ccite>(Larry Valenzuela/CalMatters/CatchLight Local)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cerro Coso Community College taught over 35 in-person classes inside the D yard of the Tehachapi prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to its murals that covered the walls and gardens outside, the college was also working with the prison to build portable classrooms on site.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In December 2022, that all came to a halt. The college learned that the corrections department planned to close the D yard in Tehachapi this summer, as well as the California City Correctional Center, another prison where Cerro Coso also teaches, by next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Dropping out in California prisons\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Professors and administrators were in a bind. Almost 20% of Cerro Coso’s students were incarcerated at one of the two prisons. At the time, Anna Carlson, program director for the college’s incarcerated education program, had little information about the timeline for the closures, except a promise from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that students would be able to stay throughout the spring semester.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11950003\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1568px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2023/05/18/when-california-downsizes-prisons-incarcerated-people-are-shuffled-out-of-community-college-classes/051023-inmate-students-lv_09/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11950003\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11950003\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_09.jpg\" alt=\"in a dimly lit empty room, stools sit on top of desks, with an empty bookshelf and art tools in the background\" width=\"1568\" height=\"1045\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_09.jpg 1568w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_09-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_09-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_09-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_09-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1568px) 100vw, 1568px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An empty art classroom at Cerro Coso College in Ridgecrest. \u003ccite>(Larry Valenzuela/CalMatters/CatchLight Local)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“That just didn’t happen,” Carlson said. “Some were able to stay, and some were not.” Her office at Cerro Coso, a trailer that abuts the local school, is at the epicenter of the prison closures, fielding calls and sorting files from students and professors who are frantic or frustrated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the spring, professors arrived at the prisons only to find that some of their students were gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Peter Fulks, a professor at Cerro Coso, spoke to over 100 people who are imprisoned and who told him continuing their education was consistently a top concern. Some men broke into tears because they were so worried about what might happen next, Fulks said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over 400 of Cerro Coso’s incarcerated students left prison before they could finish their semester. Of those students, 126 have been paroled; the rest are scattered across at least 27 different state prisons, according to data from Carlson’s department at Cerro Coso Community College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Others dropped out of school even before they were transferred, said Fulks, resulting in an enrollment dip before the spring semester, right as news got out about the prison closures.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Bureaucratic coordination\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The corrections department said in a statement that it is committed to preventing prison transfers during the semester, but that it does happen. The corrections department also said that the special credits awarded for classes — the ones which can give people who are incarcerated years off of their sentence — will transfer to the new prison, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some students who leave in the middle of a semester strike special agreements with their teachers to finish the rest of the class via mail, but not every professor is willing or able to do that. Unlucky students must withdraw or take an incomplete.[aside postID=news_11934758,news_11821589,news_11934072 label='More on California Prisons']In general, educational options for students vary depending on which prison they are sent to, according to the statement. Some prisons only offer classes via email, known as “correspondence-based” courses; others have partnerships akin to Cerro Coso’s model and focus on in-person instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The statement said it is up to the community colleges, with the state’s help “if needed,” to ensure the students’ credits transfer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the corrections department later clarified that it tracks where it moves each person, administrators at two community colleges told CalMatters that they don’t have access to that information and said there’s no coordinated system among community colleges to communicate which students have transferred where.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moreover, colleges need the written consent of the student before they can communicate with one another due to privacy laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Correspondence classes push on\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Cerro Coso Community College is more vulnerable to the effects of prison closures because its classes are primarily in-person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Statewide, most college classes in prison are by mail, where students communicate through letters with a community college professor they have never met.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the case at both Palo Verde College on the Colorado River and Lassen College near Northern Nevada, which also face looming prison closures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Palo Verde College expects to lose about 10% of its student body — around 520 people — when nearby Chuckawalla Valley State Prison closes in 2025, but President Don Wallace said the college can easily make up the lost enrollment by gaining correspondence-based students from other colleges around the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All told, nearly half of Palo Verde’s current students are incarcerated, a number that has more than doubled since 2016. The vast majority of those students are correspondence-based.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the college will find other students, Wallace said the transfers will have a “horrific impact” on the current ones, who he worries may never finish their education. “It’s a stop-out point,” he said. “Even among people that are not incarcerated, when they have to change from one college to another or they move from a community college to a four-year university, those are points where people quit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11950002\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1568px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2023/05/18/when-california-downsizes-prisons-incarcerated-people-are-shuffled-out-of-community-college-classes/051023-inmate-students-lv_17/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11950002\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11950002\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_17.jpg\" alt=\"two plastic bins overflowing with manila envelopes\" width=\"1568\" height=\"1045\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_17.jpg 1568w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_17-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_17-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_17-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_17-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1568px) 100vw, 1568px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Correspondence letters from incarcerated students in the Cerro Coso office in Tehachapi. \u003ccite>(Larry Valenzuela/CalMatters/CatchLight Local)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Lassen College, whose nearby prison began closing last year, has been able to continue educating about three-quarters of its 200 students at their new prisons via correspondence, said Colleen Baker, interim dean of instruction. She did not respond to questions about the fate of the 50 of students who did not continue their education via correspondence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To Fulks at Cerro Coso, who recently defended a dissertation about prison education, the difference between in-person instruction and correspondence-based classes is stark. “Correspondence success rates are extremely low, about 68%, compared to face-to-face, which was about 81.6%,” he said, adding that the performance for correspondence classes may actually be even lower since some of the remote classes he studied had professors stop by occasionally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for colleges, who receive state money based in part on the number of students they enroll, correspondence classes bring in a lot more revenue. “Each one of their students counts the same as a face to face. You don’t have to pay for location, materials for students, they limit how much support they provide to students and that money goes in,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Millions lost as degrees delay\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Once the prison fully closes, Cerro Coso will lose just over 900 students, more than 10% of its total enrollment. The college’s vice president of finance, Chad Houck, said the college did not know how much funding would be lost. Palo Verde and Lassen College will each lose an estimated $1.7 million this academic year, according to an estimate by CalMatters using the state’s funding formula. While Lassen College was able to continue educating most of the prison’s students, it lost nearly 1,800 incarcerated students who were studying at the fire training center adjacent to the prison.[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Don Wallace, president, Palo Verde College\"]‘Even among people that are not incarcerated, when they have to change from one college to another or they move from a community college to a four-year university, those are points where people quit.’[/pullquote]But unlike Lassen and Palo Verde colleges, Cerro Coso Community College will not offer any additional correspondence-based classes as a result of the prison closures, said Houck. He said the “quality is not the same” and that neither students nor faculty prefer it. Instead, the college will focus on recruiting more students from the local prison units that will remain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the incarcerated Cerro Coso students who are leaving, they will need to connect with a new college at the prison where they go next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carlson has few options to help them and typically must wait for the students to contact her office and request a transcript. As of May 11, roughly 60 students from the D yard in Tehachapi and the California City prison have reached out to her team to request a transcript, and most people reached out before their transfer, at the moment they knew their destination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carlson and her colleagues predict those numbers will go up as more people settle into their next prison, but they also know some may never finish their degrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Adam Echelman covers California’s community colleges in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Gov. Gavin Newsom is closing and downsizing prisons across the state — in the process, transferring incarcerated people out of their community college classes. College administrators say they have few resources to help.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1684444758,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":42,"wordCount":2025},"headData":{"title":"When California Downsizes Prisons, Incarcerated People Are Shuffled Out of Community College Classes | KQED","description":"Gov. Gavin Newsom is closing and downsizing prisons across the state — in the process, transferring incarcerated people out of their community college classes. College administrators say they have few resources to help.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"When California Downsizes Prisons, Incarcerated People Are Shuffled Out of Community College Classes","datePublished":"2023-05-18T21:19:07.000Z","dateModified":"2023-05-18T21:19:18.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png","isAccessibleForFree":"Y","publisher":{"@type":"NewsMediaOrganization","@id":"https://www.kqed.org/#organization","name":"KQED","url":"https://www.kqed.org","logo":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}}},"source":"CalMatters","sourceUrl":"https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2023/05/california-prisons-community-college/?mc_cid=4496f235fb&mc_eid=03aeecdf22","nprByline":"\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/author/adam-echelman/\">Adam Echelman\u003c/a>","excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","showOnAuthorArchivePages":"No","articleAge":"0","path":"/news/11949943/when-california-downsizes-prisons-incarcerated-people-are-shuffled-out-of-community-college-classes","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As California closes three more prisons and downsizes six others, some people incarcerated there aren’t ready to go. They are worried about the future of their educations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For more than 1,500 incarcerated people who attend college in these facilities, closures mean they could be transferred to a new prison where the courses may not line up or where they’re unable to continue their classes, leaving some students a few credits short of a degree. Education can offer tangible, real-world benefits to incarcerated people: They can earn degrees and gain merit credits that chip off time from a sentence. Research shows that \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-and-education-departments-announce-new-research-showing-prison-education-reduces\">prison education also reduces recidivism\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/prisons/2023/02/how-many-prisons-does-california-need/\">California’s shrinking prison population\u003c/a> — the state had \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\">160,000 people incarcerated in 2011\u003c/a>, down to just \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2023/05/Tpop1d230510.pdf\">96,000 as of May 10, 2023 (PDF)\u003c/a> — has also created an unexpected problem for the state’s community college system, which has developed special programs to help those in prisons earn degrees. Palo Verde Community College in Blythe, for example, draws almost half of its students from the nearby prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the prisons close down, at least three community colleges stand to lose more than 10% of their student enrollment and millions of dollars in state funding, collectively.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11950004\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1568px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2023/05/18/when-california-downsizes-prisons-incarcerated-people-are-shuffled-out-of-community-college-classes/051023-inmate-students-lv_07/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11950004\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11950004\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_07.jpg\" alt=\"the exterior of a prison fence, with a sign that says California City Correctional Facility\" width=\"1568\" height=\"1045\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_07.jpg 1568w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_07-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_07-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_07-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_07-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1568px) 100vw, 1568px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The California City Correctional Facility just outside California City is one of the prisons set to close soon. \u003ccite>(Larry Valenzuela/CalMatters/CatchLight Local)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom has been interested in closing prisons since at least 2019. Since then, the state has closed one in Tracy and nearly finished closing another Susanville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last December, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said it would close a prison in Blythe and end the contract with a private prison company in California City. The corrections department also said it would close parts of six other prisons throughout the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement to CalMatters, the corrections department said that it is committed to preventing “academic disruption” for students at the closing prisons and pointed to the work of the \u003ca href=\"https://risingscholarsnetwork.org/#:~:text=We%20are%20a%20network%20of,experienced%20the%20criminal%20justice%20system.\">Rising Scholars Network\u003c/a> at the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, which oversees various higher education programs across all of the state’s 34 adult prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But local community college administrators say communication from the corrections department is limited and that they have few resources to help incarcerated people who fall through the cracks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Learning in the D yard\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Formerly incarcerated David Zemp, a self-described nerd, gets wistful when he talks about prison education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He spent seven years locked up in the D yard at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi. By the time he was released in 2022, he said the prison unit looked more like a college campus than a prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those incarcerated in the prison made their own salsa at the nearby garden and covered the white walls with murals: a dinosaur fossil, an astronaut and, at the entrance, the March of Progress in which a monkey evolves into man with a cap and gown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was falling apart, but the people who were investing in it were in love with it,” he said. He earned five degrees while incarcerated, which ultimately knocked off roughly three years of his 12-year prison sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11950001\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1568px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2023/05/18/when-california-downsizes-prisons-incarcerated-people-are-shuffled-out-of-community-college-classes/051023-inmate-students-lv_18/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11950001\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11950001\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_18.jpg\" alt=\"the side view of a middle-aged woman with her hair pulled back, filing a stack of white books on a shelf\" width=\"1568\" height=\"1045\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_18.jpg 1568w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_18-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_18-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_18-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_18-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1568px) 100vw, 1568px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anna Carlson, program director for the incarcerated education program, looks over books meant for incarcerated students at the Cerro Coso office in Tehachapi on May 10, 2023. \u003ccite>(Larry Valenzuela/CalMatters/CatchLight Local)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cerro Coso Community College taught over 35 in-person classes inside the D yard of the Tehachapi prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to its murals that covered the walls and gardens outside, the college was also working with the prison to build portable classrooms on site.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In December 2022, that all came to a halt. The college learned that the corrections department planned to close the D yard in Tehachapi this summer, as well as the California City Correctional Center, another prison where Cerro Coso also teaches, by next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Dropping out in California prisons\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Professors and administrators were in a bind. Almost 20% of Cerro Coso’s students were incarcerated at one of the two prisons. At the time, Anna Carlson, program director for the college’s incarcerated education program, had little information about the timeline for the closures, except a promise from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that students would be able to stay throughout the spring semester.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11950003\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1568px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2023/05/18/when-california-downsizes-prisons-incarcerated-people-are-shuffled-out-of-community-college-classes/051023-inmate-students-lv_09/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11950003\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11950003\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_09.jpg\" alt=\"in a dimly lit empty room, stools sit on top of desks, with an empty bookshelf and art tools in the background\" width=\"1568\" height=\"1045\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_09.jpg 1568w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_09-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_09-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_09-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_09-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1568px) 100vw, 1568px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An empty art classroom at Cerro Coso College in Ridgecrest. \u003ccite>(Larry Valenzuela/CalMatters/CatchLight Local)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“That just didn’t happen,” Carlson said. “Some were able to stay, and some were not.” Her office at Cerro Coso, a trailer that abuts the local school, is at the epicenter of the prison closures, fielding calls and sorting files from students and professors who are frantic or frustrated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the spring, professors arrived at the prisons only to find that some of their students were gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Peter Fulks, a professor at Cerro Coso, spoke to over 100 people who are imprisoned and who told him continuing their education was consistently a top concern. Some men broke into tears because they were so worried about what might happen next, Fulks said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over 400 of Cerro Coso’s incarcerated students left prison before they could finish their semester. Of those students, 126 have been paroled; the rest are scattered across at least 27 different state prisons, according to data from Carlson’s department at Cerro Coso Community College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Others dropped out of school even before they were transferred, said Fulks, resulting in an enrollment dip before the spring semester, right as news got out about the prison closures.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Bureaucratic coordination\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The corrections department said in a statement that it is committed to preventing prison transfers during the semester, but that it does happen. The corrections department also said that the special credits awarded for classes — the ones which can give people who are incarcerated years off of their sentence — will transfer to the new prison, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some students who leave in the middle of a semester strike special agreements with their teachers to finish the rest of the class via mail, but not every professor is willing or able to do that. Unlucky students must withdraw or take an incomplete.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"postid":"news_11934758,news_11821589,news_11934072","label":"More on California Prisons "},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In general, educational options for students vary depending on which prison they are sent to, according to the statement. Some prisons only offer classes via email, known as “correspondence-based” courses; others have partnerships akin to Cerro Coso’s model and focus on in-person instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The statement said it is up to the community colleges, with the state’s help “if needed,” to ensure the students’ credits transfer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the corrections department later clarified that it tracks where it moves each person, administrators at two community colleges told CalMatters that they don’t have access to that information and said there’s no coordinated system among community colleges to communicate which students have transferred where.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moreover, colleges need the written consent of the student before they can communicate with one another due to privacy laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Correspondence classes push on\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Cerro Coso Community College is more vulnerable to the effects of prison closures because its classes are primarily in-person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Statewide, most college classes in prison are by mail, where students communicate through letters with a community college professor they have never met.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the case at both Palo Verde College on the Colorado River and Lassen College near Northern Nevada, which also face looming prison closures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Palo Verde College expects to lose about 10% of its student body — around 520 people — when nearby Chuckawalla Valley State Prison closes in 2025, but President Don Wallace said the college can easily make up the lost enrollment by gaining correspondence-based students from other colleges around the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All told, nearly half of Palo Verde’s current students are incarcerated, a number that has more than doubled since 2016. The vast majority of those students are correspondence-based.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the college will find other students, Wallace said the transfers will have a “horrific impact” on the current ones, who he worries may never finish their education. “It’s a stop-out point,” he said. “Even among people that are not incarcerated, when they have to change from one college to another or they move from a community college to a four-year university, those are points where people quit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11950002\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1568px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2023/05/18/when-california-downsizes-prisons-incarcerated-people-are-shuffled-out-of-community-college-classes/051023-inmate-students-lv_17/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11950002\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11950002\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_17.jpg\" alt=\"two plastic bins overflowing with manila envelopes\" width=\"1568\" height=\"1045\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_17.jpg 1568w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_17-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_17-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_17-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/05/051023-Inmate-Students-LV_17-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1568px) 100vw, 1568px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Correspondence letters from incarcerated students in the Cerro Coso office in Tehachapi. \u003ccite>(Larry Valenzuela/CalMatters/CatchLight Local)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Lassen College, whose nearby prison began closing last year, has been able to continue educating about three-quarters of its 200 students at their new prisons via correspondence, said Colleen Baker, interim dean of instruction. She did not respond to questions about the fate of the 50 of students who did not continue their education via correspondence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To Fulks at Cerro Coso, who recently defended a dissertation about prison education, the difference between in-person instruction and correspondence-based classes is stark. “Correspondence success rates are extremely low, about 68%, compared to face-to-face, which was about 81.6%,” he said, adding that the performance for correspondence classes may actually be even lower since some of the remote classes he studied had professors stop by occasionally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for colleges, who receive state money based in part on the number of students they enroll, correspondence classes bring in a lot more revenue. “Each one of their students counts the same as a face to face. You don’t have to pay for location, materials for students, they limit how much support they provide to students and that money goes in,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Millions lost as degrees delay\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Once the prison fully closes, Cerro Coso will lose just over 900 students, more than 10% of its total enrollment. The college’s vice president of finance, Chad Houck, said the college did not know how much funding would be lost. Palo Verde and Lassen College will each lose an estimated $1.7 million this academic year, according to an estimate by CalMatters using the state’s funding formula. While Lassen College was able to continue educating most of the prison’s students, it lost nearly 1,800 incarcerated students who were studying at the fire training center adjacent to the prison.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘Even among people that are not incarcerated, when they have to change from one college to another or they move from a community college to a four-year university, those are points where people quit.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Don Wallace, president, Palo Verde College","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But unlike Lassen and Palo Verde colleges, Cerro Coso Community College will not offer any additional correspondence-based classes as a result of the prison closures, said Houck. He said the “quality is not the same” and that neither students nor faculty prefer it. Instead, the college will focus on recruiting more students from the local prison units that will remain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the incarcerated Cerro Coso students who are leaving, they will need to connect with a new college at the prison where they go next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carlson has few options to help them and typically must wait for the students to contact her office and request a transcript. As of May 11, roughly 60 students from the D yard in Tehachapi and the California City prison have reached out to her team to request a transcript, and most people reached out before their transfer, at the moment they knew their destination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carlson and her colleagues predict those numbers will go up as more people settle into their next prison, but they also know some may never finish their degrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Adam Echelman covers California’s community colleges in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/news/11949943/when-california-downsizes-prisons-incarcerated-people-are-shuffled-out-of-community-college-classes","authors":["byline_news_11949943"],"categories":["news_8"],"tags":["news_26658","news_3149","news_25365","news_16","news_28654"],"affiliates":["news_18481"],"featImg":"news_11950000","label":"source_news_11949943"},"news_11923465":{"type":"posts","id":"news_11923465","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"news","id":"11923465","score":null,"sort":[1661443245000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"immigrant-advocates-make-final-push-to-pass-bill-ending-prison-to-ice-transfers-in-california","title":"Immigrant Advocates Make Final Push to Pass Bill Ending Prison-to-ICE Transfers in California","publishDate":1661443245,"format":"standard","headTitle":"KQED News","labelTerm":{"site":"news"},"content":"\u003cp>California immigrant advocates are making a final push to persuade state lawmakers to pass a bill that would end the practice of transferring noncitizens to immigration custody when they’re released from jail or prison — legislation that would go further than California's existing so-called “sanctuary state” law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill, known as the VISION Act, overwhelmingly passed the state Assembly last year but fell short of the 21 votes needed for Senate passage, so it carried over as a “two-year bill.” Now it’s awaiting a floor vote in the state Senate before the legislative session concludes at the end of August.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill’s backers are looking for support from three more senators, and they’ve been \u003ca href=\"https://vietrise.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2022/08/2022.08.16_OC-Elected-Officials-Support-the-VISION-Act.pdf\">sending letters\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://sanfernandosun.com/2022/08/10/valley-organizations-urge-hertzberg-to-support-the-vision-act/\">holding rallies\u003c/a> in the districts of several Democrats still on the fence. If the session ends without a vote, the bill will die.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Late Tuesday, the authors made amendments to \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB937\">AB 937\u003c/a> that they hope will address concerns from Democratic senators who pulled back their support last year over opposition from law enforcement groups. One change would allow the state parole board to notify ICE if an immigrant who was released on parole is later convicted of a serious new offense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a recent press conference, Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, the bill’s author, emphasized that it would still require incarcerated immigrants to serve their sentences. But under the VISION Act, state and local officials would no longer hand them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement upon release, unless served with a warrant issued by a judge. State and local officials would also stop tracking the birthplace of offenders in their criminal records systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If individuals have served their time, have paid their debt to society, regardless of where you are born you have a right to restart your life,” she said. “That is the societal contract that we have. And California should not be in the business of collaborating with ICE.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On average, \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billAnalysisClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB937\">nearly 1,600 people come out of state prison each year with an immigration hold\u003c/a> that leads to their transfer to ICE to be deported, according to an estimate by state Senate staff.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"California Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo\"]'If individuals have served their time, have paid their debt to society, regardless of where you are born, you have a right to restart your life. That is the societal contract that we have.'[/pullquote]The VISION Act would close a loophole in an earlier law, the 2018 California Values Act, \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB54\">SB 54\u003c/a>, sometimes known as the “sanctuary state” law, which limited police and sheriff’s departments from collaborating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with exceptions for a wide range of crimes, from violent felonies to certain misdemeanors. The Values Act didn’t prohibit transfers to ICE by prisons, but the VISION Act would.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police and sheriff’s groups oppose the bill. They point to federal law, which says immigrants, even those who are legal with green cards, can be deported if they’ve committed a so-called “aggravated felony,” from a long list of crimes that includes some misdemeanors. And they say it’s safer for ICE to take custody of a person inside a locked facility than to arrest them at their home or a public location.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This proposed legislation puts local law enforcement in a no-win situation, having to choose between state and federal laws,” the Police Officers Research Association of California said in a statement last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in a joint statement, \u003ca href=\"https://ct3.blob.core.windows.net/21blobs/58984f34-e091-4208-93db-4e804b666038\">law enforcement groups noted that the VISION Act would prevent them\u003c/a> from notifying immigration authorities of the release of people who had served sentences for crimes such as rape, murder and torture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are also not arguing that immigrants somehow pose any more threat than citizens or asking to involve immigration authorities in low-level offenses. However, there should be a point, in the most egregious cases, where we do not provide protections for dangerous persons from enforcement,” the statement said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But advocates for the bill say it’s not California’s responsibility to do the work of immigration enforcement, and ICE can still bring deportation proceedings against someone whether or not they’re incarcerated. They point to other states — including Oregon and Illinois — which have passed laws to end most prison-to-ICE transfers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In California, we're always proud to say that we're the first when it comes to social justice,” said veteran civil rights and labor organizer Dolores Huerta. “Well, now we're not the first, because other states have already taken care of this issue. ... It’s time for us to act.”[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Sandra Castañeda, Los Angeles resident\"]'I thought I would never say this, but prison is better than this place.'[/pullquote]Huerta called the transfers “double jeopardy” because people often wind up spending additional months or years in ICE detention, where it’s more difficult to mount a defense against deportation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Los Angeles resident Sandra Castañeda lived through that. When her conviction for a murder she didn’t commit was vacated last summer, she thought she’d be going home after 19 years in prison. Instead, she was handed to ICE and held for a year in a private detention center in rural Georgia. She said she saw many women there give up their cases in desperation and accept deportation, because they couldn’t bear the conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought I would never say this, but prison is better than this place,” Castañeda said last month in a phone call from the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga. “In prison you have a routine. You have a job, there's classes, there's things to do. ... Here, you’re stuck in a dorm with 23 people, all day, every day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Castañeda was released this month with the help of a pro bono lawyer, Anoop Prasad of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco. An immigration judge ruled that she’s not deportable because she no longer has an aggravated felony on her record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Castañeda’s conviction was wiped away by a California judge after the Legislature eliminated the state’s “felony murder” rule, which had allowed her to be charged with murder because she was driving a car out of which a fatal shot was fired, even though she had no indication that her passenger would shoot. But Prasad noted that Castañeda also earned a commutation from Gov. Gavin Newsom because of her exemplary behavior in prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For the governor on the one hand to be like, ‘I'm granting clemency. You're a model for other incarcerated people.’ And then in the next breath to say, ‘Oh, call up ICE and have this person deported,’” makes no sense, Prasad said. “California needs to end this hypocrisy of working with an agency that's so cruel.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A UC San Diego poll last summer found \u003ca href=\"https://usipc.ucsd.edu/publications/usipc-vision-act-final-20210803.pdf\">two-thirds of California voters supported the VISION Act\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill could go to a vote in the state Senate next week. Newsom has not given any indication of whether he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Aug. 26 Correction: A previous version of this story mischaracterized SB 54, the California Values Act, saying it allowed police and sheriffs to collaborate with ICE only in cases of immigrants convicted of serious or violent crimes. In fact, the law allows them to do so when a person has been convicted (or in some cases charged) with a long list of crimes, including some misdemeanors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Backers of the VISION Act, moving through the state Senate this month, say noncitizens released from prison should not be handed over for deportation.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1662486782,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":23,"wordCount":1338},"headData":{"title":"Immigrant Advocates Make Final Push to Pass Bill Ending Prison-to-ICE Transfers in California | KQED","description":"Backers of the VISION Act, moving through the state Senate this month, say noncitizens released from prison should not be handed over for deportation.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Immigrant Advocates Make Final Push to Pass Bill Ending Prison-to-ICE Transfers in California","datePublished":"2022-08-25T16:00:45.000Z","dateModified":"2022-09-06T17:53:02.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png","isAccessibleForFree":"Y","publisher":{"@type":"NewsMediaOrganization","@id":"https://www.kqed.org/#organization","name":"KQED","url":"https://www.kqed.org","logo":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}}},"disqusIdentifier":"11923465 https://ww2.kqed.org/news/?p=11923465","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2022/08/25/immigrant-advocates-make-final-push-to-pass-bill-ending-prison-to-ice-transfers-in-california/","disqusTitle":"Immigrant Advocates Make Final Push to Pass Bill Ending Prison-to-ICE Transfers in California","audioUrl":"https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/0af137ef-751e-4b19-a055-aaef00d2d578/ffca7e9f-6831-4[…]f-aaef00f5a073/ef0bfdc7-39e8-4fc2-84ec-aefb0125f855/audio.mp3","excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","path":"/news/11923465/immigrant-advocates-make-final-push-to-pass-bill-ending-prison-to-ice-transfers-in-california","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>California immigrant advocates are making a final push to persuade state lawmakers to pass a bill that would end the practice of transferring noncitizens to immigration custody when they’re released from jail or prison — legislation that would go further than California's existing so-called “sanctuary state” law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill, known as the VISION Act, overwhelmingly passed the state Assembly last year but fell short of the 21 votes needed for Senate passage, so it carried over as a “two-year bill.” Now it’s awaiting a floor vote in the state Senate before the legislative session concludes at the end of August.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill’s backers are looking for support from three more senators, and they’ve been \u003ca href=\"https://vietrise.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2022/08/2022.08.16_OC-Elected-Officials-Support-the-VISION-Act.pdf\">sending letters\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://sanfernandosun.com/2022/08/10/valley-organizations-urge-hertzberg-to-support-the-vision-act/\">holding rallies\u003c/a> in the districts of several Democrats still on the fence. If the session ends without a vote, the bill will die.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Late Tuesday, the authors made amendments to \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB937\">AB 937\u003c/a> that they hope will address concerns from Democratic senators who pulled back their support last year over opposition from law enforcement groups. One change would allow the state parole board to notify ICE if an immigrant who was released on parole is later convicted of a serious new offense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a recent press conference, Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, the bill’s author, emphasized that it would still require incarcerated immigrants to serve their sentences. But under the VISION Act, state and local officials would no longer hand them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement upon release, unless served with a warrant issued by a judge. State and local officials would also stop tracking the birthplace of offenders in their criminal records systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If individuals have served their time, have paid their debt to society, regardless of where you are born you have a right to restart your life,” she said. “That is the societal contract that we have. And California should not be in the business of collaborating with ICE.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On average, \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billAnalysisClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB937\">nearly 1,600 people come out of state prison each year with an immigration hold\u003c/a> that leads to their transfer to ICE to be deported, according to an estimate by state Senate staff.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"'If individuals have served their time, have paid their debt to society, regardless of where you are born, you have a right to restart your life. That is the societal contract that we have.'","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"align":"right","size":"medium","citation":"California Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The VISION Act would close a loophole in an earlier law, the 2018 California Values Act, \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB54\">SB 54\u003c/a>, sometimes known as the “sanctuary state” law, which limited police and sheriff’s departments from collaborating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with exceptions for a wide range of crimes, from violent felonies to certain misdemeanors. The Values Act didn’t prohibit transfers to ICE by prisons, but the VISION Act would.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police and sheriff’s groups oppose the bill. They point to federal law, which says immigrants, even those who are legal with green cards, can be deported if they’ve committed a so-called “aggravated felony,” from a long list of crimes that includes some misdemeanors. And they say it’s safer for ICE to take custody of a person inside a locked facility than to arrest them at their home or a public location.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This proposed legislation puts local law enforcement in a no-win situation, having to choose between state and federal laws,” the Police Officers Research Association of California said in a statement last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in a joint statement, \u003ca href=\"https://ct3.blob.core.windows.net/21blobs/58984f34-e091-4208-93db-4e804b666038\">law enforcement groups noted that the VISION Act would prevent them\u003c/a> from notifying immigration authorities of the release of people who had served sentences for crimes such as rape, murder and torture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are also not arguing that immigrants somehow pose any more threat than citizens or asking to involve immigration authorities in low-level offenses. However, there should be a point, in the most egregious cases, where we do not provide protections for dangerous persons from enforcement,” the statement said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But advocates for the bill say it’s not California’s responsibility to do the work of immigration enforcement, and ICE can still bring deportation proceedings against someone whether or not they’re incarcerated. They point to other states — including Oregon and Illinois — which have passed laws to end most prison-to-ICE transfers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In California, we're always proud to say that we're the first when it comes to social justice,” said veteran civil rights and labor organizer Dolores Huerta. “Well, now we're not the first, because other states have already taken care of this issue. ... It’s time for us to act.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"'I thought I would never say this, but prison is better than this place.'","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"align":"right","size":"medium","citation":"Sandra Castañeda, Los Angeles resident","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Huerta called the transfers “double jeopardy” because people often wind up spending additional months or years in ICE detention, where it’s more difficult to mount a defense against deportation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Los Angeles resident Sandra Castañeda lived through that. When her conviction for a murder she didn’t commit was vacated last summer, she thought she’d be going home after 19 years in prison. Instead, she was handed to ICE and held for a year in a private detention center in rural Georgia. She said she saw many women there give up their cases in desperation and accept deportation, because they couldn’t bear the conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought I would never say this, but prison is better than this place,” Castañeda said last month in a phone call from the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga. “In prison you have a routine. You have a job, there's classes, there's things to do. ... Here, you’re stuck in a dorm with 23 people, all day, every day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Castañeda was released this month with the help of a pro bono lawyer, Anoop Prasad of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco. An immigration judge ruled that she’s not deportable because she no longer has an aggravated felony on her record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Castañeda’s conviction was wiped away by a California judge after the Legislature eliminated the state’s “felony murder” rule, which had allowed her to be charged with murder because she was driving a car out of which a fatal shot was fired, even though she had no indication that her passenger would shoot. But Prasad noted that Castañeda also earned a commutation from Gov. Gavin Newsom because of her exemplary behavior in prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For the governor on the one hand to be like, ‘I'm granting clemency. You're a model for other incarcerated people.’ And then in the next breath to say, ‘Oh, call up ICE and have this person deported,’” makes no sense, Prasad said. “California needs to end this hypocrisy of working with an agency that's so cruel.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A UC San Diego poll last summer found \u003ca href=\"https://usipc.ucsd.edu/publications/usipc-vision-act-final-20210803.pdf\">two-thirds of California voters supported the VISION Act\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill could go to a vote in the state Senate next week. Newsom has not given any indication of whether he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Aug. 26 Correction: A previous version of this story mischaracterized SB 54, the California Values Act, saying it allowed police and sheriffs to collaborate with ICE only in cases of immigrants convicted of serious or violent crimes. In fact, the law allows them to do so when a person has been convicted (or in some cases charged) with a long list of crimes, including some misdemeanors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/news/11923465/immigrant-advocates-make-final-push-to-pass-bill-ending-prison-to-ice-transfers-in-california","authors":["259"],"categories":["news_1169","news_8","news_13"],"tags":["news_31502","news_3149","news_18123","news_886","news_23883","news_21027","news_20202","news_25409","news_20750","news_3883","news_20529","news_30865"],"featImg":"news_11923545","label":"news"},"news_11908340":{"type":"posts","id":"news_11908340","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"news","id":"11908340","score":null,"sort":[1647464677000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"documents-show-how-california-dept-of-corrections-handles-racism-among-officers","title":"Documents Show How California Dept. of Corrections Handles Racism Among Officers","publishDate":1647464677,"format":"standard","headTitle":"The California Report | KQED News","labelTerm":{"term":72,"site":"news"},"content":"\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As people across the country reacted to George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police in late May 2020, at least two state correctional officers, independently, posted racist comments on Facebook about Floyd’s death. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And a Black correctional officer was disciplined for growing angry at co-workers over a “thin blue line” flag hanging in a state prison gymnasium in August 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These officers all were disciplined for breaking the agency’s discrimination policies, according to documents released to KQED by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation under SB16, the expanded transparency law. \u003c/span>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Coalition of Black Employees at the CDCR\"]'Changing the culture of systemic racism and implicit bias at CDCR will only succeed after acknowledging the challenges faced by Black employees, and taking concrete actions to address those challenges.'[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The records shed light for the first time on how the agency deals with racism among its employees. The documents contain racist and antisemitic language and imagery. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the wake of the incidents, a group of Black CDCR employees has been pushing the department to \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/article246896837.html\">make hiring and promotional practices more fair and equitable\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Nothing has changed, not a thing,” said Sharonya Reene Dorsey, an analyst for the CDCR’s Office of Correctional Education.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> CDCR spokesperson Dana Simas wrote in an email that leadership has taken concrete steps to improve recruitment, outreach and diversity in hiring. Simas wrote that the department has zero tolerance for discrimination, “and we work hard to ensure racial equity and justice.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On May 28, 2020, Joshua Priester, a white correctional officer at Folsom State Prison, commented after a Facebook user shared an article with the headline “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tmz.com/videos/052720-george-floyd-security-footage-4791146-0-dzljqi2r/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Surveillance Footage Shows George Floyd Moments Before Killing, He’s Not Resisting\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“He [Floyd] was not a very good person one less loser,” Priester wrote. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to the documents released by CDCR, Priester argued with two people with whom he’d attended the correctional academy. One user suggested that if Floyd were white, he would not have been killed by police officers because he would have been at work. \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21424263-hn-fol-360-20-s_-_priester__j_-_second_amended_noaa\">The full exchange is available here. \u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The department suspended Priester for 60 days for his comments, and for sharing another image of Floyd’s arrest on his Facebook page. As of Tuesday, the image remained up on Priester's page.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11908386\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-2.30.18-PM.png\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-11908386\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-2.30.18-PM-800x854.png\" alt=\"The screenshot of the meme shows a police officer kneeling on a man's neck and below an individual striking another in the head.\" width=\"800\" height=\"854\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-2.30.18-PM-800x854.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-2.30.18-PM-1020x1089.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-2.30.18-PM-160x171.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-2.30.18-PM.png 1414w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joshua Priester worked as a correctional officer at Folsom State Prison when he posted the above image on Facebook three days after George Floyd's death. \u003ccite>(Screenshot from Facebook)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Priester did not reply to emails and messages requesting comment, and his union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, did not respond to emails and calls requesting comment. CDCR did not say whether Priester appealed his suspension. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A day earlier, on May 27, 2020, Matthew Sanchez, an officer at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21424265-s-cci-243-20-d_-_sanchez__m_-_noaa\">commented on a post about Floyd’s arrest\u003c/a>, according to the records.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“How the fuck do you shout when you're be [sic] choked?” Sanchez wrote, including a laughing emoji in the post. “If you're actually being choked you can’t talk.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When another commenter objected, Sanchez, using emojis and a texting abbreviation, fired back, “did you bring your feelings to Facebook? I got one for you. What's the difference between Jews and boy scouts? Boy scouts come back from their camps. Lmk when you’re ready for another one.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The department dismissed Sanchez. CDCR would not say whether Sanchez appealed his firing. Sanchez couldn’t be reached for comment, and his former union did not respond to our inquiries.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By May 29, 2020, word of the officers’ racist posts had reached Ralph Diaz, CDCR’s former secretary, who sent out a memo to all employees calling the posts “\u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/29/ca-prison-staff-posted-racist-and-extremely-hurtful-comments-about-george-floyds-killing-cdcr-secretary-says/\">extremely hurtful and disrespectful.\u003c/a>” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“To say I was upset to learn of these comments would be an understatement – those who engaged in such behavior have brought dishonor to this Department and cast a shadow on the fine work we do,” Diaz wrote. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Diaz reminded CDCR employees of their duty to keep their private lives “unsullied,” and suggested they all review the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theiacp.org/resources/law-enforcement-code-of-ethics\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Law Enforcement Code of Ethics\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response to KQED’s request for comment, \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CDCR spokesperson \u003c/span>Simas wrote that Diaz’s memo and the disciplinary actions taken by the department “exemplify” the department’s commitment to racial equity and justice. Diaz retired in September 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We also require annual training on discrimination related policies, and strive to ensure there is proper accountability and expectations for our staff both at work and in the community,” Simas wrote.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Simas would not say whether the department had reviewed the treatment of Black people in custody by Sanchez and Priester.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A CDCR employee, who didn’t want to be named because she fears retaliation, said the discipline displays the agency’s bias.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They make an antisemitic joke, and they get fired. But they make a joke about an African American person, and they either don't get suspended or just get suspended,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dorsey, in the CDCR's Office of Correctional Education, and her colleague, Sebrena Lindsay, were among the employees who received the memo from Diaz, but they saw it as a missed opportunity for the administration to reach out to Black staff and see how they were doing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We were hurting as a community of employees,” Lindsay said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In response, Dorsey, Lindsay and other Black co-workers \u003ca href=\"https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HA1nX6KVTMiw0_twKrs4saBu2oYnI6pY/view?usp=sharing\">sent their own letter\u003c/a>, calling out the agency for failing to hire, promote and support Black employees. They also included a list of specific action items the agency could take to increase pay equity and representation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Changing the culture of systemic racism and implicit bias at CDCR will only succeed after acknowledging the challenges faced by Black employees, and taking concrete actions to address those challenges,” the letter said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the key requests they made was for an independent audit of hirings and promotions so the agency could gather data on its own practices and reveal whether there was bias. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“You really can’t fix the problem if you can’t acknowledge the problem,” another CDCR employee, who requested anonymity because they fear retaliation, told KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In an email, Simas said that CDCR has improved recruitment and outreach and increased diversity in hiring. The agency sent out recruitment advertisements featuring people who present as Black, Asian American and Muslim American, she noted. According to Simas, the agency also is adopting a diversity statement in job applications, and it sent all CDCR executives and managers to implicit bias training beginning in late 2020.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The documents released by CDCR show Diaz’s memo also was part of the justification for disciplining a Black correctional officer in Los Angeles for anti-white racism in August 2020. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Carl Holmes arrived for his shift at California State Prison, Los Angeles County, he was upset by a “thin blue line” flag hanging in the gymnasium. Holmes said \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21424264-s-lac-406-20-d_-_holmes__c_-_noaa\">the flag was offensive to him as a Black man\u003c/a> and to the Black Lives Matter movement, according to documents.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The documents say that an administrative officer “addressed” Holmes’s concerns about the flag, but do not reveal how. The records also state that the “blue line symbolizes police officers shot and killed in the line of duty,” while failing to acknowledge that the imagery has other connotations and has even been \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sfs-top-cop-banned-thin-blue-line-masks-now-the-police-union-is-selling-them/\">banned by some police chiefs\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Simas did not respond to questions about how the department views the flag.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A white officer asked Holmes if he was OK, and Holmes, according to the recollection of the officer, said, “All police and white people are racist pigs and that flag out there, that I have to look at every day makes me sick, and enraged and I'm not going to put up with them trying to talk me down about this,” documents say. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CDCR cut Holmes’s pay by 5% for 24 pay periods — or two years. Holmes did not respond to emails and messages requesting comment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since Dorsey and her colleagues sent their letter and proposed an action plan to the administration, they said the department hasn’t adopted any of the recommendations. Instead, she and Lindsay have been targeted, she claims.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Simas wrote in an email that leadership has continued to meet with Dorsey and her group and\u003c/span> that the department welcomes hearing about employees’ experiences “so that we can address their concerns collaboratively.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dorsey and Lindsay say they aren’t afraid to speak out because they are near retirement and are committed to changing the culture for future employees. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They know they can’t intimidate us,” Dorsey said. “They could try. I'm not intimidated.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"In the aftermath of George Floyd's killing, the California Department of Corrections disciplined two officers for making racist statements on social media. Thanks to a new law, the public can see what those officers posted and how they were disciplined.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1647547451,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":43,"wordCount":1542},"headData":{"title":"Documents Show How California Dept. of Corrections Handles Racism Among Officers | KQED","description":"In the aftermath of George Floyd's killing, the California Department of Corrections disciplined two officers for making racist statements on social media. Thanks to a new law, the public can see what those officers posted and how they were disciplined.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Documents Show How California Dept. of Corrections Handles Racism Among Officers","datePublished":"2022-03-16T21:04:37.000Z","dateModified":"2022-03-17T20:04:11.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png","isAccessibleForFree":"Y","publisher":{"@type":"NewsMediaOrganization","@id":"https://www.kqed.org/#organization","name":"KQED","url":"https://www.kqed.org","logo":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}}},"disqusIdentifier":"11908340 https://ww2.kqed.org/news/?p=11908340","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2022/03/16/documents-show-how-california-dept-of-corrections-handles-racism-among-officers/","disqusTitle":"Documents Show How California Dept. of Corrections Handles Racism Among Officers","audioUrl":"https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/0af137ef-751e-4b19-a055-aaef00d2d578/ffca7e9f-6831-4[…]f-aaef00f5a073/6b3c7cdb-19dc-489a-9423-ae5a01028744/audio.mp3","excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","path":"/news/11908340/documents-show-how-california-dept-of-corrections-handles-racism-among-officers","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As people across the country reacted to George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police in late May 2020, at least two state correctional officers, independently, posted racist comments on Facebook about Floyd’s death. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And a Black correctional officer was disciplined for growing angry at co-workers over a “thin blue line” flag hanging in a state prison gymnasium in August 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These officers all were disciplined for breaking the agency’s discrimination policies, according to documents released to KQED by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation under SB16, the expanded transparency law. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"'Changing the culture of systemic racism and implicit bias at CDCR will only succeed after acknowledging the challenges faced by Black employees, and taking concrete actions to address those challenges.'","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Coalition of Black Employees at the CDCR","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The records shed light for the first time on how the agency deals with racism among its employees. The documents contain racist and antisemitic language and imagery. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the wake of the incidents, a group of Black CDCR employees has been pushing the department to \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/article246896837.html\">make hiring and promotional practices more fair and equitable\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Nothing has changed, not a thing,” said Sharonya Reene Dorsey, an analyst for the CDCR’s Office of Correctional Education.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> CDCR spokesperson Dana Simas wrote in an email that leadership has taken concrete steps to improve recruitment, outreach and diversity in hiring. Simas wrote that the department has zero tolerance for discrimination, “and we work hard to ensure racial equity and justice.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On May 28, 2020, Joshua Priester, a white correctional officer at Folsom State Prison, commented after a Facebook user shared an article with the headline “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tmz.com/videos/052720-george-floyd-security-footage-4791146-0-dzljqi2r/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Surveillance Footage Shows George Floyd Moments Before Killing, He’s Not Resisting\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“He [Floyd] was not a very good person one less loser,” Priester wrote. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to the documents released by CDCR, Priester argued with two people with whom he’d attended the correctional academy. One user suggested that if Floyd were white, he would not have been killed by police officers because he would have been at work. \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21424263-hn-fol-360-20-s_-_priester__j_-_second_amended_noaa\">The full exchange is available here. \u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The department suspended Priester for 60 days for his comments, and for sharing another image of Floyd’s arrest on his Facebook page. As of Tuesday, the image remained up on Priester's page.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11908386\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-2.30.18-PM.png\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-11908386\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-2.30.18-PM-800x854.png\" alt=\"The screenshot of the meme shows a police officer kneeling on a man's neck and below an individual striking another in the head.\" width=\"800\" height=\"854\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-2.30.18-PM-800x854.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-2.30.18-PM-1020x1089.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-2.30.18-PM-160x171.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-2.30.18-PM.png 1414w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joshua Priester worked as a correctional officer at Folsom State Prison when he posted the above image on Facebook three days after George Floyd's death. \u003ccite>(Screenshot from Facebook)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Priester did not reply to emails and messages requesting comment, and his union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, did not respond to emails and calls requesting comment. CDCR did not say whether Priester appealed his suspension. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A day earlier, on May 27, 2020, Matthew Sanchez, an officer at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21424265-s-cci-243-20-d_-_sanchez__m_-_noaa\">commented on a post about Floyd’s arrest\u003c/a>, according to the records.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“How the fuck do you shout when you're be [sic] choked?” Sanchez wrote, including a laughing emoji in the post. “If you're actually being choked you can’t talk.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When another commenter objected, Sanchez, using emojis and a texting abbreviation, fired back, “did you bring your feelings to Facebook? I got one for you. What's the difference between Jews and boy scouts? Boy scouts come back from their camps. Lmk when you’re ready for another one.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The department dismissed Sanchez. CDCR would not say whether Sanchez appealed his firing. Sanchez couldn’t be reached for comment, and his former union did not respond to our inquiries.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By May 29, 2020, word of the officers’ racist posts had reached Ralph Diaz, CDCR’s former secretary, who sent out a memo to all employees calling the posts “\u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/29/ca-prison-staff-posted-racist-and-extremely-hurtful-comments-about-george-floyds-killing-cdcr-secretary-says/\">extremely hurtful and disrespectful.\u003c/a>” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“To say I was upset to learn of these comments would be an understatement – those who engaged in such behavior have brought dishonor to this Department and cast a shadow on the fine work we do,” Diaz wrote. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Diaz reminded CDCR employees of their duty to keep their private lives “unsullied,” and suggested they all review the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theiacp.org/resources/law-enforcement-code-of-ethics\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Law Enforcement Code of Ethics\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response to KQED’s request for comment, \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CDCR spokesperson \u003c/span>Simas wrote that Diaz’s memo and the disciplinary actions taken by the department “exemplify” the department’s commitment to racial equity and justice. Diaz retired in September 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We also require annual training on discrimination related policies, and strive to ensure there is proper accountability and expectations for our staff both at work and in the community,” Simas wrote.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Simas would not say whether the department had reviewed the treatment of Black people in custody by Sanchez and Priester.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A CDCR employee, who didn’t want to be named because she fears retaliation, said the discipline displays the agency’s bias.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They make an antisemitic joke, and they get fired. But they make a joke about an African American person, and they either don't get suspended or just get suspended,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dorsey, in the CDCR's Office of Correctional Education, and her colleague, Sebrena Lindsay, were among the employees who received the memo from Diaz, but they saw it as a missed opportunity for the administration to reach out to Black staff and see how they were doing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We were hurting as a community of employees,” Lindsay said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In response, Dorsey, Lindsay and other Black co-workers \u003ca href=\"https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HA1nX6KVTMiw0_twKrs4saBu2oYnI6pY/view?usp=sharing\">sent their own letter\u003c/a>, calling out the agency for failing to hire, promote and support Black employees. They also included a list of specific action items the agency could take to increase pay equity and representation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Changing the culture of systemic racism and implicit bias at CDCR will only succeed after acknowledging the challenges faced by Black employees, and taking concrete actions to address those challenges,” the letter said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the key requests they made was for an independent audit of hirings and promotions so the agency could gather data on its own practices and reveal whether there was bias. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“You really can’t fix the problem if you can’t acknowledge the problem,” another CDCR employee, who requested anonymity because they fear retaliation, told KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In an email, Simas said that CDCR has improved recruitment and outreach and increased diversity in hiring. The agency sent out recruitment advertisements featuring people who present as Black, Asian American and Muslim American, she noted. According to Simas, the agency also is adopting a diversity statement in job applications, and it sent all CDCR executives and managers to implicit bias training beginning in late 2020.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The documents released by CDCR show Diaz’s memo also was part of the justification for disciplining a Black correctional officer in Los Angeles for anti-white racism in August 2020. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Carl Holmes arrived for his shift at California State Prison, Los Angeles County, he was upset by a “thin blue line” flag hanging in the gymnasium. Holmes said \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21424264-s-lac-406-20-d_-_holmes__c_-_noaa\">the flag was offensive to him as a Black man\u003c/a> and to the Black Lives Matter movement, according to documents.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The documents say that an administrative officer “addressed” Holmes’s concerns about the flag, but do not reveal how. The records also state that the “blue line symbolizes police officers shot and killed in the line of duty,” while failing to acknowledge that the imagery has other connotations and has even been \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sfs-top-cop-banned-thin-blue-line-masks-now-the-police-union-is-selling-them/\">banned by some police chiefs\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Simas did not respond to questions about how the department views the flag.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A white officer asked Holmes if he was OK, and Holmes, according to the recollection of the officer, said, “All police and white people are racist pigs and that flag out there, that I have to look at every day makes me sick, and enraged and I'm not going to put up with them trying to talk me down about this,” documents say. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CDCR cut Holmes’s pay by 5% for 24 pay periods — or two years. Holmes did not respond to emails and messages requesting comment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since Dorsey and her colleagues sent their letter and proposed an action plan to the administration, they said the department hasn’t adopted any of the recommendations. Instead, she and Lindsay have been targeted, she claims.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Simas wrote in an email that leadership has continued to meet with Dorsey and her group and\u003c/span> that the department welcomes hearing about employees’ experiences “so that we can address their concerns collaboratively.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dorsey and Lindsay say they aren’t afraid to speak out because they are near retirement and are committed to changing the culture for future employees. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They know they can’t intimidate us,” Dorsey said. “They could try. I'm not intimidated.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/news/11908340/documents-show-how-california-dept-of-corrections-handles-racism-among-officers","authors":["8676"],"programs":["news_72"],"categories":["news_6188","news_8"],"tags":["news_1628","news_3149","news_27626","news_30805","news_20109","news_30804","news_28497"],"featImg":"news_11908407","label":"news_72"},"news_11901952":{"type":"posts","id":"news_11901952","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"news","id":"11901952","score":null,"sort":[1642687232000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"why-a-california-program-allowing-prosecutors-to-shorten-prison-sentences-is-catching-on-in-red-and-blue-counties","title":"Why a California Program Allowing Prosecutors to Shorten Prison Sentences Is Catching on in Red and Blue Counties","publishDate":1642687232,"format":"audio","headTitle":"The California Report | KQED News","labelTerm":{"term":72,"site":"news"},"content":"\u003cp>Alwin Smith was 30 years old when he received his third strike and a sentence to die in state prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years of struggling with drug addiction caught up with him in 2000, when he was arrested in Riverside County for robbery and possession of drugs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"When I first got sentenced, I was sentenced to 25 years to life for each one of those. And they gave me 15 more years — five years for each prior offense,\" he said. \"So I ended up with 65 years to life. ... That's a sentence that, can't nobody do it. I mean, you ain't gonna never complete the sentence.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith would spend the next two decades in three different state prisons. For the first six years, at Corcoran State Prison, he said he had very little access to drug treatment or other rehabilitation services. But in 2007, he was sent to California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, where he started going to church and soon began attending classes and programs the church offered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Now I'm starting to understand some things about my behavior. You know, the one thing, the one factor in my life, is alcohol and drug abuse — that's the thing that continuously had guided my steps,\" Smith said. \"It was the driving force behind my actions and decisions.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith wasn’t just helping himself — over the coming years, he would become a leader, helping other men embrace faith and sobriety at both the Men's Colony and Soledad State Prison, where he was transferred in 2011.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But still, his 65-year-to-life sentence remained — until an unlikely coalition, including Riverside County’s Republican district attorney, joined forces to secure his release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hillary Blout helped create the system that made Smith's release possible. A former San Francisco prosecutor, Blout now heads \u003ca href=\"https://www.fortheppl.org/\">For the People\u003c/a>, an Oakland-based criminal justice reform nonprofit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I just believed that there was a way that we could get prosecutors to be part of the solution,\" Blout said. \"I knew that prosecutors believe that there were people in prison that didn't need to be there, I knew that they agreed that people can change, and that there were people that were serving sentences not based on current-day practices.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Blout helped write \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB2942\">a 2018 California law\u003c/a> that enabled district attorneys to bring certain exemplary people in prison back to court and request they be resentenced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It started with a couple of conversations with some elected prosecutors in California. They agreed: Yeah, if we had a law like this, we'd use it. We'd use it in a safe way,\" Blout said. \"We would be methodical about it. But yeah, we absolutely would get people out of prison if you showed they didn't need to be there anymore.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the People works with prosecutors, public defenders and other groups to find the right cases; so far more than 100 people in California prisons have been released through the program since the legislation went into effect in 2019, and Blout estimates another 26,000 could safely reenter society.[aside label=\"Related Coverage\" tag=\"criminal-justice-reform\"]Last year, Blout's group\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11882320/new-state-funding-boosts-prosecutor-led-resentencing-efforts-in-california\"> helped secure $18 million in state funding\u003c/a> for DAs in \u003ca href=\"https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d44c4376e48120001a8b1d3/t/60f20eb61147e5557d91ae9a/1626476214277/Latest+-+Fact+Sheet++California+County+Resentencing+Pilot+Program+%281%29.pdf\">nine counties, including San Francisco, Santa Clara and Contra Costa\u003c/a>, to help pay for the work of identifying and seeking the release of more eligible people in prison. She says the state could eventually save hundreds of millions of dollars through safe resentencing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the People also has successfully pushed to pass similar laws in \u003ca href=\"https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?Year=2019&BillNumber=6164\">Washington\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/06/bill-allowing-das-and-prisoners-to-ask-court-to-review-sentence-conviction-heads-to-governors-desk.html\">Oregon\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/article/Illinois-passes-new-law-prohibiting-police-from-16317669.php'\">Illinois\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's a rare good-news, bipartisan story in a policy area that's historically been marked by bitter disagreement. Democratic state leaders have been pushing criminal justice reform in California in earnest for about a decade, following a lawsuit over state prison crowding that eventually led the U.S. Supreme Court to order the state to reduce the number of people locked up. But most of those reforms remain unpopular among law enforcement officials and Republican leaders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While this program sounds like a natural fit for progressive prosecutors already committed to reform, it’s notable that it's also being embraced by some more traditionally law-and-order DA's offices — like the one in Yolo County, just west of Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jonathan Raven, the county's chief deputy district attorney, has worked in law enforcement for 25 years. A decade ago, when Raven started working in this office, \"we viewed every case as a nail,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"And if you have a nail with the tool, you're going to use a hammer. And we realize now that they're all there, all sorts of other tools in the box that we can use to achieve justice.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new law, Raven said, allows his office both to reconsider sentences that may have been too long from the start and to revisit cases in which people have demonstrated they've had a true personal transformation in prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Raven said his office always works with an eye to public safety and ensuring victims’ voices are part of the resentencing conversation. His office has so far resentenced nine people through the program, most of whom were immediately released, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's real stories and real people and real lives. And the thing about sentencing someone to prison — it's a lot of power that we have, and there's such an effect on so many people,\" he said. \"So it's extremely satisfying to see someone who has earned an early release, you know, get out early.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Alwin Smith’s case, he walked free in July. He’s now back in Riverside County, working at a Costco and interning at a church, where he helps provide meals and showers to the homeless, and speaks to middle school students about his story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the long term, Smith said, he just wants to continue to help others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I'm working a great job at a great company and I'm giving back. But I want more of the giving back ... and to continue to grow and learn,\" he said. \"So I'm seeing where the Lord is going to lead me and take me in that process.\"\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"A growing number of liberal and conservative prosecutors are embracing a 2018 state law that allows prosecutors to request early release for certain people serving long prison sentences.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1642715669,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":25,"wordCount":1061},"headData":{"title":"Why a California Program Allowing Prosecutors to Shorten Prison Sentences Is Catching on in Red and Blue Counties | KQED","description":"A growing number of liberal and conservative prosecutors are embracing a 2018 state law that allows prosecutors to request early release for certain people serving long prison sentences.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Why a California Program Allowing Prosecutors to Shorten Prison Sentences Is Catching on in Red and Blue Counties","datePublished":"2022-01-20T14:00:32.000Z","dateModified":"2022-01-20T21:54:29.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png","isAccessibleForFree":"Y","publisher":{"@type":"NewsMediaOrganization","@id":"https://www.kqed.org/#organization","name":"KQED","url":"https://www.kqed.org","logo":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}}},"disqusIdentifier":"11901952 https://ww2.kqed.org/news/?p=11901952","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2022/01/20/why-a-california-program-allowing-prosecutors-to-shorten-prison-sentences-is-catching-on-in-red-and-blue-counties/","disqusTitle":"Why a California Program Allowing Prosecutors to Shorten Prison Sentences Is Catching on in Red and Blue Counties","audioUrl":"https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/0af137ef-751e-4b19-a055-aaef00d2d578/ffca7e9f-6831-41c5-bcaf-aaef00f5a073/3c1bb8cf-4367-4a6c-9893-ae2301117dde/audio.mp3","excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","path":"/news/11901952/why-a-california-program-allowing-prosecutors-to-shorten-prison-sentences-is-catching-on-in-red-and-blue-counties","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Alwin Smith was 30 years old when he received his third strike and a sentence to die in state prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years of struggling with drug addiction caught up with him in 2000, when he was arrested in Riverside County for robbery and possession of drugs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"When I first got sentenced, I was sentenced to 25 years to life for each one of those. And they gave me 15 more years — five years for each prior offense,\" he said. \"So I ended up with 65 years to life. ... That's a sentence that, can't nobody do it. I mean, you ain't gonna never complete the sentence.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith would spend the next two decades in three different state prisons. For the first six years, at Corcoran State Prison, he said he had very little access to drug treatment or other rehabilitation services. But in 2007, he was sent to California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, where he started going to church and soon began attending classes and programs the church offered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Now I'm starting to understand some things about my behavior. You know, the one thing, the one factor in my life, is alcohol and drug abuse — that's the thing that continuously had guided my steps,\" Smith said. \"It was the driving force behind my actions and decisions.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith wasn’t just helping himself — over the coming years, he would become a leader, helping other men embrace faith and sobriety at both the Men's Colony and Soledad State Prison, where he was transferred in 2011.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But still, his 65-year-to-life sentence remained — until an unlikely coalition, including Riverside County’s Republican district attorney, joined forces to secure his release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hillary Blout helped create the system that made Smith's release possible. A former San Francisco prosecutor, Blout now heads \u003ca href=\"https://www.fortheppl.org/\">For the People\u003c/a>, an Oakland-based criminal justice reform nonprofit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I just believed that there was a way that we could get prosecutors to be part of the solution,\" Blout said. \"I knew that prosecutors believe that there were people in prison that didn't need to be there, I knew that they agreed that people can change, and that there were people that were serving sentences not based on current-day practices.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Blout helped write \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB2942\">a 2018 California law\u003c/a> that enabled district attorneys to bring certain exemplary people in prison back to court and request they be resentenced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It started with a couple of conversations with some elected prosecutors in California. They agreed: Yeah, if we had a law like this, we'd use it. We'd use it in a safe way,\" Blout said. \"We would be methodical about it. But yeah, we absolutely would get people out of prison if you showed they didn't need to be there anymore.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the People works with prosecutors, public defenders and other groups to find the right cases; so far more than 100 people in California prisons have been released through the program since the legislation went into effect in 2019, and Blout estimates another 26,000 could safely reenter society.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"label":"Related Coverage ","tag":"criminal-justice-reform"},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Last year, Blout's group\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11882320/new-state-funding-boosts-prosecutor-led-resentencing-efforts-in-california\"> helped secure $18 million in state funding\u003c/a> for DAs in \u003ca href=\"https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d44c4376e48120001a8b1d3/t/60f20eb61147e5557d91ae9a/1626476214277/Latest+-+Fact+Sheet++California+County+Resentencing+Pilot+Program+%281%29.pdf\">nine counties, including San Francisco, Santa Clara and Contra Costa\u003c/a>, to help pay for the work of identifying and seeking the release of more eligible people in prison. She says the state could eventually save hundreds of millions of dollars through safe resentencing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the People also has successfully pushed to pass similar laws in \u003ca href=\"https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?Year=2019&BillNumber=6164\">Washington\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/06/bill-allowing-das-and-prisoners-to-ask-court-to-review-sentence-conviction-heads-to-governors-desk.html\">Oregon\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/article/Illinois-passes-new-law-prohibiting-police-from-16317669.php'\">Illinois\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's a rare good-news, bipartisan story in a policy area that's historically been marked by bitter disagreement. Democratic state leaders have been pushing criminal justice reform in California in earnest for about a decade, following a lawsuit over state prison crowding that eventually led the U.S. Supreme Court to order the state to reduce the number of people locked up. But most of those reforms remain unpopular among law enforcement officials and Republican leaders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While this program sounds like a natural fit for progressive prosecutors already committed to reform, it’s notable that it's also being embraced by some more traditionally law-and-order DA's offices — like the one in Yolo County, just west of Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jonathan Raven, the county's chief deputy district attorney, has worked in law enforcement for 25 years. A decade ago, when Raven started working in this office, \"we viewed every case as a nail,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"And if you have a nail with the tool, you're going to use a hammer. And we realize now that they're all there, all sorts of other tools in the box that we can use to achieve justice.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new law, Raven said, allows his office both to reconsider sentences that may have been too long from the start and to revisit cases in which people have demonstrated they've had a true personal transformation in prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Raven said his office always works with an eye to public safety and ensuring victims’ voices are part of the resentencing conversation. His office has so far resentenced nine people through the program, most of whom were immediately released, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's real stories and real people and real lives. And the thing about sentencing someone to prison — it's a lot of power that we have, and there's such an effect on so many people,\" he said. \"So it's extremely satisfying to see someone who has earned an early release, you know, get out early.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Alwin Smith’s case, he walked free in July. He’s now back in Riverside County, working at a Costco and interning at a church, where he helps provide meals and showers to the homeless, and speaks to middle school students about his story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the long term, Smith said, he just wants to continue to help others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I'm working a great job at a great company and I'm giving back. But I want more of the giving back ... and to continue to grow and learn,\" he said. \"So I'm seeing where the Lord is going to lead me and take me in that process.\"\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/news/11901952/why-a-california-program-allowing-prosecutors-to-shorten-prison-sentences-is-catching-on-in-red-and-blue-counties","authors":["3239"],"programs":["news_72"],"categories":["news_6188","news_8","news_13"],"tags":["news_3149","news_22276","news_21479","news_2960","news_925","news_20859","news_23623"],"featImg":"news_11902112","label":"news_72"},"news_11862087":{"type":"posts","id":"news_11862087","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"news","id":"11862087","score":null,"sort":[1614289076000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"california-prison-authorities-have-yet-to-learn-lessons-from-major-covid-19-outbreaks-advocates-warn","title":"California Prison Authorities Have Yet to Learn Lessons From Major COVID-19 Outbreaks, Advocates Warn","publishDate":1614289076,"format":"standard","headTitle":"KQED News","labelTerm":{},"content":"\u003cp>When news of the pandemic first reached the men incarcerated at Avenal State Prison in Central California, inmate Ed Welker said the prevailing mood was panic. “We were like, ‘Yeah, it’s going to come in here and it’s going to spread like wildfire and we’re all going to get it,’ ” he said. “And that’s exactly what happened.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Almost a year later, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/population-status-tracking/\">94% of Avenal’s incarcerated men have contracted COVID-19 and eight have died\u003c/a>. With more than 3,600 confirmed cases among prisoners and staff members, the facility tops the list of the country’s largest COVID-19 clusters in prisons compiled by \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html\">The New York Times\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://uclacovidbehindbars.org/\">UCLA COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Calling the prison system’s response to the pandemic “nonchalant,” “incompetent” and at times “negligent,” Welker and his fellow inmates described a crowded and dangerous living situation. Inmates interviewed by Valley Public Radio said physical distancing was nearly impossible, and constant moves in and out of quarantine were confusing and disruptive. The postponement of visits and rehabilitative programs left the men with little opportunity to vent their frustrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s chaos over here, man,” said John Walker, 50, an inmate interviewed via the prison system’s collect-calling service during the fall surge in cases. “That’s why the mental health program’s blowing up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similar grievances have been voiced by prisoners across the country, who have contracted the virus at a rate more than three times that of the general population, according to \u003ca href=\"http://themarshallproject.org/2020/12/18/1-in-5-prisoners-in-the-u-s-has-had-covid-19\">an analysis\u003c/a> by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to the U.S. criminal justice system. Lawsuits and criminal justice advocates detail a pandemic response in prisons and jails that has ranged from careless to egregious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11862099\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1536px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11862099 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/avenal_02.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1536\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/avenal_02.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/avenal_02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/avenal_02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/avenal_02-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1536px) 100vw, 1536px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The exterior of Avenal State Prison. A recent report by The Marshall Project points at California’s prisons as a case study showing how outbreaks tend to recur in overcrowded prisons. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California’s prison authority denies many of these men’s claims and instead points to the long list of precautions the agency has adopted since the pandemic began. Dana Simas, press secretary at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, wrote in an email that state and Avenal officials “are continuously working with public health and health care experts to address this unprecedented pandemic and protect those who live and work in our state prisons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The virus continues to devastate prison populations and employees. Despite a dramatic drop in new infections since the holidays, more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/05/01/a-state-by-state-look-at-coronavirus-in-prisons\">15,000 inmates\u003c/a> nationwide have contracted the virus in the past three weeks, according to The Marshall Project. California’s facilities serve as a case study in which outbreaks recur while prison advocates argue that officials failed to enact a critical precaution: relieving overcrowding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There has not been the political will to do what’s necessary to keep people safe, which is to dramatically reduce prison and jail populations,” said \u003ca href=\"https://law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/aaron-littman\">Aaron Littman\u003c/a>, a teaching fellow at UCLA School of Law and deputy director of the COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early in the pandemic, corrections agencies across the country put in place measures to prevent outbreaks, mandating masks and physical distancing, setting aside housing units specifically for quarantined inmates, and establishing testing protocols for staffers and the incarcerated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The measures are important, the measures help ... but those are not sufficient,” said Littman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Horrific errors occurred. In late May, for instance, a transfer of a handful of inmates later discovered to have been COVID-positive sparked an outbreak that killed 29 people and infected 2,600 others at San Quentin State Prison in Northern California.\u003cbr>\n[aside postID=\"news_11843335\" hero=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1920_Avenal-1020x574.jpg\"]\u003cbr>\nDecision-makers disagree about what’s safe. At Avenal, as in all of California’s prisons, labor contracts permit guards to work different shifts in different buildings, despite the fact that many academic experts and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/correction-detention/guidance-correctional-detention.html\">the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discourage the practice\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The public health director of Kings County, where Avenal is located, tried to order the prison to temporarily freeze staff assignments in May, but \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/post/avenal-s-prison-labor-contract-allows-actions-cdc-and-kings-county-warned-could-spread-covid-19#stream/0\">the state prison authority politely informed him the county has no jurisdiction over a state-run facility\u003c/a>. “The response to us was, ‘Well, because of labor agreements, we can’t do that,’ ” said Kings County Supervisor Craig Pedersen. “It was one of the most frustrating interactions we had, I think, in this process.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Workplace culture may also undermine well-intentioned precautions. In a review published in October, California’s Office of the Inspector General, the state prison watchdog, \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/OIG-COVID-19-Review-Series-Part-2-%E2%80%93-Face-Coverings-and-PPE.pdf\">reported that staff members failed to properly wear masks at two-thirds of the prisons it inspected\u003c/a>. The report concluded lax enforcement was to blame.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, like Littman, many advocates and academics say preventive measures can accomplish little in such tightly packed environments. “Our review of the evidence indicates that relieving population pressures in jails, prisons, and detention centers greatly facilitates adherence to CDC guidelines, controlling COVID-19 outbreaks, and reducing health risks, particularly for medically vulnerable people,” members of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25945/decarcerating-correctional-facilities-during-covid-19-advancing-health-equity-and\">National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine\u003c/a> wrote in an October report. “Smaller populations make it easier for correctional officials to place individuals in single cells, have sufficient resources for testing, and safely quarantine individuals after exposure to an infected person.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11862104\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11862104\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Protesters gather outside Avenal State Prison on June 6, 2020. At this prison in Central California, 94% of the incarcerated men had contracted COVID-19 and eight have died. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Colby Lenz)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When the pandemic began, 1.5 million inmates were housed in roughly \u003ca href=\"https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html\">1,900 state and federal prisons\u003c/a>, many of which were not just crowded but overcrowded. California’s prisons were stuffed with an average of 30% more inmates than they were designed to house. Avenal’s occupancy was nearly 50% beyond capacity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since March, the state corrections department has granted early releases to 19,000 inmates due to medical and other circumstances, but a federal judge argued it hasn’t been enough. “I have cajoled, begged and pleaded with the governor and the secretary to release a very significantly higher number of inmates beyond their current release efforts,” U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar said during a January hearing for an ongoing court case regarding medical care within the state’s prisons. “With all appreciation for the efforts they have made, those requests have fallen on deaf ears.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not just the incarcerated who are contracting COVID-19 at alarming rates. Throughout the country, nearly \u003ca href=\"https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/05/01/a-state-by-state-look-at-coronavirus-in-prisons#staff-cases\">103,000 prison employees\u003c/a> have tested positive for the virus and 184 have died, a sum that doesn’t begin to account for the infections transmitted beyond prison walls to families and communities.\u003cbr>\n[ad fullwidth]\u003cbr>\n“It’s a huge concern,” said Jeff Garner, executive director of the nonprofit Kings Community Action Organization in rural Kings County, where three state prisons provide jobs for more than 4,300 people. “The prisons are a huge employer in our county. Whether it’s employees or clients, it’s kind of like those six degrees of separation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just 40 miles from Avenal, on the other side of this agricultural county in the San Joaquin Valley, is the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, Corcoran, ranked by The New York Times as the country’s second-largest cluster of COVID-19 in prison. Kings County health officials have not responded to multiple requests for comment about how these two prison outbreaks have contributed to community transmission of the virus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11862101\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11862101 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The second-largest cluster of COVID-19 cases in the nation is also in Kings County at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran, California. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Could the arrival of the vaccines finally put a stop to COVID-19 in prisons? In December, nearly 500 academics and public health experts \u003ca href=\"https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rlz5lCDHLCJ4Pnhl0mdNl3VeRSuBu8QWblRtjXu6zN0/edit#heading=h.gjdgxs\">signed a letter\u003c/a> to the CDC calling for prisoners and correctional employees to receive priority access. At least nine states included incarcerated people \u003ca href=\"https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/12/08/covid-vaccination-plans/\">in the first tier of vaccination plans\u003c/a>, while 15 included prison staffers, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a research organization that studies mass incarceration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California began offering vaccines to medically vulnerable inmates at a limited number of facilities in December. By mid-February, the state had vaccinated \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/\">close to 35,800 inmates and 24,900 correctional staffers.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label ='Related Coverage' tag='prisons']Ed Welker, 58, hasn’t been offered a vaccine yet, but he said he’s not interested. Despite the \u003ca href=\"https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fcases-updates%2Fcases-in-us.html#vaccinations\">63 million\u003c/a> doses that have already been shot into American arms, he’s wary of long-term side effects — and he also feels that, at Avenal, the vaccine is obsolete. “For this particular population, I think it’s a waste of time and money, because everybody here for the most part has had” COVID-19, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although Welker said many inmates share his views, they appear to be in a minority: In a recent court filing, state officials reported that more than two-thirds of incarcerated people who’ve been offered the vaccine have accepted it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Welker argues that getting vaccinated, like masking and physical distancing, is a moral imperative for correctional staffers, who could bring the virus back to the prison. “They signed up for this,” he said. “It’s their job to protect us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kerry Klein is a reporter with Valley Public Radio. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is from a reporting partnership that includes \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/\">Valley Public Radio\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/\">NPR\u003c/a> and KHN, an editorially independent program of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kff.org/\">KFF\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://khn.org/morning-briefing/\">Subscribe\u003c/a> to KHN's free Morning Briefing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg src=\"https://ssl.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&t=event&ec=Republish&tid=UA-53070700-2&z=1614279992310&cid=215ff375-8839-40ce-9e8e-ac5ef5e5d8da&ea=https%3A%2F%2Fkhn.org%2Fnews%2Farticle%2Flessons-from-california-prison-where-covid-spread-like-wildfire%2F&el=Lessons%20From%20California%20Prison%20Where%20Covid%20%E2%80%98Spread%20Like%20Wildfire%E2%80%99\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Months after Avenal State Prison reported that 94% of the men incarcerated in it had contracted COVID-19, advocates are still pushing for California to reduce overcrowding in its prisons as the best way to prevent future outbreaks.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1614293556,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":28,"wordCount":1698},"headData":{"title":"California Prison Authorities Have Yet to Learn Lessons From Major COVID-19 Outbreaks, Advocates Warn | KQED","description":"Months after Avenal State Prison reported that 94% of the men incarcerated in it had contracted COVID-19, advocates are still pushing for California to reduce overcrowding in its prisons as the best way to prevent future outbreaks.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"California Prison Authorities Have Yet to Learn Lessons From Major COVID-19 Outbreaks, Advocates Warn","datePublished":"2021-02-25T21:37:56.000Z","dateModified":"2021-02-25T22:52:36.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png","isAccessibleForFree":"Y","publisher":{"@type":"NewsMediaOrganization","@id":"https://www.kqed.org/#organization","name":"KQED","url":"https://www.kqed.org","logo":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}}},"disqusIdentifier":"11862087 https://ww2.kqed.org/news/?p=11862087","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2021/02/25/california-prison-authorities-have-yet-to-learn-lessons-from-major-covid-19-outbreaks-advocates-warn/","disqusTitle":"California Prison Authorities Have Yet to Learn Lessons From Major COVID-19 Outbreaks, Advocates Warn","source":"KHN","sourceUrl":"https://khn.org/","nprByline":"\u003ca href=\"https://khn.org/news/author/kerry-klein-valley-public-radio/\">Kerry Klein, Valley Public Radio\u003c/a>","path":"/news/11862087/california-prison-authorities-have-yet-to-learn-lessons-from-major-covid-19-outbreaks-advocates-warn","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When news of the pandemic first reached the men incarcerated at Avenal State Prison in Central California, inmate Ed Welker said the prevailing mood was panic. “We were like, ‘Yeah, it’s going to come in here and it’s going to spread like wildfire and we’re all going to get it,’ ” he said. “And that’s exactly what happened.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Almost a year later, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/population-status-tracking/\">94% of Avenal’s incarcerated men have contracted COVID-19 and eight have died\u003c/a>. With more than 3,600 confirmed cases among prisoners and staff members, the facility tops the list of the country’s largest COVID-19 clusters in prisons compiled by \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html\">The New York Times\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://uclacovidbehindbars.org/\">UCLA COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Calling the prison system’s response to the pandemic “nonchalant,” “incompetent” and at times “negligent,” Welker and his fellow inmates described a crowded and dangerous living situation. Inmates interviewed by Valley Public Radio said physical distancing was nearly impossible, and constant moves in and out of quarantine were confusing and disruptive. The postponement of visits and rehabilitative programs left the men with little opportunity to vent their frustrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s chaos over here, man,” said John Walker, 50, an inmate interviewed via the prison system’s collect-calling service during the fall surge in cases. “That’s why the mental health program’s blowing up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similar grievances have been voiced by prisoners across the country, who have contracted the virus at a rate more than three times that of the general population, according to \u003ca href=\"http://themarshallproject.org/2020/12/18/1-in-5-prisoners-in-the-u-s-has-had-covid-19\">an analysis\u003c/a> by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to the U.S. criminal justice system. Lawsuits and criminal justice advocates detail a pandemic response in prisons and jails that has ranged from careless to egregious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11862099\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1536px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11862099 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/avenal_02.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1536\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/avenal_02.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/avenal_02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/avenal_02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/avenal_02-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1536px) 100vw, 1536px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The exterior of Avenal State Prison. A recent report by The Marshall Project points at California’s prisons as a case study showing how outbreaks tend to recur in overcrowded prisons. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California’s prison authority denies many of these men’s claims and instead points to the long list of precautions the agency has adopted since the pandemic began. Dana Simas, press secretary at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, wrote in an email that state and Avenal officials “are continuously working with public health and health care experts to address this unprecedented pandemic and protect those who live and work in our state prisons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The virus continues to devastate prison populations and employees. Despite a dramatic drop in new infections since the holidays, more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/05/01/a-state-by-state-look-at-coronavirus-in-prisons\">15,000 inmates\u003c/a> nationwide have contracted the virus in the past three weeks, according to The Marshall Project. California’s facilities serve as a case study in which outbreaks recur while prison advocates argue that officials failed to enact a critical precaution: relieving overcrowding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There has not been the political will to do what’s necessary to keep people safe, which is to dramatically reduce prison and jail populations,” said \u003ca href=\"https://law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/aaron-littman\">Aaron Littman\u003c/a>, a teaching fellow at UCLA School of Law and deputy director of the COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early in the pandemic, corrections agencies across the country put in place measures to prevent outbreaks, mandating masks and physical distancing, setting aside housing units specifically for quarantined inmates, and establishing testing protocols for staffers and the incarcerated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The measures are important, the measures help ... but those are not sufficient,” said Littman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Horrific errors occurred. In late May, for instance, a transfer of a handful of inmates later discovered to have been COVID-positive sparked an outbreak that killed 29 people and infected 2,600 others at San Quentin State Prison in Northern California.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"postid":"news_11843335","hero":"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1920_Avenal-1020x574.jpg","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cbr>\nDecision-makers disagree about what’s safe. At Avenal, as in all of California’s prisons, labor contracts permit guards to work different shifts in different buildings, despite the fact that many academic experts and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/correction-detention/guidance-correctional-detention.html\">the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discourage the practice\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The public health director of Kings County, where Avenal is located, tried to order the prison to temporarily freeze staff assignments in May, but \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/post/avenal-s-prison-labor-contract-allows-actions-cdc-and-kings-county-warned-could-spread-covid-19#stream/0\">the state prison authority politely informed him the county has no jurisdiction over a state-run facility\u003c/a>. “The response to us was, ‘Well, because of labor agreements, we can’t do that,’ ” said Kings County Supervisor Craig Pedersen. “It was one of the most frustrating interactions we had, I think, in this process.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Workplace culture may also undermine well-intentioned precautions. In a review published in October, California’s Office of the Inspector General, the state prison watchdog, \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/OIG-COVID-19-Review-Series-Part-2-%E2%80%93-Face-Coverings-and-PPE.pdf\">reported that staff members failed to properly wear masks at two-thirds of the prisons it inspected\u003c/a>. The report concluded lax enforcement was to blame.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, like Littman, many advocates and academics say preventive measures can accomplish little in such tightly packed environments. “Our review of the evidence indicates that relieving population pressures in jails, prisons, and detention centers greatly facilitates adherence to CDC guidelines, controlling COVID-19 outbreaks, and reducing health risks, particularly for medically vulnerable people,” members of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25945/decarcerating-correctional-facilities-during-covid-19-advancing-health-equity-and\">National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine\u003c/a> wrote in an October report. “Smaller populations make it easier for correctional officials to place individuals in single cells, have sufficient resources for testing, and safely quarantine individuals after exposure to an infected person.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11862104\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11862104\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/Avenal_protest-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Protesters gather outside Avenal State Prison on June 6, 2020. At this prison in Central California, 94% of the incarcerated men had contracted COVID-19 and eight have died. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Colby Lenz)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When the pandemic began, 1.5 million inmates were housed in roughly \u003ca href=\"https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html\">1,900 state and federal prisons\u003c/a>, many of which were not just crowded but overcrowded. California’s prisons were stuffed with an average of 30% more inmates than they were designed to house. Avenal’s occupancy was nearly 50% beyond capacity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since March, the state corrections department has granted early releases to 19,000 inmates due to medical and other circumstances, but a federal judge argued it hasn’t been enough. “I have cajoled, begged and pleaded with the governor and the secretary to release a very significantly higher number of inmates beyond their current release efforts,” U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar said during a January hearing for an ongoing court case regarding medical care within the state’s prisons. “With all appreciation for the efforts they have made, those requests have fallen on deaf ears.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not just the incarcerated who are contracting COVID-19 at alarming rates. Throughout the country, nearly \u003ca href=\"https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/05/01/a-state-by-state-look-at-coronavirus-in-prisons#staff-cases\">103,000 prison employees\u003c/a> have tested positive for the virus and 184 have died, a sum that doesn’t begin to account for the infections transmitted beyond prison walls to families and communities.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cbr>\n“It’s a huge concern,” said Jeff Garner, executive director of the nonprofit Kings Community Action Organization in rural Kings County, where three state prisons provide jobs for more than 4,300 people. “The prisons are a huge employer in our county. Whether it’s employees or clients, it’s kind of like those six degrees of separation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just 40 miles from Avenal, on the other side of this agricultural county in the San Joaquin Valley, is the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, Corcoran, ranked by The New York Times as the country’s second-largest cluster of COVID-19 in prison. Kings County health officials have not responded to multiple requests for comment about how these two prison outbreaks have contributed to community transmission of the virus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11862101\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11862101 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/satf_02-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The second-largest cluster of COVID-19 cases in the nation is also in Kings County at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran, California. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Could the arrival of the vaccines finally put a stop to COVID-19 in prisons? In December, nearly 500 academics and public health experts \u003ca href=\"https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rlz5lCDHLCJ4Pnhl0mdNl3VeRSuBu8QWblRtjXu6zN0/edit#heading=h.gjdgxs\">signed a letter\u003c/a> to the CDC calling for prisoners and correctional employees to receive priority access. At least nine states included incarcerated people \u003ca href=\"https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/12/08/covid-vaccination-plans/\">in the first tier of vaccination plans\u003c/a>, while 15 included prison staffers, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a research organization that studies mass incarceration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California began offering vaccines to medically vulnerable inmates at a limited number of facilities in December. By mid-February, the state had vaccinated \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/\">close to 35,800 inmates and 24,900 correctional staffers.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"label":"Related Coverage ","tag":"prisons"},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Ed Welker, 58, hasn’t been offered a vaccine yet, but he said he’s not interested. Despite the \u003ca href=\"https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fcases-updates%2Fcases-in-us.html#vaccinations\">63 million\u003c/a> doses that have already been shot into American arms, he’s wary of long-term side effects — and he also feels that, at Avenal, the vaccine is obsolete. “For this particular population, I think it’s a waste of time and money, because everybody here for the most part has had” COVID-19, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although Welker said many inmates share his views, they appear to be in a minority: In a recent court filing, state officials reported that more than two-thirds of incarcerated people who’ve been offered the vaccine have accepted it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Welker argues that getting vaccinated, like masking and physical distancing, is a moral imperative for correctional staffers, who could bring the virus back to the prison. “They signed up for this,” he said. “It’s their job to protect us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kerry Klein is a reporter with Valley Public Radio. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is from a reporting partnership that includes \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/\">Valley Public Radio\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/\">NPR\u003c/a> and KHN, an editorially independent program of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kff.org/\">KFF\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://khn.org/morning-briefing/\">Subscribe\u003c/a> to KHN's free Morning Briefing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg src=\"https://ssl.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&t=event&ec=Republish&tid=UA-53070700-2&z=1614279992310&cid=215ff375-8839-40ce-9e8e-ac5ef5e5d8da&ea=https%3A%2F%2Fkhn.org%2Fnews%2Farticle%2Flessons-from-california-prison-where-covid-spread-like-wildfire%2F&el=Lessons%20From%20California%20Prison%20Where%20Covid%20%E2%80%98Spread%20Like%20Wildfire%E2%80%99\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/news/11862087/california-prison-authorities-have-yet-to-learn-lessons-from-major-covid-19-outbreaks-advocates-warn","authors":["byline_news_11862087"],"categories":["news_6188","news_8"],"tags":["news_28846","news_2729","news_616","news_3149","news_29196","news_28871","news_27350","news_27980","news_29195"],"featImg":"news_11862090","label":"source_news_11862087"},"news_11827617":{"type":"posts","id":"news_11827617","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"news","id":"11827617","score":null,"sort":[1594082107000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"state-lawmakers-urge-newsom-to-stop-transferring-people-in-prison-to-ice-in-pandemic","title":"State Lawmakers Urge Newsom to Stop Transferring People in Prison to ICE in Pandemic","publishDate":1594082107,"format":"standard","headTitle":"The California Report | KQED News","labelTerm":{"term":72,"site":"news"},"content":"\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated Tuesday, July 7, 12:00 p.m.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dozens of state lawmakers called on Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday to stop California prison officials from transferring people to federal immigration detention during the coronavirus pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O2z1Wc3GoEhkCGQuNkLKLoA-7fC35MgP/view\">letter\u003c/a> signed by 44 members of the state Senate and Assembly — as well as 18 local elected officials, including Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland and Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton — the political leaders said ending the transfers is urgently needed to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 between detention systems in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When the health of Californians in custody is at risk, that puts the health of all Californians at risk,” said Assemblyman Rob Bonta, an Oakland Democrat leading the effort. “Once a Californian has paid their debt to society ... they’ve earned their release from state prison or a jail, they should be released back to their community, back to their family, and not be funneled into Trump’s deportation machine ... where they can be sent to circumstances where their health and life are put at risk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The request came as COVID-19 is raging through both the California prison system and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. In California, as of Monday, a total of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/population-status-tracking/\">5,346 people in the state prison system\u003c/a> and 949 state prison staff have been diagnosed with the virus. In addition, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/coronavirus\">2,742 people in ICE detention\u003c/a> have tested positive for COVID-19, along with 45 ICE employees — and scores of private prison workers — at detention centers nationally, including more than 200 people who have been sickened at ICE facilities in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Non-citizen immigrants, even those with longstanding, legal permanent residence, can be subject to deportation if they have a criminal record. Immigration officials commonly issue a “detainer,” requesting that prison officials notify them when an incarcerated immigrant is set to be released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside tag=\"california-state-prison\" label=\"related coverage\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week Ralph Diaz, the head of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in a state Senate hearing that his agency does inform ICE of incarcerated immigrants’ release dates, and coordinates a transfer to ICE agents who take the person into custody. He said he had no plan to end the practice, which he said was the same way that CDCR responds to a hold placed by any other law enforcement agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in their letter to Newsom, Bonta and the other lawmakers said California is under no legal obligation to assist the federal government with deportations, and the governor and CDCR can end the policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom’s office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Immigrant advocates said Monday that transfers from CDCR are the primary way that people are being taken into ICE custody in California since the start of the pandemic. CDCR transferred 575 people to ICE between Jan. 1 to May 13, according to Angela Chan, policy director for the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chan said she is aware of only one instance this year in which a person was released from state prison and not picked up by ICE — that’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11827388/cambodian-refugee-leaves-san-quentin-with-covid-19-but-avoids-ice-detention\">the case of Chanthon Bun\u003c/a>, a Cambodian refugee who was set free from San Quentin State Prison last week after earning early parole, having served 23 years of a 49-year sentence for an armed robbery he committed as a teenager.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the day of his release, Bun went for a COVID-19 test and found out he had been infected inside the prison. If he had been transferred to ICE custody, he would have taken the virus with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chan said Bun's legal team at the Asian Law Caucus is still trying to learn why Bun was not transferred to ICE, even though the agency had a detainer to arrest him. ICE officials did not answer a request for an explanation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=about_15238 label='Take Our Survey']However in response to the call by California lawmakers for prisons to stop cooperating with the immigration agency, ICE spokeswoman Paige Hughes released this statement: \"Policy makers who strive to make it more difficult to remove dangerous criminal aliens and aim to stop the cooperation of local officials and business partners, harm the very communities whose welfare they have sworn to protect.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE maintains that the safest place to take immigrants into custody is inside a locked facility of another law enforcement agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bonta disputed that notion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I think when they say 'safe,' they mean 'easy,'\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It’s certainly not safer for the individual who’s being put at risk of [exposure to] COVID in detention centers. ... They don't need to be in a detention center to go through [civil deportation] proceedings. They can show up to court, they can file their paperwork, they can do all that from the safety of their community and their family.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bonta added that making transfers convenient for ICE is not the state's responsibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Our issue is to look out for the health, safety and welfare of Californians,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Legislators say the transfers risk spreading COVID-19 more widely, at a time when thousands of people in state prisons and ICE detention centers have become sick.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1597260910,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":23,"wordCount":861},"headData":{"title":"State Lawmakers Urge Newsom to Stop Transferring People in Prison to ICE in Pandemic | KQED","description":"Legislators say the transfers risk spreading COVID-19 more widely, at a time when thousands of people in state prisons and ICE detention centers have become sick.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"State Lawmakers Urge Newsom to Stop Transferring People in Prison to ICE in Pandemic","datePublished":"2020-07-07T00:35:07.000Z","dateModified":"2020-08-12T19:35:10.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png","isAccessibleForFree":"Y","publisher":{"@type":"NewsMediaOrganization","@id":"https://www.kqed.org/#organization","name":"KQED","url":"https://www.kqed.org","logo":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}}},"disqusIdentifier":"11827617 https://ww2.kqed.org/news/?p=11827617","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2020/07/06/state-lawmakers-urge-newsom-to-stop-transferring-people-in-prison-to-ice-in-pandemic/","disqusTitle":"State Lawmakers Urge Newsom to Stop Transferring People in Prison to ICE in Pandemic","audioUrl":"https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/0af137ef-751e-4b19-a055-aaef00d2d578/ffca7e9f-6831-41c5-bcaf-aaef00f5a073/400752e8-5d68-40d5-b969-abf10110de20/audio.mp3","path":"/news/11827617/state-lawmakers-urge-newsom-to-stop-transferring-people-in-prison-to-ice-in-pandemic","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated Tuesday, July 7, 12:00 p.m.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dozens of state lawmakers called on Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday to stop California prison officials from transferring people to federal immigration detention during the coronavirus pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O2z1Wc3GoEhkCGQuNkLKLoA-7fC35MgP/view\">letter\u003c/a> signed by 44 members of the state Senate and Assembly — as well as 18 local elected officials, including Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland and Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton — the political leaders said ending the transfers is urgently needed to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 between detention systems in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When the health of Californians in custody is at risk, that puts the health of all Californians at risk,” said Assemblyman Rob Bonta, an Oakland Democrat leading the effort. “Once a Californian has paid their debt to society ... they’ve earned their release from state prison or a jail, they should be released back to their community, back to their family, and not be funneled into Trump’s deportation machine ... where they can be sent to circumstances where their health and life are put at risk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The request came as COVID-19 is raging through both the California prison system and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. In California, as of Monday, a total of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/population-status-tracking/\">5,346 people in the state prison system\u003c/a> and 949 state prison staff have been diagnosed with the virus. In addition, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/coronavirus\">2,742 people in ICE detention\u003c/a> have tested positive for COVID-19, along with 45 ICE employees — and scores of private prison workers — at detention centers nationally, including more than 200 people who have been sickened at ICE facilities in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Non-citizen immigrants, even those with longstanding, legal permanent residence, can be subject to deportation if they have a criminal record. Immigration officials commonly issue a “detainer,” requesting that prison officials notify them when an incarcerated immigrant is set to be released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"tag":"california-state-prison","label":"related coverage "},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week Ralph Diaz, the head of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in a state Senate hearing that his agency does inform ICE of incarcerated immigrants’ release dates, and coordinates a transfer to ICE agents who take the person into custody. He said he had no plan to end the practice, which he said was the same way that CDCR responds to a hold placed by any other law enforcement agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in their letter to Newsom, Bonta and the other lawmakers said California is under no legal obligation to assist the federal government with deportations, and the governor and CDCR can end the policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom’s office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Immigrant advocates said Monday that transfers from CDCR are the primary way that people are being taken into ICE custody in California since the start of the pandemic. CDCR transferred 575 people to ICE between Jan. 1 to May 13, according to Angela Chan, policy director for the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chan said she is aware of only one instance this year in which a person was released from state prison and not picked up by ICE — that’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11827388/cambodian-refugee-leaves-san-quentin-with-covid-19-but-avoids-ice-detention\">the case of Chanthon Bun\u003c/a>, a Cambodian refugee who was set free from San Quentin State Prison last week after earning early parole, having served 23 years of a 49-year sentence for an armed robbery he committed as a teenager.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the day of his release, Bun went for a COVID-19 test and found out he had been infected inside the prison. If he had been transferred to ICE custody, he would have taken the virus with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chan said Bun's legal team at the Asian Law Caucus is still trying to learn why Bun was not transferred to ICE, even though the agency had a detainer to arrest him. ICE officials did not answer a request for an explanation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"postid":"about_15238","label":"Take Our Survey "},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>However in response to the call by California lawmakers for prisons to stop cooperating with the immigration agency, ICE spokeswoman Paige Hughes released this statement: \"Policy makers who strive to make it more difficult to remove dangerous criminal aliens and aim to stop the cooperation of local officials and business partners, harm the very communities whose welfare they have sworn to protect.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE maintains that the safest place to take immigrants into custody is inside a locked facility of another law enforcement agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bonta disputed that notion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I think when they say 'safe,' they mean 'easy,'\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It’s certainly not safer for the individual who’s being put at risk of [exposure to] COVID in detention centers. ... They don't need to be in a detention center to go through [civil deportation] proceedings. They can show up to court, they can file their paperwork, they can do all that from the safety of their community and their family.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bonta added that making transfers convenient for ICE is not the state's responsibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Our issue is to look out for the health, safety and welfare of Californians,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/news/11827617/state-lawmakers-urge-newsom-to-stop-transferring-people-in-prison-to-ice-in-pandemic","authors":["259"],"programs":["news_72"],"categories":["news_1169","news_6188","news_8"],"tags":["news_616","news_3149","news_1629","news_27350","news_27504","news_16","news_6884","news_20202","news_23454","news_3674"],"featImg":"news_11827643","label":"news_72"}},"programsReducer":{"possible":{"id":"possible","title":"Possible","info":"Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. 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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. 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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":{"site":"news","source":"kqed","order":"2"},"link":"/podcasts/mindshift","subscribe":{"apple":"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindshift-podcast/id1078765985","google":"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5","npr":"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast","stitcher":"https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share","spotify":"https://open.spotify.com/show/0MxSpNYZKNprFLCl7eEtyx"}},"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/","meta":{"site":"news","source":"npr"},"link":"/radio/program/morning-edition"},"onourwatch":{"id":"onourwatch","title":"On Our Watch","tagline":"Police secrets, unsealed","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. 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