Justice Department Says California Prison System, Two Women’s Prisons Violated Inmates’ Rights; 49-Day Fix Deadline

The Justice Department said Thursday it has reasonable cause to believe California’s prison system and two of its women’s prisons are violating the Constitution by failing to protect incarcerated women from sexual abuse and harassment by staff, and it gave the state 49 days to fix the problems or face possible federal litigation.

In a formal notice dated Aug. 13, the department said the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino have allowed a systemic pattern of abuse and failed to maintain basic safeguards. Investigators found what the department called a “longstanding pattern of sustained staff sexual misconduct, inadequate safeguards, failures in confidential reporting, improper investigative practices, and insufficient accountability measures.”

Those failures violate prisoners’ rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, according to the Justice Department. “Female prisoners have the constitutional right to be free from sexual assault and harassment by prison staff,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli of the Central District of California added: “These facts are unacceptable. California owes a legal and moral duty to safeguard prisoners in its custody.”

The findings stem from a Civil Rights Division investigation conducted with the U.S. attorneys’ offices for the Eastern and Central districts of California. The department opened the inquiry in September 2024 under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, or CRIPA, a federal law that allows the Justice Department to investigate public institutions and sue over patterns or practices of unconstitutional conditions. Investigators issued a subpoena in December 2024, conducted an on-site assessment at the Chowchilla prison in May 2025 and another at the Chino prison in July 2025, and reviewed thousands of documents, interviews, expert analyses and site tours.

The Justice Department’s findings report said investigators identified an “unbroken pattern of often violent, sexual misconduct by staff against prisoners from 2000 through 2024, continuing to the present.” The department said California must take minimum corrective steps including expanded camera coverage, stronger confidential reporting channels, improved investigative protocols, better staff training and monitoring, implementation of safeguards compliant with the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and broader use and preservation of body-worn camera recordings.

The notice was sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom and signed by Dhillon. It gives California 49 days to address the violations to the department’s satisfaction before the U.S. attorney general may file suit under CRIPA, putting the deadline at Oct. 1. U.S. Attorney Eric Grant of the Eastern District of California said the findings describe “exactly what Congress intended CRIPA and PREA to address” and urged swift compliance with the remedial measures.

PREA, the Prison Rape Elimination Act, sets national standards to prevent, detect and respond to sexual abuse in confinement. One of the sharpest points in the federal findings is that California’s own PREA audits for both prisons previously found full compliance. The final audit report for the Central California Women’s Facility, submitted Jan. 16, 2026, and the final audit report for the California Institution for Women, submitted May 29, 2025, each showed 45 standards met and none unmet. The Justice Department, by contrast, said the state prison system and both facilities failed to adequately and effectively implement PREA.

The department’s report said its conclusions were not based on isolated allegations but on years of documented administrative findings, criminal referrals and prosecutions. Among the examples it cited was former Central California Women’s Facility officer Gregory Rodriguez, who was convicted in early 2025 and sentenced in August 2025 to 224 years in prison for sexually abusing prisoners.

For now, the immediate next step is the deadline in the federal notice: California has until Oct. 1 to address the findings, or the Justice Department may sue.