The beleaguered federal Bureau of Prisons said Monday it will close a women’s prison in California known as the “rape club” despite attempts to reform the troubled facility after an Associated Press investigation exposed rampant staff-on-inmate sexual abuse (previous coverage available here).
Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters said in a statement that the agency had “taken unprecedented steps and provided a tremendous amount of resources to address culture, recruitment and retention, aging infrastructure — and most critical — employee misconduct.”
“Despite these steps and resources, we have determined that FCI Dublin is not meeting expected standards and that the best course of action is to close the facility,” Peters said. “This decision is being made after ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of those unprecedented steps and additional resources.”
The announcement of Dublin’s closure represents an extraordinary acknowledgement by the Bureau of Prisons that its much-promised efforts to improve the culture and environment there have not worked. An AP investigation in 2021 found a culture of abuse and cover-ups that had persisted for years at the prison.
FCI Dublin, about 21 miles east of Oakland, is one of six women-only federal prisons and the only one west of the Rocky Mountains. It currently houses 605 inmates — 504 inmates in its main prison and another 101 at an adjacent minimum-security camp. That figure is down from a total of 760 prisoners in February 2022. The women currently housed at the prison will be transferred to other facilities.