Female inmates in California state prisons are suffering a disproportionate number of indignities as a consequence of the state’s plan to reduce prison overcrowding by shifting the responsibility for low-level offenders from state to county authority.
According to an article, Too Many Women, written by Matthew Fleischer, female inmates have only benefited from this plan by small measures.
For example, some mothers – primary caregivers – serving time for non-serious, non-violent, and non-sexual crimes, are allowed to complete their sentences in community facilities or at home.
Close to one-third of the female inmates in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) were imprisoned for convictions related to drugs, wrote Fleischer.
Because of the plan new low-level offenders are kept in county jails, and “the women’s population numbers plunged faster than those of the men,” said Fleischer.
“From 2011 to 2012, California’s female inmate population dropped from 9,038 to 6,142, while the number of inmates in female prisons, compared with the design capacity of those facilities, plummeted from 170 percent to 116.9 percent,” Fleischer wrote.
CDCR reached the U.S. Supreme Court’s mandated population cap of 137.5 percent of design capacity in women’s prisons. However, in 2012, the CDCR converted Valley State Prison for Women (VSPW) into a men’s prison to reduce overcrowding in other men’s prisons. The consequence of the closure was that women prisons became the most crowded in the system, according to Fleischer.
“As a result, overall numbers in women’s facilities shot up to 153.5 percent of capacity – now officially higher than the infamously crowded men’s facilities,” said Fleischer. This, according to Fleischer, has forced the other two California women prisons, Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF), and California Institute for Women, to receive the VSPW’s population.
“CCWF, in particular, is suffering. According to the most recent population report from the CDCR, CCWF is operating at nearly 175 percent capacity,” said Fleischer.
“Historically, people in women’s prisons have tended to self-harm instead of riot. So CDCR probably felt like it was okay to overcrowd there because they can keep the repercussions quieter,” said Courtney Hooks of Justice Now, a prisoners’ rights organization.
According to Fleischer, eight women are placed in a cell that was built to house four women. He said along with that, the population demographic has changed since the concentration of dangerous inmates has increased in the last two years.
“I have never experienced this amount of violence and unsafe environment as I have since being transferred to CCWF,” said an inmate, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal by corrections officers.
Fleischer said CDCR spokesperson Dana Simas concedes that the impact of realignment has been felt much more by women inmates than their male counterparts.
Fleischer also reported that advocates for female prisoners say this overcrowding is producing problems the Supreme Court said was cruel and unusual punishment.
“The system can’t accommodate the number of women they’re trying to service. A shortage of staff leaves women functionally locked down. So women are losing out on any possibility of rehabilitation,” said Misty Rojo, program director for the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP).
Simas said the concerns about prison overcrowding in women’s prisons in relation to capacity, are “overstated,” in Fleisher’s report.
“By our definition, there is no overcrowding like you saw before realignment,” said Simas. “There is no one being housed in triple bunks, or gyms and day rooms. If you were to go in to a male prison, or female prison, you would not see any disparate treatment between the two.”
According to Simas, “capacity concerns should ease when the newly opened Folsom Women’s Facility becomes fully operational,” Fleischer reported.
CCWP’s Rojo said, “Everything that’s happening is only happening for the men. None of that focus has been brought to women… We see no sustainable plan to reduce overcrowding in [women’s prisons].”
Fleisher’s article concluded, saying that women who are locked up will have to “endure the indignities and the outright harm of overcrowding while the larger system slowly eases into compliance with the Supreme Court’s mandate.”
