OAKLAND, CA – Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Director Colette S. Peters announced last April the troubled Federal Correctional Institute at Dublin, a low-level women’s prison riddled with sex abuse of women incarcerated there for decades, would close immediately.
The BOP cited its inability to reform the sexual abuse culture at FCI Dublin as the reason for the closure, despite ongoing efforts.
According to KTVU, at first “some activists cheered the closing of the scandal-plagued prison,” yet the reality is harsh for the 605 women who had been incarcerated at FCI Dublin but now have been bussed across the country to other prisons with more troubling issues.
Lawyers Kara Janssen and Susan Beaty, who represent 600 women in a class-action lawsuit against the BOP, recounted their recent visit to FCI Waseca, a low-security federal prison with 700 women in a small town in Minnesota.
They spoke with about 90 women who described their systemic oppression faced at the prison.
“Women are often put on lockdown because of the rampant drug problem at FCI Waseca, thrown into special housing units, called the SHU, and often told they can’t contact their loved ones by email, letter, phone or in person,” reported Lisa Fernandez for KTVU.
“It’s hard to say just how many people sobbed,” Janssen said of her visit to the Minnesota prison last week. “They cannot even call their young children to tell them they’ve been put in the SHU. So, their kids just think they’ve disappeared.”
Many women have spent up to 90 days in the SHU “for relatively minor violations or allegations of violations like appearing to be on drugs or hugging someone,” Fernandez reported, adding, after release from solitary, “they get placed on an “encumbrance,” meaning they can’t use the phone or email and can only buy a small amount at the commissary.”
Janssen also told Fernandez these women lack mental health services and inconsistent access to medications, but little detail was discussed on the subject matter “for fear of retaliation by BOP correctional officers.”
Janssen also cited a recent audit showing that BOP correctional officers at FCI Dublin were wrong 45 percent of the time when they lodged disciplinary infractions against the women there.
“They’ve been frequently on lockdown, meaning they’re locked in their cells, in their dorms, unable to easily access the phone or the computer, unable to go to programming or their jobs,” Janssen told KTVU. “They’re extremely isolated, which, of course, exacerbates underlying mental health conditions, anxiety and depression.”
One woman, Courtney Marie Chicoine, wrote a letter from FCI Waseca, and according to a KTVU report, she is often put on lockdown caused by other inmates’ drug-related seizures or hallucinations, for which all inmates were punished.
She said the continued lockdowns are stressful for her, but the head psychologist responded that they’re stressful for everyone and denied her request for mental health services and medications.
“The psychologist gets to go home every night, while she (the incarcerated) has to remain locked up,” Chicoine revealed to KTVU. “She (the head psychologist) looked at me like I was dirt and said, ‘’Yeah, I didn’t commit any crimes, so you’re right, I do get to go home every day.’”
Chicoine, representing all women imprisoned under such conditions, called out for help. “I reached out for help and this is the response I got. It makes me wonder if this is the response that people here dealing with drug addiction get when they cry out for help,” she wrote.
“We already had issues, but the response from staff has been worse since the Dublin women arrived. We have no recourse. Please help. I don’t know what else to do,” Chicoine penned.
Both lawyers acknowledged they also heard reports of some sexual abuse at FCI Waseca, but nothing like at FCI Dublin, where seven officers, including the warden and chaplain, have been convicted of sex crimes against incarcerated women. An eighth correctional officer is headed to trial, according to KTVU.
However, when the attorneys investigated the BOP about the prison situation, they answered at great length regarding its disciplinary procedures, who gets placed in the SHU and all the mental health services the agency provides, said KTVU, adding BOP also said some women in the SHU to have access to visitation and telephone calls.
Specifically, the attorneys questioned what criteria the agency used to put someone in the SHU, to which the agency responded that the warden and other employees meet once a week to review each case to ensure that people are in the SHU for the appropriate reasons, according to KTVU, noting the agency “does not permit indiscriminate punishment,” the BOP responded.
The BOP acknowledged a series of drug overdoses at FCI Waseca in September, which prompted the prison to implement “modified operation status.”
However, Janssen and Beaty questioned the BOP for punishing inmates while ignoring the potential role of correctional officers in bringing drugs into the facility.
“They need to change and reform their SHU policy,” Janssen said to KTVU. “Staff should not have unfettered discretion to put people in there whenever they want to.”
According to KTVU, Beaty has already visited the prison in Seattle called FDC SeaTac, where several FCI Dublin women were transferred to. Both lawyers plan to visit FCI Aliceville in Alabama later this month.
“It was never about an institution,” Janssen said to KTVU, insisting, “Dublin just happened to be the sort of exploding example where things got so extreme, even the government couldn’t ignore it.”
