SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Pressure is mounting on California lawmakers to take action over allegations of abuse, retaliation and failed oversight inside the state’s women’s prisons after survivors and advocates delivered urgent testimony during a recent budget hearing.
On April 20, 2026, the Assembly Budget Committee on Public Safety held a hearing to address demands for action and accountability regarding abuse taking place behind the walls of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation women’s prisons.
Ahead of the hearing, which was set to consider budget decisions that would directly impact the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and support for victims, numerous testimonies written by people in California women’s prisons were submitted to the committee.
One survivor said that while she was “imprisoned for a Watson DUI [a second-degree murder charge],” she “was never sentenced to having [herself] be stalked or hunted” by a correctional officer. She described being held against her will and “violently grabbed” in intimate areas while she “fought to keep from being raped.”
Since coming forward about the abuse, the survivor said she has been subjected to numerous forms of retaliation, including cleaning up excrement, having her high school diploma revoked and the addition of $10,000 to her restitution. She said she is still being stalked by another correctional officer actively involved in a “lawsuit against CDCR/CCWF for violent rape, sodomy and oral copulation of another inmate at CCWF.”
The California Coalition for Women Prisoners quoted Amika Mota, executive director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition, who served as a panelist at the hearing, in its press release on the proceeding.
Mota said, “Sexual violence in our prisons is not historical. It is happening now, and how California responds is a choice being made in this room today. Since we met last year, retaliation against survivors of staff sexual abuse has escalated. Survivors are losing jobs and peer roles, denied privacy when reporting, and facing ongoing harassment.”
Sexual violence is not the only type of abuse being reported. The same press release notes that “only 11% of CDCR’s investigations into staff misconduct complaint cases were adequate” in discussing a mass use-of-force incident that took place in 2024 at Central California Women’s Facility.
Forty staff members were disciplined, and a $1.9 million settlement was reached after correctional officers gathered dozens of incarcerated women and administered pepper spray and OC grenades at them inside the chow hall.
Many people at the hearing explained budget requests for additional resources they said were necessary to address the abuse. One proposal was that California close one of its prisons, which would free up $150 million to support “prevention and responses to sexual abuse, retaliation, and violence in the women’s prison.”
One woman summed up the sentiment many voices throughout the hearing were trying to convey to the committee: “I did not know when I was sentenced to life that it signified I forfeited my right to be human.”
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