Institutionalized indifference: FCI Dublin and the policies quietly stifling sexual misconduct complaints in federal prisons
Image description: thumbnail depicts a picture of the sign outside FCI Dublin. It’s a stone sign reading “Federal Correction Institution Dublin, CA” with the seal of the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons next to it.
Content note: discussion of sexual violence, incarceration, racism
“[F]or women, prison is a space in which the threat of sexualized violence that looms in the larger society is effectively sanctioned as a routine aspect of the landscape of punishment behind prison walls.”
- Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003) at page 77-8
On November 28, 2022, trial proceedings began in Oakland against the former warden of Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin (FCI Dublin), a federal women’s prison located in Dublin, CA. The former warden, who faces seven counts of sexually abusive conduct perpetrated against individuals incarcerated at the facility, is the highest-ranking federal prison official to be charged in the past decade.
The case is part of a larger criminal investigation at the prison which uncovered pervasive abuse and resulted in five arrests, including the prison chaplain. However, while FCI Dublin has gained national notoriety as a particularly egregious example of the sexual misconduct plaguing women’s correctional institutions, much of its coverage has focused on the salacious details of the warden’s behavior. In doing so, media sources have failed to account for the racialized impact of the abuse, which has disproportionately impacted undocumented women of color. Moreover, troubling findings about the Bureau of Prisons’ investigatory practices reveal that this trial, while a significant step in ensuring accountability, may be an anomaly. The Bureau’s institutionalized policies effectively operate to silence complaints from incarcerated people, allowing for extensive misconduct in the 122 federal prisons across the county to remain largely unexamined and unchallenged.
Compounded vulnerabilities
“The continuity of treatment from the free world to the universe of the prison is even more complicated, since they also confront forms of violence in prison that they have confronted in their homes and intimate relationships.
- Davis at page 79
Built in 1974, FCI Dublin is a minimum-security facility occupying a low complex of buildings across the street from Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail. It is one of six federal women’s prisons in the country, and the only one in the Bay Area. While reports of abuse in the facility stem back to the 1990s, events in recent years have further exposed the depth of misconduct. A 2022 investigative report by the Associated Press uncovered a longstanding “permissive and toxic” culture of abuse which pervades the prison. Complaints of staff sexual abuse and misconduct at FCI Dublin were met with swift retaliation: one person who reported a sexual assault lost her job at the prison commissary after filing a complaint, and another was placed in solitary confinement for three months and then transferred to a federal prison in another state. In 2020, however, the complaints reached the Department of Justice, which launched an investigation with the FBI.
These retaliatory actions likely do not impact all incarcerated people equally. While the Bureau of Prisons does not publish statistics on the breakdown of race, ethnicity, and national origin within its women’s prisons, it is known that a high proportion of those incarcerated are people of color, and that approximately 80% have experienced sexual violence and/or intimate partner violence prior to incarceration.
Likewise, not everyone at ‘women’s’ facilities identifies as a woman. FCI Dublin includes transgender men and people of other genders, due to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP)’s alleged de facto policy that favors housing people based on their sex assigned at birth as opposed to their gender identity. In a recent audit conducted under the BOP’s Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) requirement, FCI Dublin reported 4 individuals who identify as transgender or nonbinary. The number is likely greater, but individuals may fear to report their gender identity out of concerns for their safety.
Additionally, the prison does not release statistics on the immigration status of those incarcerated. While the identity of the witnesses in the current case are confidential, legal advocates noted in an open letter urging a coordinated response to the allegations at FCI Dublin that “a disproportionate number of those impacted by this abuse are immigrants who live with the threat of deportation after incarceration.” FCI Dublin cooperates with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and complies when the agency issues a ‘detainer’ requesting that non-citizen individuals incarcerated at the prison be transferred to immigration detention at the date of their release. The number of individuals incarcerated at FCI Dublin with ICE detainers is unknown, but one source found that 1,225 individuals had been issued a detainer since 2007.
Advocates note that FCI Dublin staff used their knowledge of individuals’ immigration status to perpetuate abuse and limit complaints through coercion. “We've heard from a lot of survivors that staff intentionally targeted noncitizen women for abuse because of their added vulnerability,” said Susan Beaty, an attorney at Centro Legal de la Raza, to NPR. “I've heard so many stories about staff saying to people, ‘I’ve looked in your file. I know you have an immigration hold. I know that once your sentence is up, you're going to be deported, and you're not going to be a problem for me.’” The warden allegedly promised certain women that he would grant them compassionate release in exchange for their silence. The risk of retaliation for making a complaint while incarcerated – already fraught with power imbalance – is compounded for individuals who face the threat of prolonged detention, or deportation, even once they have served their sentence.
A policy of silence
“Studies on female prisons throughout the world indicate that sexual abuse is an abiding, though unacknowledged, form of punishment to which women, who have the misfortune of being sent to prison, are subjected. This is one aspect of life in prison that women can expect to encounter, either directly or indirectly, regardless of the written policies that govern the institution.”
- Davis, pg. 80
The written policies governing FCI Dublin and the Bureau of Prisons writ large have failed survivors and those experiencing sexual abuse within the facility. As one troubling example, the same warden who faces criminal charges for abusing 4 separate women also oversaw FCI Dublin’s compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), including conducting trainings with all newly hired supervisors and directing the facility’s responses to PREA audits, for two years prior to his arrest.
The facility’s newest PREA audit report, released in March 2022 after the warden’s arrest, makes one note of the change in leadership, but otherwise gives FCI Dublin a passing score in all areas. The methodology of the report is deeply concerning, particularly regarding its treatment of non-English speakers. According to the audit, individuals who had disclosed sexual abuse who did not speak English “were assisted with interpretation [by] a staff member translator” during the audit interviews (p. 9). The staff were then allegedly told to keep the information confidential. While the auditor acknowledged that some individuals who made complaints “expressed concern” about retaliation, the report concluded that she “did not find evidence of retaliation” based on interviews with prison staff (p. 87).
Furthermore, while elements of the abuse at FCI Dublin appear to be unprecedented, this issue is not relegated to that prison alone. According to the AP report, in 2020, there were 422 complaints of sexual abuse by BOP staff across all 122 federal prisons. Of those complaints, BOP had substantiated only four and was allegedly still investigating 290. These low numbers are directly linked to a troubling agency policy, which provides that BOP will “not rely on inmate testimony to make administrative misconduct findings and take disciplinary action against BOP employees, unless there is evidence aside from inmate testimony that independently establishes the misconduct.” This an all-but-impossible evidentiary standard to meet in settings of confinement.
Last month, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released an advisory memorandum voicing “serious concerns” about BOP’s investigatory practices. The agency responded that it would be too difficult to implement OIG’s recommendation to change its complaint policy. OIG analyzed the agency’s response and, finding its concerns “unpersuasive,” mandated compliance. It remains unclear how and to what extent BOP will revise its policies in response to the memorandum.
Actions without consequences
The destructive combination of racism and misogyny, however much it has been challenged by social movements, scholarship, and art over the last three decades, retains all its awful consequences within women's prisons.
- Davis, pg. 83
Within a system that is predicated on the continued silence of those who are abused, survivors who hold marginalized identities are at even greater risk of violence or retaliation if they try to speak up. The stark omissions in the FCI Dublin audit – an institution already in the spotlight for sexual misconduct – make it clear that BOP continues to conceal ongoing behavior through policies that make it virtually impossible for incarcerated people to substantiate their claims of abuse. Individuals in circumstances with weaker independent evidence than the current case will continue to have their complaints suppressed if these policies remain unchanged.
This deeply troubling trial is, to be sure, an important step towards accountability. Indeed, renewed public scrutiny of these practices in the wake of this scandal may apply needed pressure on the agency and its actors to implement real change. More crucially, it may also provide another significant outcome: validation to some who feel that they are finally being heard.