DUBLIN – The women who once lived behind bars on the notorious Federal Correctional Institute of Dublin are all living in other locations, federal officials said Thursday.
“All women were successfully relocated. . . locations, released or moved to community housing,” Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman Donald Murphy said in an email Thursday. “Each individual has undergone a thorough assessment to determine the best placement for them, with the aim of keeping everyone as close as possible to their expected release locations.”
Collette Peters, the director of the BOP, ordered the prison closed on April 15 after U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers concluded in March that “Dublin is a dysfunctional mess.” The situation isn’t any longer there tolerable.”
In his statement, Murphy characterized the prison closure as “temporary.” He said no employee will lose their jobs as a result of the closure.
Eight prison guards have been charged with sexually abusing prisoners at FCI Dublin. Seven of them were convicted.
Rogers also noted in March that there was ongoing retaliation for the conviction and sentencing of prison officials guilty of criminal sexual abuse and contact and said a special warden would be appointed to provide unprecedented oversight.
A month later, federal officials announced they were closing the facility.
Inmates said the abuse hasn't stopped. Inmates told the Bay Area New Group that the hasty transfer of more than 600 inmates to prisons as far away as Miami and Minnesota involved strenuous bus rides and cross-country flights with nowhere to go. Some prisoners said they had to travel without medical prescriptions or hygiene products.
“People were crying. I was scared the whole time,” inmate Sara Victoria, 47, told the Bay Area News Group last month after she got stuck on the parked bus. “We just didn’t know where we were going or what we were doing.”
Some inmates languished on buses in the Dublin prison car park for over five hours before returning to their cells without explanation. Their only meals were frozen sandwiches, they said. The bus ran out of toilet paper.
Staff writer Julia Prodis Sulek contributed to this story.
image credit : www.mercurynews.com