Bureau of Prisons agrees to pay $116 million settlement to more than 100 former California's FCI Dublin women's prison inmates

Jakob Rodgers, The Mercury News on Dec 17, 2024

Published in News & Features

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The Federal Bureau of Prisons agreed pay $116 million to more than 100 former inmates at the scandal-plagued FCI Dublin women’s prison in California, which was recently permanently closed amid a pervasive culture of sexual abuse and retaliation by guards at the facility.

The prison system’s payout will go to 103 former inmates of the prison, according to an announcement Tuesday by Jessica Pride, an attorney for the women. She touted the settlement as the largest paid by the U.S. government to people claiming to have been sexually assaulted.

“This historic settlement sends a powerful message: systematic abuse of prisoners will not be tolerated,” Pride said in a statement Tuesday. “What happened at Dublin was not just a failure of oversight – it was a cultural rot, where sexual abuse became entrenched as part of the prison’s operations.”

The announcement comes a week and a half after another watershed settlement was reached related to conditions at the troubled women’s prison. That agreement called for the implementation of a consent decree to oversee the care of the hundreds of former FCI Dublin inmates who are now being held at prisons across the nation.

That earlier settlement, which still requires final approval by a judge, the nearly 500 inmates who joined in the class-action lawsuit and who still remain incarcerated would be overseen by a federal monitor to ensure they are treated properly by the Bureau of Prisons. The inmates — currently housed at a dozen prisons across the United States — would receive numerous protections, including from being placed into solitary confinement as a form of retaliation for speaking out about conditions at their respective prisons.

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