It was 1.5 years ago that women prisoners in California were relieved of the burden of one part of officially sanctioned sexual abuse.  In response to demands by California Prison Focus the Director of Corrections ordered the end to routine cross gender pat searches.  Since September 2005 male corrections officers can no longer physically search women prisoners.  During CPF’s investigative visits to the three women’s’ prisons the women inside have told us that the ban has held.

            That victory was the first step in stopping official sexual abuse of women in our prisons.  A more difficult task lies ahead.  And it is to that effort that we invite your participation.  CPF’s Dignity for Women Prisoners Campaign seeks to have male custodial staff be relieved of assignment to women’s housing units.  The presence of male officers in the housing areas is sexually abusive.  Men have visual and physical access to women at all times of the day and night.  Such access leads to the frequent visual, verbal and physical abuse the women must endure.

            International human rights standards require that female prisoners only be attended by female officers..[1]  Male staff such as doctors and teachers may provide professional services in women’s prisons, but should always be accompanied by female officers.  Such measures designed solely to protect the rights and special status of women shall not be deemed to be discriminatory.[2]  In December of 2004 the 6^th Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled in a landmark decision that authorized the Michigan Department of Corrections’ ban on male staff in women’s housing units as a bona fide occupational qualification.[3]

            In 1998 CPF met with the UN Special Reporter on Violence Against Women, Judge Radhika Coomaraswany prior to her visit to Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla.  She was shocked at the rules then existent in California.  She later wrote, “…it is clear that sexual misconduct by male corrections officers in housing units and elsewhere creates a situation in which sexual misconduct is more pervasive than if women were guarded by female officers.  Sanctioned sexual harassment, i.e. women being pat-frisked by men and monitored in their rooms and in the showers by male corrections officers, is also prevalent.” 

            It took the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation until 2005 to end the abusive cross gender pat searches, and then only under pressure from CPF’s Dignity Campaign.  That despite the fact that the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1993 in the Jordan case that male officers doing routine pat searches of women prisoners violated the Eight Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.[4]  

            Women prisoners in California should not have to suffer one day more of the officially sanctioned sexual abuse attendant to being guarded by male staff in their housing units.