Special Master Slams Conditions at FCI Dublin in Report

Documents ordered unsealed on Friday by a federal judge included a special master’s report that detailed systemic abuse and inadequate medical and mental health care at the Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin.

“Management’s failure to ensure staff adhered to [the Bureau of Prison] policy put the health, safety and liberty of [adults in custody] at great risk for many years,” the report from Wendy Still, who was appointed special master in April, reads. “It is unconscionable that any correctional agency could allow incarcerated individuals under their control and responsibility to be subject to the conditions that existed at FCI-Dublin for such an extended period of time without correction.”

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered that Still’s report, along with other previously sealed documents in the class action lawsuit, be made available to the public during a hearing. The lawsuit, filed in August 2023, alleges that women incarcerated at FCI Dublin were subjected to a culture of abuse, retaliation, and cover-ups.

The lawsuit demanded systemic changes at the facility. It is one of more than 60 filed since 2021 alleging sexual assault and retaliation by FCI Dublin officials.

Earlier this year, Rogers set a trial date for June 2025 after assigning Still to oversee changes to the prison. In April, federal officials abruptly shut down the facility and transferred hundreds of people incarcerated there to other federal facilities across the country.

Still wrote in her report that the facility faced staffing shortages, failed to provide timely access to mental and medical health care and created an environment where inmates feared retaliation if they filed complaints with the warden.

She added that she “continues to have concerns that the mistreatment, neglect and abuse” inmates experienced at the facility not be repeated where they were transferred, “as many of the conditions that existed at this facility appear to be longstanding and systemic in nature.”

After the facility shut down, the Biden Administration requested the case be dismissed, calling it “moot.” William Lonthrop, deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, wrote in a  court declaration that there are no immediate plans to reopen the facility, but if overcrowding or other factors affecting federal prisons did force the facility to reopen, it would not house women.

Rogers did not rule on the government’s request. She said that there were still issues raised by women who were previously incarcerated at FCI Dublin that needed to be resolved.

“You want this court to wipe its hands clean and go its merry way with respect to those hundreds of individuals that are out there?” she asked federal attorneys during the hearing.

“What we heard was the judge say really clearly that the issues are ongoing and that the [Bureau of Prisons] needs to be accountable for the harms that they caused,” Susan Beaty, an attorney representing the class of women incarcerated at the prison, told KQED after the hearing.

Meanwhile, eight former correctional officers at the prison have been criminally charged with sexual abuse of women who were incarcerated there. Seven have been sentenced. The last, Darrell Wayne Smith, is set to go on trial in March on 15 charges and faces a potential life sentence if convicted.

Rogers said the documents she ordered unsealed must be available to the public by Monday.

KQED’s Alex Hall and Gilare Zada contributed to this report.