Overview
- The Justice Department launched investigations under a new Single-Sex Prison Initiative into whether policies that place male inmates who identify as women in female facilities violate women’s rights.
- Investigators are zeroing in on California’s California Institution for Women and Central California Women’s Facility, along with Maine’s Maine Correctional Center in Windham.
- The reviews will examine alleged violations of the First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments tied to reports of sexual assault, rape, voyeurism, and a climate of intimidation in women’s units.
- In California, a 2020 law known as the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act lets inmates request transfer based on self-identified gender, and state data show more than 1,020 male-to-female transfer requests since it took effect.
- After a separate lawsuit by the Women’s Liberation Front was dismissed for lack of standing, the DOJ probe continues under a civil-rights authority that has produced settlement agreements and mandated reforms in past prison cases.