The closure of a girls's federal jail in Dublin, Calif., supposed to deal with a historical past of abuse and dysfunction, has as an alternative created chaos and frustration throughout a rushed switch of 600 inmates to services as distant as Minnesota and Miami.
Prisoners describe their journeys by bus and airplane with out lacking the mandatory medical prescriptions and hygiene merchandise. Vaudencia Hamilton, an inmate transported to Miami, recounted enduring hours of tight handcuffs, going with out diabetes medicine and feeling dizzy and nauseous all through the journey.
The choice to shut the federal correctional establishment follows revelations of a “rap* membership” tradition amongst jail officers, leading to legal expenses in opposition to eight officers, with six convicted. One decide characterised the mold- and asbestos-plagued facility as a “dysfunctional mess.”
Nonetheless, for Hamilton and others, the transfers felt like punishment. A number of inmates and their family have expressed concern concerning the chaotic and anxious switch, with some inmates spending hours on buses with out rationalization and enduring frozen sandwiches as their solely meals.
Inmate Sara Victoria described the confusion and worry in the course of the transfers, saying: “We simply didn't know the place we have been going or what we have been doing.”
Maria Morales Rodriguez, one other inmate, detailed scenes of emotional misery and despair amongst inmates in the course of the transfers, together with self-harm and vomiting.
These with kids within the Bay Space fear about shedding contact with their households, whereas others fear about disrupted plans for launch and adjustment to a brand new surroundings. Margarita Rosales emphasised: “I perceive that we’re criminals. However we're nonetheless human beings.”
Benjamin O'Cone, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, declined to immediately handle the inmates' considerations, citing the necessity to shut the power as a consequence of failure to satisfy anticipated requirements.
The closure of the Dublin facility, which housed notable inmates similar to Heidi Fleiss and Patty Hearst, has sparked authorized challenges. The California Coalition for Girls Prisoners sought an emergency order to cease the transfers, however most inmates had already been moved by Sunday.
Regardless of assurances that prisoners can be stored near the place they’re launched, households like Thuy Nguyen face hardship as relations are despatched 1000’s of kilometers away.
