Female Inmates Trapped with Predators

Senator Grove opened the hearing with a devastating account: a woman incarcerated at CCWF mailed her a condom along with a letter describing how she had been raped by a biological male inmate who self-identified as transgender. “Think about that,” Grove said. “Why is the state of California paying for condoms in women’s prisons?”

The state isn’t just handing out condoms—it’s instructing women to carry them to the dayroom, to the shower, to meals. “Just in case.” The implication is terrifyingly clear: rape is expected. These aren’t precautions. They are silent admissions of policy failure.

Testimonies from formerly incarcerated women brought the issue into agonizing focus. Amie Ichikawa, executive director of Woman II Woman and a rape survivor, told the committee that male prisoners with violent sexual histories were being transferred into women’s dormitories. These dorms house up to eight people per room—with no internal security, no ability to lock a door, and no place to run.

Tisha Croslin, another Woman II Woman advocate and former inmate, described a chilling episode in which a known rapist and torturer was moved into their prison. The man requested a job as an electrician—after electrocuting his previous victims. “It was an assault on all of us,” she said, describing how their only “safe” space had been invaded.

In a grim twist, the 2022 CDCR report found that 33.8% of male inmates requesting transfer under SB 132 were registered sex offenders—many with histories of rape, incest, and child sexual abuse.

Letters read aloud from currently incarcerated women detailed relentless abuse—one described being punched, choked, and hit in the face with a tablet, leading to a miscarriage. Another spoke of being forced to live with a six-foot-two, 200-pound intact male who regularly threatened violence. “It’s like the Wild Wild West,” she wrote. “There aren’t enough staff to patrol them.”

Senator Grove’s bill wasn’t ideal, but it would make things better than they are. It did not seek to eliminate all transfers under SB 132, the 2020 law allowing inmates to request housing based on gender identity. Instead, it sought to:

Yet the bill was branded by opponents as “transphobic” and “part of a national effort to erase transgender people.” Senator Wiener, leading the opposition, dismissed the accounts of abuse as false or statistically irrelevant, citing CDCR data that 68% of sexual assaults are committed by staff. He accused the bill’s proponents of being complicit in a “poll-tested culture war” that is seeking to “dehumanize trans people and eliminate from from public life.”

Senator Seyarto responded bluntly: “It’s not an attack on the trans population. It’s in reaction to something that is going on in our women’s prisons,” he said. “It’s in reaction to… people being attacked in our prison system, and being raped in our prison systems.” 

SB 311 may have failed in committee, but the stories it unearthed cannot be buried. Femail inmates who have already suffered rape, incest, or trafficking before entering prison are now subjected to daily fear, intimidation, and sexual abuse. And because of California’s political paralysis, their cries for help go unanswered.

Ironically, many of the same lawmakers who wore denim the day before in symbolic support of rape survivors turned around and denied justice to the most voiceless victims in our society—incarcerated women.

“Let’s be clear: the gold standard is returning to sex-separated prisons based on biological reality,” said Greg Burt, California Family Council Vice President. “But SB 311 was a courageous effort to address a tragic fallout from SB 132—namely, women being raped, impregnated, and traumatized in the very places meant to rehabilitate them. This bill shined a light on the painful truth that women’s intimate spaces have been invaded and their cries for help ignored.

“This moment demands moral clarity,” he continued. “The Bible teaches that all people are made in the image of God, including those behind bars. Their dignity is not erased by their criminal record. ‘Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy’ (Proverbs 31:9, ESV).”

That’s exactly what SB 311 attempted to do.

But instead of protecting the abused women, California’s leaders chose to protect transgender-identified men instead.