[Pnews] Chaotic Dublin prison closure leads to fighting, crying, cutting

[Prisoner News]

mercurynews.com 
<https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/23/chaotic-dublin-prison-closure-leads-to-fighting-crying-cutting-inmates-say/> 



  Chaotic Dublin prison closure leads to fighting, crying, cutting,
  inmates say

Julia Prodis Sulek
April 23, 2024
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Closing the women’s federal prison in Dublin was supposed to put a swift 
end to the abuse and dysfunction of the troubled facility. But inmates 
say the chaotic and hurried transfer of 600 inmates this past week to 
prisons as far as Minnesota and Miami has wrought suffering all its own.

Prisoners have been sent on grueling cross-country bus trips and flights 
— some without medical prescriptions or sanitary products, prisoners say 
— with little sense of their destination.

“We were all bruised up on our wrists because of the fact that they put 
the handcuffs on so tight and so long,” inmate Vaudencia Hamilton told 
the Bay Area News Group in a phone call Tuesday from the Miami prison 
after a three-day journey by bus and plane. She went without her 
diabetes medication throughout the trip, she said, and felt “dizzy and 
sick and nauseated.”

Shuttering the federal correctional institution in Dublin comes in the 
aftermath of a “rape club” culture that led to criminal charges against 
eight jail officers, seven of whom have since been sentenced. One judge 
called the facility, also riddled with mold and asbestos, a 
“dysfunctional mess.”

But as Hamilton put it after her ordeal, “the men went to prison, and we 
got the punishment.”

Nearly a dozen inmates, most incarcerated on drug charges, and their 
relatives reached out to the Bay Area News Group over recent days to 
describe the chaos and anxiety they say the prisoners experienced during 
the frenetic move.

There was so much confusion during the first days of transfers last week 
that some inmates languished for upwards of five hours on buses in the 
Dublin prison parking lot before returning to their cells without 
explanation. Their only meal was frozen sandwiches, they said. Toilet 
paper on the bus ran out.

“People were crying. I had anxiety the whole time,” inmate Sara 
Victoria, 47, told the Bay Area News Group last week after she was stuck 
on the parked bus. “We just didn’t know where we were going and what we 
were doing.”

“I have witnessed people fighting. I have witnessed people crying. I 
have witnessed people drinking pills because they just want to pass out 
and not think about it. I have witnessed people vomiting,” inmate Maria 
Morales Rodriguez, 43, said. “Another lady over here next to me, she was 
cutting herself. We have witnessed all of that. And even officers over 
here are crying because that’s how crazy it is.”

Inmates with children who live in the Bay Area and were able to visit 
their loved ones in prison fear they won’t see their kids again. Those 
with pending release dates to halfway houses worry those plans will be 
lost in the chaos. And those who formed tight friendships in the prison 
are panicked about adjusting to new facilities.

“I understand they’re closing down the prison,” inmate Margarita Rosales 
said. “I understand that we’re criminals. I can totally understand that. 
But we’re still human beings.”

Benjamin O’Cone, a spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Prisons, 
declined Monday to answer a list of questions about the inmates’ 
concerns or the status of the shutdown.

Instead, he reissued a statement from Bureau of Prisons Director 
Collette Peters saying that despite efforts to address employee 
misconduct, aging infrastructure and the culture of the prison, the 
Dublin facility “is not meeting expected standards” so must be closed.

The low-security federal prison has played host to a who’s who of female 
inmates, from Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss to convicted SLA bankrobber 
Patty Hearst, heiress of the William Randolph Hearst media empire, who 
was later pardoned by then-President Bill Clinton. Squeaky Fromme and 
Sara Jane Moore, convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald 
Ford, were housed there, and more recently, actresses Lori Loughlin and 
Felicity Huffman, for their roles in the Varsity Blues college 
admissions scam.

An inmate rights group, California Coalition For Women Prisoners, filed 
for an emergency temporary restraining order Friday attempting to halt 
the transfers, but inmates said that a majority of the prisoners had 
already been cleared out by Sunday.

It’s unclear how many inmates remain behind Tuesday. Over the course of 
the scandal, prisoners have filed some 60 civil lawsuits alleging sexual 
assault.

Removing 600 inmates within a week, the motion said, has “wrought chaos” 
on a population already at risk of “imminent and serious medical injury, 
including lack of treatment for serious medical ailments, psychological 
distress and risk of suicide.”

As part of prison policy, officials said they would attempt to keep 
inmates “as close to their release locations as possible.”

But Thuy Nguyen, of San Jose, says her sister, inmate Trang Nguyen, was 
shipped to Miami some 3,000 miles away from her three young children who 
live in the Bay Area. They visited her nearly every weekend and played 
together on slides in a prison playground.

Her youngest, a 2-year-old son who has been raised by his father since 
he was 6 months old, was just starting to connect with her.

“He found a bond and was comfortable with her,” Nguyen said. “And then 
now all of a sudden it’s not happening.”

On Thursday, Nguyen said her sister was sent by bus from Dublin to 
Nevada, then flew with about 60 other prisoners to Georgia, then 
traveled by bus with about half of them another 12 hours to Miami.

“Her hands were tied. Her legs were tied,” Nguyen said of her sister. 
“Imagine sitting like that for about three days.”

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