Write to the Director of the California Department of Corrections to demand that male officers not be allowed to pat-search female inmates. (The Director is currently re-considering this policy.)
Sample letter:Ms. Jeanne Woodford, Director
California Department of Corrections
1515 S Street
Sacramento, CA 94283
By FAX: (916) 322-2877
Dear Ms. Woodford:
I am writing to urge you to immediately prohibit male officers from pat-searching female inmates. I join Human Rights Watch and California Prison Focus in expressing my concern that permitting male correctional employees to pat down women is sexually degrading to women inmates and heightens the risk of staff sexual abuse. Women prisoners who have undergone such searches routinely describe them as traumatizing and humiliating and consider them to be a form of sexual assault.
“Clothed body searches” of women by male correctional officers violate women’s sense of dignity and right to privacy. International standards, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, require effective measures to ensure body searches are “carried out in a manner consistent with the dignity of the person being searched. Persons being subjected to body searches by States officials…should only be examined by persons of the same sex.” I am writing to ask you to take swift measures to bring California’s correctional procedures in line with the international standards to which the United States is a party.
Given the extraordinarily high percentage of women prisoners who have been sexually or physically abused prior to entering prison, cross-gender pat searches can also contribute to unresolved trauma from such prior abuse. I also know that cross-gender searches are known to have been conducted many times in an inappropriate manner where correctional officers have groped women. I urge you to reduce the risk of such abuse by prohibiting cross-gender searches, a reasonable measure that would be an important step toward creating more humane conditions for the 11,000 women incarcerated in California’s correctional facilities.
As you know, California is home to the largest women’s prisons in the world. As a resident of California, I must insist that we bring our correctional code of conduct in line with other developed states and that we take every measure to protect the dignity of women inmates.
I am confident that you will proactively address this issue, and I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
[YOUR SIGNATURE HERE]
Related Material
Letter to the Director of the California Department of Corrections: Stop Cross Gender Pat Searches
Letter, December 16, 2004
All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons
Report, December 1, 1996