California can fix its women's prison rape crisis now. Why won't they?

Bodily autonomy is a cornerstone of women’s rights in California. But behind prison walls, incarcerated women can face a very different reality in which the state holds enormous power.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice delivered a damning assessment of California’s two state prisons for women. Federal investigators concluded that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and its two women’s prisons — the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and California Institution for Women in Chino — are violating the Constitution by failing to protect female prisoners from sexual abuse and harassment by staff.