The Federal Bureau of Prisons will permanently close Dublin’s infamous ‘rape club’ women’s prison and idle six prisons in a major reshuffle after years of abuse, decay and mismanagement.
The agency informed employees and Congress in a notice Thursday that it plans to close the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, which has been the center of controversy for several years. The agency is also deactivating several minimum-security prison camps in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida.
The agency said staff and inmates at the affected locations will be transferred to other facilities.
The Bureau of Prisons document says it is taking “decisive and strategic action” to address “significant challenges, including critical staffing shortages, crumbling infrastructure and limited budget resources.” The agency said it is not downsizing and is committed to finding positions for every employee involved.
The closures are a striking coda to the Biden administration’s stewardship of the Justice Department’s largest agency. After repeatedly pledging to reform FCI Dublin and other troubled facilities, Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters is focusing on closures and consolidation, citing insufficient staffing and staggering costs to repair aging infrastructure.
The final closure of FCI Dublin comes seven months later announcing a temporary closure following reform efforts in the wake of the abuse between staff and prisoners that led to the name ‘rape club’. At the time, it appeared the agency planned to close the low-security prison, but officials held out the possibility that it could be repaired and reopened for another purpose, such as housing male inmates.
The assessment found that significant repairs were required to reopen FCI Dublin, the agency said. Low staffing levels, exacerbated by the high cost of living in the Bay Area, also contributed to the decision to close the facility, the agency said.
“We understand the impact the closure will have on our employees and want to ensure everyone can continue to fulfill the agency’s mission in other locations,” the statement said.
The prison was at the center of one years of research. Since 2021, at least eight employees, including a former director, have been accused of sexually abusing inmates.
Five employees have pleaded guilty. Two were convicted at trial, including former director Ray Garcia. The case against the eighth employee is pending.
At the time the closure was announced, FCI Dublin housed approximately 600 prisoners.
The move comes three years after the agency closed its troubled New York prison in Manhattan after numerous problems came to light in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide there, including lax security, staff shortages and squalid, unsafe conditions such as falling concrete and broken cells .
The Bureau of Prisons and the correctional workers union have repeatedly pushed for additional federal prison funding, emphasizing what they say is not enough money to address wage increases, staff retention and a multibillion-dollar repairs backlog. More than half of federal prison facilities were built before 1991 and many are becoming outdated or obsolete, the agency said.
The agency said it expects that transferring employees to the remaining facilities will increase retention and reduce the number of mandatory overtime and extensions, a practice in which cooks, teachers, nurses and other prison staff are assigned to monitor inmates.
The permanent closure of FCI Dublin represents an extraordinary admission by the Bureau of Prisons that it has failed to fix the prison’s culture and environment, in the wake of AP reports showing rampant sexual abuse within its walls brought light. Hundreds of people incarcerated at FCI Dublin are suing the organization, demanding reforms and monetary compensation for abuse at the facility.
The closures at FCI Dublin and the entire federal prison system come amid an AP investigation that has exposed deep, previously unreported flaws within the Bureau of Prisons. AP reporting has revealed widespread employee criminal activity, dozens of escapes, chronic violence, deaths and severe staffing shortages that have hampered responses to emergencies, including assaults and suicides.
In July, President Joe Biden signed a law strengthening oversight of the agency after AP reporting exposed its many shortcomings.
