FEMALE INMATES: JAMMED BEHIND BARS?

Chowchilla Lockups Are at More Than Double Their Capacity, Provoking
Health Concerns

State corrections officials have crammed hundreds of inmates into two
already overstuffed women's prisons in Chowchilla -- an influx that
the state's prison medical czar says could cause health care services
to "collapse entirely" in one of the prisons.

By moving about 600 inmates from Southern California, prison
officials have worsened crowding in the state's three all-female
prisons. And with most of the attention on the state's jampacked male
prisons, not much relief is in sight.

"Because of the sheer numbers of men, women have just become what we
call 'correctional afterthoughts,' " said Barbara Owen, a criminology
professor at California State University, Fresno, and a national
expert on women's prisons.

Populations at the Valley State Prison for Women and the Central
California Women's Facility have swelled by 8 percent, leaving both
prisons housing more than twice as many inmates as they were designed to hold.

About 400 women are sleeping in prison gymnasiums, squeezed side by
side in bunk beds. At Valley State, the increasing demand for medical
care forced officials to shut down a preventive care clinic to focus
on urgent aid.

The prison is providing the care required under legal guidelines, but
only because medical staff members are working overtime, said Dr.
Daun Martin, Valley State's acting health care manager.

"We are struggling every day," she said. "We're constantly under the
gun to make sure that our patients get good care."

The transfers started in April when the state Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation shut down the women's wing of the
California Rehabilitation Center in Norco. The aging facility did not
have the space needed to properly care for female inmates, officials say.

The transfers, completed in late June, had been planned for a long
time. But Robert Sillen, the court-appointed overseer of prison
medical care, said he wasn't consulted enough on the decision and
that the transfers would have a "severe" impact on medical care.

Medical care at Valley State is "already at a crisis stage" and the
influx of new prisoners "may well cause the medical delivery system
at (the prison) to collapse entirely," Sillen said in a recent update
to a federal judge.

Wendy Still, associate director for female offender programs, said
Corrections and Rehabilitation has responded to Sillen's concerns. A
representative from his office now sits in on weekly population
meetings, she said.

"I think it's important that we work very closely together," she said.

Martin said Valley State needs more medical staff members and more
vehicles to take inmates to off-site hospitals and clinics.

Sillen -- who has complete control of the prison medical system --
has ordered more than 100 vans for all of the state's prisons, and
Valley State should get new vehicles later this summer, said Rachael
Kagan, the medical overseer's spokeswoman. Also, Sillen is reviewing
Valley State's request for 17 more nurses and one doctor at the
prison, which now has five full-time doctors, six nurse practitioners
and more than 30 nurses.

"We have massive, massive health care needs," Martin said. Many
inmates "haven't taken care of themselves. They haven't eaten right.
They've been prostituting, living on the streets."

Long-range plans call for moving thousands of inmates from the
state's three women's prisons to several community-based facilities,
where women would get better access to rehabilitation services,
corrections officials say.

But the Legislature has failed to pass the proposal, which is opposed
by unions.

This year's version -- contained in Assembly Bill 76 by Assemblywoman
Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View -- would have added 2,900 beds at
community-based facilities, with no more than 200 beds in each
facility. But Lieber had to take the proposal out of the bill in the
face of opposition from Service Employees International Union Local
1000, which feared the bill would result in "privately operated
facilities that lack proper oversight." Lieber and other supporters
- -- including the Corrections and Rehabilitation Department -- still
hope a deal can be cut this year.

The recently approved $7.9 billion prison construction plan mostly
ignores women. Some 16,000 beds will be added at male prisons, but
none at women's prisons.

Owen blames the inattention on "the tyranny of the numbers." Of the
state's 166,171 prisoners, just 11,136 are women.

Yet female prisons are just as crowded as male prisons -- and getting
worse. About 4,600 more women are imprisoned now than in 1990,
leaving women's prisons stuffed to nearly double their capacity.

Owen and other experts say the spike is due to stiffer penalties for
drug crimes.

Nearly 65 percent of female inmates are incarcerated for nonviolent
drug or property crimes, compared with about 40 percent of male
inmates, according to a 2004 study by the Little Hoover Commission.

Historically, female prisoners have been treated like male prisoners.
But research suggests women have different needs.

A majority of female inmates have mental health problems, and four in
10 were physically or sexually abused before age 18, according to the
Little Hoover report. Many are the primary caretaker of a child, yet
the state isolates the women in "large, remotely located prisons"
with limited access to counseling, the report found.

The result: Half of those released from prison violate parole and end
up back in prison.

Owen, who consults with the state on prison issues, said Corrections
and Rehabilitation has a good plan in place but that the "processes
to implement the plan are very slow-moving." The community-based
facilities are a key part of the strategy to free more space for
counseling and drug treatment. But without significant new money for
the facilities, the department has had to take a piecemeal approach.

Today, about 10 percent of female inmates are housed in
community-based centers, Still said. The goal is to move nearly 50
percent of inmates into the centers.

Meanwhile, prisons like Valley State struggle to keep up with the
growing population. Martin, the health manager, said she's been
lobbying for modular buildings to provide more clinic space.

"We have to have more space," she said. "We cannot continue doing
what we're doing and do it well ... without more space."