The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, on Monday voiced concern over the conditions in which female inmates were experiencing at the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF), saying that after reporting alleged sexual harassment, privacy violations, threats, and violence, they were now facing retaliation.

In June 2026, the Special Rapporteur received complaints from five women who had been or currently are incarcerated at CCWF. The complaints allege that the women were required to share intimate spaces, such as showers, toilets, and sleeping quarters, with the biological male prisoners. Several women within CCWF, as a result of this arrangement, are experiencing psychological, physical, and sexual violence, which is exacerbating their past traumatic experiences, Alsalem wrote in the letter to the United States Government.

Alsalem also voiced concern over California’s Senate Bill 132, which allows transgender prisoners to be housed in men’s or women’s correctional facilities according to their gender identity. Formal medical transition, hormone therapy, or surgery is not required for an inmate to request housing aligned with their gender identity. Following the passage of the bill, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported that over 1,100 individuals self-identified shortly after the enactment, with the vast majority being biological males identifying as transgender women.

In August, the Special Rapporteur submitted an amicus curiae brief that aimed to highlight the incompatibility of SB 132 with international human rights law and the rights of female prisoners. The concerns underlying the brief have also been reiterated by the Justice Department who found “reasonable cause to believe” that female inmates were being sexually abused by staff at CCWF.

This finding is consistent with a long-standing pattern documented by human rights groups. In a 1996 report published by Human Rights Watch, the rights organization found that female prisoners who suffered from custodial sexual misconduct at the hands of male correctional employees often found it very difficult to avoid their abuser due to the constraints of their sentence and an intense fear of reprisal. The group pointed out that male officers had weaponized their authority to deny privileges to these women if they refuse to engage in sexual acts with them, deliberately conducted mandatory pat-downs to grope them, and subjected them to verbal harassment.

In recent years, efforts to reform the treatment of female inmates in prisons across the US have manifested in several legislative proposals, most notably The Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act, which was introduced in 2017 by Senators Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren. Although at the federal level, the Act was never formally passed into law as a standalone bill, many of its core provisions such as prohibiting the shackling of pregnant inmates and obligating prisons across the country to provide free hygiene products, were absorbed into the First Step Act, which was formally passed at the federal level in 2018.

Since then, multiple other states have followed suit in enacting state-level bills to fully reform the criminal justice system. This includes states such as Kentucky, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.