The US government has agreed to pay nearly $116 million to settle lawsuits brought by more than 100 women who reported experiencing sexual abuse and mistreatment at a federal prison in California.
The settlements involve individual lawsuits against the Bureau of Prisons over the treatment at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Dublin, California.
Driving the news: FCI Dublin was infamously known as the “rape club” due to rampant staff-on-inmate sexual misconduct.
The big picture: The Justice Department will pay an average of about $1.1 million to each of the 103 women who filed individual lawsuits against the Bureau of Prisons.
- Additionally, a separate class-action lawsuit was settled, leading to the Bureau of Prisons agreeing to open some of its facilities to a court-appointed monitor and publicly acknowledge pervasive abuse and retaliation at FCI Dublin.
Go deeper: The settlements cover the initial wave of lawsuits seeking monetary compensation from the Bureau of Prisons, and a neutral third-party process was used to determine individual settlement amounts.
- As part of the settlement, reforms have been proposed, including the appointment of a monitor to scrutinize the treatment of nearly 500 ex-Dublin prisoners now housed at more than a dozen federal lockups across the US.
Flashback: FCI Dublin was temporarily closed in April, and the Bureau of Prisons announced its permanent shutdown, emphasizing the decision was not a result of the settlement agreement.
