SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A new budget proposal California lawmakers are considering would add 22 positions to the Office of the Inspector General to better oversee inmate complaints and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s investigatory process.

But the additional staff would only enable the office to monitor about 350 of the estimated 2,400 staff sexual misconduct and assault claims that are investigated each year. Some legislators think that’s not at all acceptable.

“Why in the world are we sitting here and not saying it’s our responsibility to address 100% of those grievances and complaints?” Assemblymember Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, asked the state’s Inspector General, Amarik Singh, at an April hearing in the Assembly budget committee.

“We spend $14.6 billion a year in CDCR. Our budget speaks our values,” she said.

During the hearing, which included testimony from sexual abuse victims, lawmakers like Bonta made clear they still do not trust CDCR to effectively protect those in their care and they want to see the inspector general’s office — the state’s prison watchdog — monitor a greater portion of the sexual abuse complaints.

Singh responded to lawmakers, saying that her office’s job is to take a “representative sample” of the cases the corrections department is already looking into — not to investigate all of them.

“It’s to find that number so that we can look at enough where we can see if there are trends, where we can make recommendations, where we can see if the department is actually doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” she said.

However, recent reports from Singh’s own office show core aspects of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s grievance and investigatory process are deficient, and corrections staffers who screen complaints often downplay them, despite the state spending hundreds of millions of dollars to revamp the system over the past five years — and despite the hundreds of sexual assault lawsuits filed by former prisoners.

A culture of abuse at California women’s prisons

The U.S. Department of Justice announced in September it was launching an investigation into whether or not the California corrections department protects incarcerated women “from sexual abuse by correctional staff.”

In a press release about the investigation, the department said there have been hundreds of sexual assault lawsuits filed by private citizens and class action groups against the state and CDCR over the past two years. In January, Gregory Rodriguez, a longtime correctional officer at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, was found guilty of 59 felony counts of sexual abuse.

In February, a class action lawsuit was filed against Dr. Scott Lee, the sole gynecologist at the California Institution for Women in Chino, alleging years of sexual abuse and mistreatment. The Chowchilla facility houses about 2,000 women and the Chino facility houses 1,220.

In Rodriguez’s case, the prison had looked into allegations in 2014 that he was acting inappropriately, but a CDCR spokesperson told The Guardian the investigation was closed because of insufficient evidence. The department opened a new investigation in 2022, and said it identified over 22 potential victims of Rodriguez’s. In the case of Lee, two women allege in a lawsuit they filed complaints, one in 2017 and another in 2022, but say Lee was allowed to continue practicing. The corrections department said they cannot comment on personnel matters, but Lee “no longer has direct in-person contact with patients.”

For the past five years, the CDCR has been working to reform its staff complaint program and to put more accountability measures in place, including body-worn cameras for correctional officers. The most recent of those changes went into effect in January, including the creation of the Centralized Allegation Resolution Unit to make more efficient and uniform decisions about staff discipline.

Assembly budget committee staff told legislators at the April hearing that these changes have required “544 budgeted positions as well as $64 million in one-time costs and $102 million in ongoing costs.”

During the same hearing, the recently-hired wardens of the Chino and Chowchilla facilities were on hand to explain what happens when they receive a sexual assault or harassment complaint.

“We’re automatically pulling body-worn camera for evidence preservation, we’re doing interviews, and if there is, if it’s involving staff, we’re immediately redirecting that officer, moving them out of the area and reporting that and referring it to the Office of Internal Affairs,” said the Chowchilla Warden Anissa De La Cruz.

More power for the Inspector General

Last year, lawmakers passed SB 1069, a bipartisan bill that increased the authority of the inspector general to monitor the staff sexual assault investigations CDCR conducts, and to do its own investigations if CDCR’s reports are deemed insufficient, or if CDCR refuses to investigate.

At the time, the bill’s author, state Sen. Caroline Menjivar, D-San Fernando Valley, said the measure would be “giving victims and survivors the power to safely report assaults, which will be reviewed by an entity independent of CDCR.”

To make the law operational, a budget change proposal for the 2025-26 fiscal year would fund 22 positions for the OIG at a cost of $3.6 million, and 29 positions beginning in 2026, at a cost of $5.7 million.

Those positions would be devoted to monitoring and investigating inmate complaints, when needed.

Singh told budget subcommittee members in April her office currently checks about 30 of the estimated 1,400 staff sexual misconduct cases CDCR investigates per year, and the staff increase would allow them to monitor 350.

However, during her testimony, Singh said CDCR opened 203 staff sexual misconduct investigations in March of this year alone.

‘It appears (the annual total) may be closer to 2,400 complaints,” she said, while acknowledging that the March numbers were “a one month snapshot.”

Persistent issues with CDCR investigations

Although there isn’t data specifically about how well CDCR investigates staff sexual assault or misconduct against female inmates, the Inspector General’s office has found that the corrections department is under-performing when it comes to investigating all complaints.

The OIG monitored 162 of the staff misconduct investigative cases opened by the CDCR’s Office of Internal Affairs in 2024, according to a March 2025 report. Of those, they found 99 were “poorly conducted,” and 63 were “satisfactorily conducted.” The Office of Internal Affairs looked into 7,990 cases in 2024, although the inspector general noted some were duplicates.

“The Office of Internal Affairs received poor ratings due to excessive delays in conducting investigations, a lack of preparedness, ineffective questioning during interviews, failure to collect relevant evidence, and unnecessary duplication of investigative work,” the report said.

The OIG also looks into the screening process CDCR uses to filter through complaints. In 2024, they found the team responsible for filtering complaints made 1,024 “poor decisions” out of the 9,245 complaints it received. The rest were “satisfactory decisions,” and only two were “superior decisions.”

“The OIG recommends the Centralized Screening Team train its staff to accurately identify allegations it receives in complaints and not minimize them,” read a recommendation from the report.

Jeff Macomber, the Secretary of the corrections department, acknowledged the concerns in a letter attached to the report. He also defended his staff, who he said were trying to meet statutory deadlines and follow the law.

“We recognize that many of the challenges highlighted stem from the overwhelming number of cases processed within our system,” he said.

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