California Medical Facility

California Medical Facility

History

The California Medical Facility had historically been a psychiatry-oriented facility (Sacramento 1970). According to Ralph Gardner (Corrections Magazine 1991), the California Medical Facility at one point held the largest program specifically for transsexual inmates, the Gender Identity Clinic. While state and metropolitan prisons make a policy of continuing the hormone treatment transsexual prisoners were taking prior to incarceration, some facilities will demand permission from the inmate's doctor. Because many transsexuals are in a state of permanent transition between both genders, the challenge for any institution has always been "where to put them." Frequently in danger of being assaulted by males, many transsexual inmates are segregated from the rest of the inmate population. It is possible that many doctors would approve of sex change operations, both for the safety, well-being, and satisfaction of the subject, and for the improved functioning of the instutition itself.

Before risk-needs assessment and responsivity considerations in offender programming became popular in correctional institutions during the late 1990s and early 2000s, institutions such as the California Medical Facility employed outdated (and often ineffective) treatment methods on many serious offenders, including on those known as "sexual aggressives."

Research by Marques (1980) during the late 1970s showed that over half of sexual aggressives at California Medical Facility were being actively treated in psychiatric counselling sessions held at the facility. However, California Medical Facility had lacked adequate assessment procedures and therapy sessions properly tailored to the specific offender. Furthermore, staff were neither equipped with specialized training nor regularly supervised, nor even focused on reducing the most important variable of interest, sexual aggressiveness. Regardless of program integrity failures, there was still inadequate reporting of recidivism, and high failure and dropout rates among participants, leaving the efficacy of the program up to anyone's best prediction.

In the late 1960s, prisoners throughout the United States and Canada were volunteering to participate as human subjects in drug research studies, often to gain extra money and provide relief from the monotony of the prison's everyday routines. By 1979, only three in-prison drug-testing labs were in operation in the United States, one of which was the California Medical Facility at Vacaville. However, in 1976, the United States forbid institutions from operating drug-research projects inside the facilities.

California Medical Facility Today

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