California Institution For Women - History

History

The original California Institution for Women was dedicated in Tehachapi in 1932; however, after a 1952 earthquake, the female inmates were transferred to the just-opened CIW in Chino, and the Tehachapi facility was rebuilt as the male-only California Correctional Institution. CIW was originally called "California Institution for Women at Corona," but "Corona residents objected to the use of their city in the prison's name and it was changed March 1, 1962, to Frontera, a feminine derivative of the word frontier, symbolic for a new beginning." CIW was the only women's prison in California until 1987, when the Northern California Women’s Facility opened.

In the early years of CIW, convicted women wore Sunday dresses while walking and working at the campus-like setting until the 1980s when three towers were added with officers atop armed with shotguns. Among other programs for inmates at CIW is "Voices from Within" in which inmates read books on tapes for "high school students in remedial classes," "college students with reading disabilities," and the blind.

The first prison nursery in California opened at CIW in 2006 "to correct what experts call a dangerous disruption of the natural bonding process." It "join newborns with their incarcerated mothers for up to 15 months." In 2007, the state of California proposed building 45 new units for mentally ill inmates at CIW and 975 at the nearby California Institution for Men; local officials opposed such plans.