When confidential information gets weaponized
Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) resident Giselle Esteban is stressed about many things that the Board of Parole Hearings (BPH) commissioners might ask her at her suitability hearing, scheduled for the near future. But nothing is as stressful as trying to figure out how to address an anonymous accusation that she found out about from staff. The accusation came in the form of a “Notice of Confidential Information.”
“It’s one of the most frustrating things that I had to deal with in the past 15 years. I feel hurt and betrayed because confidentiality was broken in one of my groups. The information I shared was used against me. These informants added and twisted my words,” Esteban said.
Esteban claimed she had not received any confidentials in 14 years. And then, in less than 10 months, Esteban had several accusations, some of which were discredited after internal CDCR investigation.
Esteban is not the only one. Now that an increased number of lifers at CCWF are scheduled for parole eligibility hearings, many people find themselves worrying about undisclosed confidential allegations filed against them, many of which are untrue and filed by others with an axe to grind. That might be estranged lovers, jealous coworkers, or angry roommates. These allegations are upsetting because, although they may have nothing to do with a person’s preparedness to go home, they still have to be accountable for it, and they adversely impact a person’s possibility to gain their freedom during their suitability hearing.
Resident Carmel Murphy, who had an experience similar to Esteban, expressed how confidentials can be nerve racking.
“Facing the unknown, something that is not factual, creates a lot of fear and anxiety because how do you explain a lie? How do you build a defense when you are blindsided without any knowledge until you go to BPH?” she said.
What is confidential information?
According to John Irwin in “Prisons in Turmoil,” California prisons were in upheaval in the 1970s due to gang violence and the rise of the prison population. As a result, internal investigative security units had to rely on confidential informants to understand the shifting landscape on the prison yards.
This was an era in which prison gangs exerted power and influence in many CDCR facilities. The information collected was used in validation packets (paperwork that documented who was an active prison gang member) to confirm who was a threat to the safety and security of the institution. For instance, informants might share which people on the yard might be planning riots, beatings, hostages, drug dealing, etc.
In 1983, In re Jackson challenged the legitimacy of the use of confidential information. The court determined that the California Department of Corrections was right to use confidential information to preserve order within the prisons and they did not have to disclose the sources of their information in order to “encourage and protect confidential inmate informants,” as it relates to the identification and management of prison gangs.
The use of confidential information was a point of contention in the federal civil rights complaint Ashker v. Governor of California where the plaintiff alleged the CDCR misused, and often fabricated, to validate inmates as prison gang members or associates with little oversight and no review. The Ashker settlement required CDCR to train staff to ensure that confidential information used against inmates is accurate, according to California Code of Regulations, Title, 3321.
Although the regulation outlines that confidential information should be used “for serious Rules Violation Reports, classification decisions, placements in segregation, Security Threat Group validations, or parole hearing violations,” at CCWF, it is not just used by prison officials to “preserve order within the prison” as the court mandates.
Instead, it is weaponized by other incarcerated individuals to jeopardize individuals’ potential release dates.
Some individuals legitimately fear that someone said, wrote, or alleged something that is now logged in their Central File (C-File). Since the C-File is used to track someone’s history or private information while in custody, and only custody and counselors know what is in there, incarcerated individuals are alarmed about the lack of fact-finding and transparency that goes into the preservation of “confidential information.” Especially since any confidential information may not be known until 10 days prior to their parole board hearing.
The most insidious issue occurs during the parole hearing itself. The BPH heavily weighs an incarcerated person’s “insight” and remorse when determining suitability, according to the California Supreme Court decision In re Shaputis. If a resident is confronted with unverified, unreliable confidential information (for example, an anonymous claim of continued gang association) and denies it, BPH frequently interprets this denial as a lack of insight or a refusal to take accountability resulting in denial. However, if the resident admits to the false claim in an attempt to display remorse, they validate the lie and are denied parole for being actively engaged in misconduct.
The negative impact of false confidential information
In 2024, CCWF resident Brenda Moreno was 10 days from her suitability hearing when she received a Notice of Confidential Information memo. In it, she discovered there were five different allegations that read: “You were identified in a confidential document; however, the information pertaining to you was not indicative of you participating in illicit behavior/illegal activities.”
“I don’t understand why they would waste time putting in five different 1030s just to say ‘You may or may not have done anything but your name came up in conversation and we just felt like writing it down,’” Moreno said, “unless their intention is to jeopardize my release date.”
The memo is dated April 5, 2024, and in her suitability hearing transcripts, the presiding parole commissioner Teal Kozel stated, “the panel reviewed the confidential information in your file…and the panel finds that these confidential documents contain evidence that demonstrate you are unsuitable for parole at this time.”
When Moreno received her parole hearing transcripts and shared her experience with other lifers on the yard, individuals were alarmed at the conclusion the commissioners made, even though they recognized the unreliability of the confidential information and the clinical interpretation.
When closing the hearing, Kozel stated that she was concerned by one sentence from the Comprehensive Risk Assessment, which read, “the sheer number of problematic situations that she’s been implicated in via confidential allegations is evidence she could make better decisions and spend time with better people.”
Kozel went on to say, “This opinion is not really legally defensible, and it stretches the limits of what might be considered an objective clinical opinion as well. It is, for lack of better term, speculation,” but it carried enough weight to deny her parole for three years.
Moreno later told me, “I don’t know how you’re supposed to refute lies when they won’t even believe you when you tell the truth. It seems like regardless of what you say, once something is in your C-File, they take it as gospel truth.”
Resident Cynthia Vargas was also negatively impacted by false confidential information.
In 2006, Vargas was involved in a riot against a “couple” and other individuals. Consequently, everyone went to solitary confinement, and one of the two people in the couple was transferred to California Institution for Women (CIW). The other individual remained in CCWF, until she misused the confidential process against Vargas. On the basis of that confidential, the individual was transferred to CIW, and she was reunited with her girlfriend. This is an example of how individuals manipulate CDCR staff for prison transfers.
Years later this same individual faced behavioral issues at CIW. Only then did CDCR staff contact Vargas concerning old confidential information. Vargas was finally granted the opportunity to reject this claim and remove it from her central file. Today, Vargas and this other individual coexist amicably on the same yard.
Other confidential information is currently keeping Vargas from herself transferring to CIW.
“I’m a grandma. I would love to be transferred to CIW to be closer to home. But I can’t because of other confidential information,” Vargas said. “I believe this process is unfair if the claims are fabricated.”
Ways to improve the situation
After interviewing my peers, I couldn’t help but question whether CDCR has broadened the use and scope of confidential information or is being manipulated by informants? Does an argument with your roommate meet the criteria? Does a dysfunctional friendship or fall out jeopardize institutional security? How is someone’s gossip a threat to the safety and security of the institution or others? Many residents are asking what can be done to mitigate the misuse of confidential information at CCWF.
When I asked Vargas, she said, “Perhaps CDCR needs to go back to using confidential information for what it was intended instead of chronicling the emotional drama of interpersonal relationships at CCWF.”
Esteban suggested that policy needs to be changed where the informant submitting any type of confidential in someone’s C-File that is going to BPH must also put it in their C-File in order to keep track of who is abusing or manipulating the system, especially if the confidential information was discredited or found to be not true.
“This issue is causing more hurdles for people going home. There needs to be some sort of balance and accountability for someone that drops a note. You can do everything right and things will still go wrong,” Esteban said.
When an evidentiary safeguard is stripped away exactly when the stakes are highest, the system stops serving justice and starts enabling arbitrary detention. If a piece of confidential information is too unreliable to justify revoking a month of good-time credit for a guilty finding on a Rules Violation Report, it is inherently too unreliable for the BPH to justify denying a decade of freedom. Ensuring basic fairness requires aligning the BPH evidentiary standards with those of CDCR, demanding that no person is kept behind bars on the word of an unverified ghost.
— Amber Bray contributed to this story
