The California legislature recently made some disturbing moves related to critical public safety issues.

To begin with, California Democrats on the Senate Public Safety Committee voted down a bill (SB 311) that would have prohibited male sex offenders, including those who identify as transgender women, from being housed in women’s prisons.

The bill, introduced by Republican Senator Shannon Grove, aimed to address concerns about the safety and privacy of female inmates following reports of assaults and other incidents involving male inmates transferred to women’s facilities under current California law.

Katy Grimes of the California Globe reported on the session in which this bill was shot down.

…[B]y the time the committee heard Senator Grove’s bill, they were unwilling to acknowledge that trans women (biological men), who request to transfer to women’s prisons, are putting female inmates in harms way. Women are abused, assaulted, raped, impregnated and given STDs in prison, Sen. Grove said.

But Democrats on the committee continued to place all blame on the CDCR guards and employees for prison sexual abuse cases, refusing to even acknowledge that some trans inmates are manipulating the system and severely sexually abusing and assaulting female inmates...