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Pen. Code, § 2638 · Article 3. Sexual Abuse in Detention

Pen. Code, § 2638

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

Thoughtful, confidential standards of physical and mental health care shall be implemented to reduce the impact of sexual abuse on inmates and wards in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that include all of the following:

(a) Victims shall receive appropriate acute-trauma care for rape victims, including, but not limited to, treatment of injuries, HIV/AIDS prophylactic measures, and, later, testing for sexually transmittable diseases.

(b) Health practitioners who conduct or encounter an inmate or ward suffering from problems that might indicate sexual abuse, such as trauma, sexually transmissible diseases, pregnancy, or chronic pain symptoms, shall ask whether the patient has experienced sexual abuse.

(c) Practitioners should strive to ask frank, straightforward questions about sexual incidents without shaming inmates or displaying embarrassment about the subject matter.

(d) Confidential mental health counseling intended to help the victim to cope with the aftermath of abuse shall be offered to those who report sexual abuse. Victims shall be monitored for suicidal impulses, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and other mental health consequences.

(e) Any adult inmate in mental health counseling for any reason shall be entitled to speak confidentially about sexual abuse.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Added by Stats. 2005, Ch. 303, Sec. 3. Effective January 1, 2006.

Source of truth

Edition
As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Official file
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN&sectionNum=2638.
Text hash
sha256 920e62544ac5a4490c4ffc149d23eb4aef45e201da38918514487eeb00852b37
Composed by
compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section

Procedural information only. Not legal advice and not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Confirm the current text with the official publisher before relying on it.