Incarcerated Transgender People Deserve to Be Safe
That's really all there is
I try to keep this substack a little more personal, but work has been all encompassing lately, and it’s been hard to focus on anything else.
For those who don’t know, I work for an organization that is solely dedicated to ending sexual abuse in prisons and jails. It’s the kind of job I don’t like to mention at parties because it brings the vibes down, but I love the work I do.
While me and my colleagues (and anyone with eyes) knew that the Trump administration would bring challenges, we did not fully realize how quickly it would happen and how deadly the consequences would be.
While there are many Trump policies that threaten the safety of incarcerated people, the most immediate impact has been on trans people. On Monday, moments after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order to (as the NYT puts it) “limit government recognition of an individual’s gender to their sex at birth.” While this puts all trans people’s safety at risk, this perhaps has the most significant and immediate consequences for transgender people housed in federal prisons.
To be clear, this is an incredibly small number of people, especially compared to the prison population as a whole. The current stats from the Bureau of Prisons put that number at 1,538 transgender women and 750 transgender men housed in federal prisons across the US (to put this in perspective, there are about 160,000 people total housed in federal prison). This does NOT mean that every single one of these trans people are housed according to their gender identity. In fact, only a handful are (I would guess less than a hundred, if that). Gender affirming housing happens on a case by case basis after lengthy interviews and assessments by corrections officials and medical professionals.1 It usually happens when the person requesting this housing placement is deemed at risk for abuse — most often because they have already been sexually abused. The Prison Rape Elimination Act names transgender status as a significant risk factor to a person’s safety and should be a consideration in housing placements.
Also worth mentioning, is the fact that not all trans people want to be housed according to their gender identity. Trans people are experts in their own safety, and often, they have built enough of a community and have found strategies that work for them in their current facility. Moving to a facility that aligns with their gender sometimes puts them at greater risk.
This is why these blanket orders are so dangerous. Transgender people are 10X more likely to be sexually abused than the rest of the prison population (per BJS data). In my job, I read letters from incarcerated survivors all the time. A disproportionate number of those come from incarcerated trans people who report over and over again that they are targeted because they are trans.
To paraphrase the landmark Supreme Court case, Farmer v. Brennan, when the government takes away someone’s freedom, they take on the absolute responsibility to keep them safe. Rape is not part of the penalty. That means that it is the government’s responsibility to keep trans people safe from sexual abuse behind bars. And yet now they are doing something that not only makes them less safe, but will GUARANTEE that people are raped.
I’m not being dramatic or overstating here.
If you place a trans woman who has been living in a women’s facility suddenly in a men’s prison, especially without any preparation or care given to that housing transition, you are setting them up for abuse from staff and other incarcerated people. Housing transitions can be dangerous on their own. Placing an at-risk woman in a mens prison is deadly.2
If you are someone who cares about survivors at all, I need you to understand that this is where the fight is. It is with the most vulnerable. Because ending sexual abuse for incarcerated transgender people creates a safer world for all of us.
Trump is not just threatening this small, often forgotten prison population. He is threatening every person who wants to live a life safe and free of abuse.
I know that there are so many things to protest right now, but I’m begging you to make this one of them. Please do not forget trans people. Please do not forget people behind bars. Their lives matter, and at this very moment, they are at risk. Don’t look away.
Some additional reading:
Trump Bars Transgender Women From U.S. Prisons for Female Inmates
‘People Will Die’ from Trump’s Trans Prisoner Crackdown, Experts Warn
Advancing Transgender Justice: Illuminating Trans Lives Behind and Beyond Bars
Dee Farmer and Farmer v. Brennan
Also rare, is gender affirming care in general (appropriate clothing, personal items, hormones, surgeries). It typically only occurs through a court order, in spite of the mountain of evidence that gender affirming care saves lives.
To debunk a common talking point that I hear from every corner of the political spectrum: housing trans women with cis women makes cis women less safe.
If this argument is in good faith, usually the fear is that cis men will pretend to be trans in order to get housed with cis women that they can then sexually abused. I’m not going to beat around the bush, this has happened. But here are two questions I want you to ask yourself:
How is this the fault of trans people?
Whose fault is this really?
Because surprise: this is the fault of the prison system. I also want to be clear that there are no reports that I’m aware of that this has happened within the federal prison system. The stories you’ll most often hear are all from the same prison in California (if you want to have a lengthy discussion with me about SB. 132, I’m happy to get into it).
As I said before, gender affirming housing happens on a case by case basis, so there should be absolutely no way for someone who is “pretending to be trans” to slip through the cracks. If it does happen, someone (usually a medical or corrections professional) has made a huge error. So that’s one thing.
But the other, and I think more important point is that prisons house dangerous people all. the. time. They house dangerous women. They house dangerous men. They house people who have committed heinous, violent crimes. It is the job of prison staff to keep everyone in their facility safe. If they can’t do that, they are failing at their jobs.