This thread was inspired by a recent episode of Law & Order. A transsexual woman committed a crime. She accepted a plea and was sentenced to a number of years in prison. She was taking hormones and had breasts but had not undergone the final operation to remove her male sexual organs.
The judge gave her an ultimatum: either voluntarily stop the hormone treatment and join the general population a male correctional facility or face solitary confinement in said facility. Either way she was going to be sent to a men’s prison. I cannot remember her choice but the episode ended with her being rushed to the emergency room after being gang raped.
I’m not sure where I stand on this. On one hand, this woman was, well, a woman. She was born in a male’s body but had always felt she was a female from a very early age. She started taking her mother’s hormone pills, developed breasts, started dressing as a woman and dating men. She still, however, had a penis and testicles.
Should she have been housed in a woman’s correctional facility, but in solitary confinement? What else could (should?) the judge have done? The fact she hadn’t had the final operation precludes her from being placed in the general population of a women’s prison, doesn’t it? Should it?
Jails always have separate facilities (that’s where Scott Peterson is being kept, for instance). Postoperative MtFs should be housed with the other women; postop FtMs with the other men. Preoperative people should be housed separately, for their own safety.
Separately, where, though? Should a preoperative transgendered female be housed separately in a male prison or in a female prison?
Thanks, by the way, for replying. Did you happen to catch that episode of Law & Order? I wanted to start a Cafe Society thread asking what people thought of it, but changed my mind.
Nah, I’m in bed with a book and cuppa tea by 10:00.
Happily, I am very unfamiliar with jails and intend to remain so, so I can’t say where the “isolation cells” are, or even whether they’re near the male or female cells.
From my experience as a defense attorney in NH, when you are arrested (pretrial), you’re in one set of cells, with other pretrial folk,separated by gender. Depending upon the individual, a person may be in isolation pretrial. Post-conviction folk are in general population, based upon classification (violent, etc.)
I actually know of one case like this- we represented a MTF transexual woman who wound up in State prison, and the remarkably enlightened Prison Admin agreed to let her serve her time in the Women’s prison. IIRC she was post-op, tho.
I know, this was the right thing to do, which makes it all the more surprising.
I think the tendency toward violence against the woman would be much worse in a men’s facility. Not to say that women in prison don’t fight, but I don’t think it’s nearly the problem it is in a men’s prison.
As far as a pre-op FTM, I think it would be a huge danger to be housed with the men, but I also think it should be fair between FTM and MTF. Solitary confinement is a horrible way to live one’s life. I don’t think I could do it. Until they find a way to protect people, I think maybe both MTF and FTM should be housed in a women’s facility.
I watched this with my parents, who were visiting from MA. My dad said there was a recent similar case there. The judge, recognizing the lose-lose situation, sentenced the transgendered convict to house arrest instead of either the male or female prison system. Don’t know what the crime was, tho, it may have been less serious than murder. Maybe a local Doper can enlighten us (apparently the judge took a lot of flak for the decision).
Watching the L&O ep, I couldn’t decide what should have been done. Clearly putting her in the male prison was tragic, but if she is legally male (defined by genitals) they did not have the option of putting her in the female prison either.
Federal law currently requires that post-ops be housed with their current external gender. Pre-ops can be housed in a facility of either gender, but isolation is recommended for the safety of the prisoner. The general recommendation is to house pre-op transsexual prisoners with others of their birth sex, but individual discretion can override this where appropriate. Any hormones being taken with a doctor’s prescription must be maintained at state expense. Self-medication need not be continued.
Prisons have the option to put a pre-op MtF in a women’s prison; they simply choose not to.
The scenario as you describe it is unlikely to have arisen; a pre-op self-medicating transsexual would have not been given that choice, instead, she would have been put straight away into the general male population with no option to continue hormones. You really don’t want to get arrested if you’re a trannie (or hurt, ref. Tyra Hunter).