Male prisons or female prisons. I ask as I saw a news blip about a man in California who wants to be in a prison for females. The thing is he’s taking hormones but otherwise still male. And he’s convicted of raping a woman.
While I sympathize with the plight of the transgendered as a woman it seems ludicrous to allow a convicted rapist access to women.
I imagine it’s different in every US state and different in each country. So if anyone has any knowledge, I thought it’d be an interesting question.
Nitpick: a transperson taking female hormones who was detained in a women’s prison should be referred to as a woman, with the pronoun “she.” Gender is not solely defined by the presence or absence of a penis, vagina, or boobs. Even if the law hasn’t caught up with this principle in every state, this is a basic rule within the transgender community and their allies. Gender is less about physiology and more about self-identity: the gender a person identifies as is more important than what’s under their clothes.
I also found a coupleofreferences relevant to your question by doing a quick Google search. Lawyers can come in and let you know the case law in their states, but as it’s a state issue it’s going to vary.
Presumably the general rule would be that people get put in male or female prisons on the basis of what the government recognizes as their gender. If their government-issued ID lists them as male or female, respectively, they would be placed in the according institution, regardless of how they self-identify. Many governments have procedures for changing the gender listed on one’s birth certificate and other official ID; this typically involves medical certification that one has undergone corrective surgery.
This one is so poetic it kind of writes itself but…you put him in a male prison, right? Provided, of course, the government still recognizes him as a male.
Seriously, until we decide to focus our penal (heh) system on reform, we need to keep in mind it’s about punishment for its own sake and has nothing to do with human rights. Penis owners go to penis prison, vagina owners go to vagina prison. So sorry it makes the trangendered criminal uncomfortable–life is about choices and risks. The OP’s subject probably has an interesting mental history and it would have been good if he’d received help before interacting violently with other people, but he chose not to get help and chose to engage in an activity he knew was punishable.
But what happens in jurisdictions who don’t recognize transgender? Psychonaut point out that some jurisdictions allow post-op transgendered people to change their “official” gender on government ID, etc… but many jurisdictions do not.
In your simple penis owner=penis prison scenario, where would you send a post-op MtF prisoner, if their state/country does not recognize transgender? And in the US in particular, I’m wondering what happens if the person’s state doesn’t recognize transgender, but they commit a federal crime. Would they go to a federal women’s prison or a men’s prison?
On a slight tangent to the thread, how do they decide which prison an intersex criminal would go to - is it based on their government ID’d gender? Because a lot of intersex people don’t identify with the gender that was often pretty much randomly/incorrectly chosen for them at birth.
If they don’t recognize a transgendered person as the gender they identify as, then presumably they go by what’s in their government-issued ID. I mean, what else can they do?
Not sure why I should feel bound by their rules, so it might be a good suggestion, but certainly not factually correct. One can make a strong argument that the person should be referred to by the legal gender that the person is, especially when discussing legal aspects related to that person’s gender.
But even if the jurisdiction does recognise transgendered people, what is the objective criteria for a person claiming a non-penis gender while being a penis-person.
What if I, a born-with-a-penis male, tell the authorities that my gender is female so I get to women’s prison? How can they tell me, objectively, if I go to men’s prison or women’s prison?
Several years ago, the agency I worked with arrested a transgendered (former) man. When s/he was delivered to the USMS for holding s/he was placed (after much giggling) in solitary confinement. The concern was that s/he was born male, but in general population, looking like a chick is going to be a major safety concern.
I’m not sure what was done for long-term detention. S/he died not too long afterward, anyway.
In our prison system (Wisconsin), inmates generally go to the prison their genitals match up with. An inmate with a penis ends up at a male institution, and one with a vagina ends up at a female institution.
We do not do gender reassignment surgery on inmates, but do generally continue hormone treatment if they came into prison already on such treatment and there’s no medical contra-indication to stopping it.
We have special management units where folks deemed at risk (feminine transgendered who have not had surgery, effeminate males, others who are at high risk for victimization) are kept, so they can socialize with others and not end up in continuous isolation just because of their situation. Though often their behavior gets them into segregation.
I’ve taken care of a fair number of transgendered folks who have not had surgery. They can be difficult to manage.
The objective criteria is whether or not a person has started sexual reassignment through hormone replacement and gender counseling.
Any implication that a man would start hormone therapy and gender counseling, then commit a crime in order to be purposely assigned to a women’s prison, is ludicrous.
If the jurisdiction recognizes transgendered people, then surely determining what prison they get sent to is as simple as checking their ID and reading the “gender” field.
They will look at your ID. If you’ve had corrective surgery (or fulfilled whatever other requirements the government imposes) and haven’t yet updated your ID, then now would be a pretty good time to do it.
I’m curious - feel free not to answer if you don’t feel at liberty to do so, but do you believe prisons should provide gender reassignment to pre-op transgender inmates? My understanding - which may be mistaken - is that surgery does a good deal to improve the long-term prognosis for such folks with regard to depression, suicide and so on.
Even if a jurisdiction recognizes that the diagnosis of ‘transgendered’ may be an appropriate one, it does not automatically follow that someone who’s phenotypically male will get put into a women’s prison solely by making the statement that they’re transgendered. Single sex institutions are designated as such for the benefit of the corrections system, to keep order and help streamline uniformity of service and security. Not for the benefit of the inmate, though the vast majority will have secondary benefit from this arrangement.
Even when the diagnosis of transgender is considered bona fide for a convicted felon, there’s extensive psychological and psychiatric evaluation that goes on to determine what sort of placement will be able to best fit the needs of both the system’s security and the inmate’s circumstances. More often than not, such patients are placed in special areas of male prisons (assuming the transgendered person is phenotypically male.)
The courts in the US have not yet ruled that one has a constitutional right to be placed in a prison which matches up with one’s internally perceived gender.
The evidence is mixed, at best. The most recent studies of which I am aware show that then taken overall, people who live as their gender of choice and take hormonal medications to help them achieve their goal of more strongly identifying with their gender of choice but have not actually had gender reassignment surgery do just as well if not better in terms of mental health, reported happiness, lessened suicide and self-harm behavior, than those who have done all that AND had the surgery.
Unless we see some very, very solid evidence that doing surgical reassignment has significant overall benefits for not just the transgendered population at large but also the incarcerated population, I’ll not advocate for gender reassignment surgery. I will advocate (as I already do) for their right to be treated with hormones when appropriate, get the psychological counselling they need, and get special housing units within prisons where they will be safer.
Is there clandestine surgery available to inmates who can acquire it by any means?
I’m asking because I saw a televised interview with a notorious murderer, Richard Speck, before he died. He had had breast augmentation surgery while in prison. AFAIK, this was not done for any transgender reason, but to supposedly “increase his survivability” in the prison population.
Obviously, he had the surgery while incarcerated.
The mechanics of getting any surgery behind bars seem outrageous and … yeah, I guess outrageous covers it.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled message board topic.
~VOW
Though there’s lots of auto-mutilation that goes on. Inmates do ‘prison tattoos’ all the time with very suspect equipment. Body piercings are done that way too, and on infrequent occasions, they’ll get more adventurous and carve out pouches in their own flesh to hide contraband inside. Or inject caulk under their skin to give their penises ‘pleasure bumps’ or just increase the girth.
Some self-mutilate, removing fingers, toes, testicles, or other bits.
I asked about objective criteria because you mentioned
Self-identity is not an objective criteria, but if it is more important than penisness/vaginaness and I lie and say “I’m a woman” how can the determine my gender. My sex is obvious, but my gender is a personal opinion (I’m simplifying).
The second part I completely agree and it was never my intention to even imply that
Let’s say I’m from jurisdiction A that doesn’t recognise it and I commit the crime in jurisdiction B that does. There is, even in the most transgender-friendly state/country a great deal of time from the moment John actually and truly says “I’m a woman” till they change the ID.