How the Trump Administration’s Latest Attack Threatens Trans Prisoners’ Lives
The Bureau of Prisons has rolled back a policy designed to lower the disproportionately high rates of assault against trans prisoners.
by Jen Jenkins
Trans people already face horrific conditions in prisons and jails. Now, the Bureau of Prisons has made the situation even worse by rolling back a policy that allowed facilities to make a case-by-case determination about where it would be safest to place a trans prisoner.
This latest policy change is another example of the Trump administration’s savage attacks on the most vulnerable. It is unacceptable, it is a violation of the law, and it will endanger the lives of trans people in federal prisons even more.
There are too many examples of trans people in prison who are abused and assaulted. According to the Department of Justice’s own statistics, 40 percent of trans people in jails and prisons were sexually assaulted in the previous year.
One of the many examples is Passion Star, a black transgender woman who filed a lawsuit after prison officials failed to protect her from years of sexual and physical abuse while incarcerated in men’s prisons. Passion was sentenced to 20 years in men’s prison. Throughout her incarceration, Passion was subjected to physical and verbal attacks from other inmates and the correctional officers.
In Passion’s own words, “For years, I was raped and beaten in prison, and when I asked for help, I was ignored. I was hurt, scared, and thrown in solitary in hopes that I would be forgotten, but today I can be proud that I never gave up. No one should be terrorized in prison and have to experience a nightmare like that.”
Sadly, Passion’s experience is not unique: it is an experience shared by many trans people in prisons and jails throughout the country.
Trans people, especially trans people of color and low-income trans people, are overrepresented in prisons due to an ongoing history of police profiling, discrimination, poverty, and other barriers. And while they are in prisons, trans people are disproportionately likely to face abuse. This abuse is even more likely for trans women when they are placed in men’s prisons.
But instead of trying to prevent this widespread violence against trans prisoners the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Prisons is making it worse. Under President Obama, BOP’s policy was to make decisions about whether to house a transgender prisoner in a men’s or women’s facility on a case-by-case basis, prioritizing factors like the prisoners’ safety and allowing for prisoners to be placed according to their gender identity in many cases.
Now, the BOP has reversed that policy. Under the new policy, trans people entering a new facility will automatically be placed in prisons based on the gender they were assigned at birth — even when that placement puts their safety and even their lives at risk.
And they’ll stay in that placement except in extremely “rare circumstances” — no matter the level of violence they face — meaning that almost all trans people in federal prisons would be permanently placed according to the gender they were assigned at birth.
Not only are the BOP’s policy changes harmful to the safety of transgender people in prison, but the new policies also violate a federal law known as the Prison Rape Elimination Act— a law signed by George Bush in 2003 that protects prisoners and voted for by current Attorney General Jeff Sessions himself when he was in the Senate — which tries to combat sexual violence in prisons and address the needs of prisoners, including trans prisoners, who are at high risk of facing violence.
DOJ’s own PREA guidelines make no bones about what that means when it comes to housing transgender prisoners: automatically placing trans people based on the gender they were thought to be at birth is a violation of the law.
According to DOJ, a policy violates PREA if it forces facility staff to make automatic placement decisions based on the gender someone was assigned at birth. A PREA violation also occurs if the prison staff does not make a true case-by-case assessment that considers a prisoner’s safety, the gender they live as, or if the policy makes it impossible for a trans person to ever be placed according to their gender identity. But that’s exactly what the new BOP policy does.
In this country, far too many people are imprisoned for far too long — and the violence, abuse, and inhumane conditions that many of them face while behind bars is unacceptable.
But instead of trying to find the solutions, the Trump administration is making it far worse. These latest policy changes are yet another assault on our communities. The Trump administration is heartlessly putting ideology and bigotry over the safety and lives of trans prisoners.
Jen Jenkins is a legal intern at NCTE.
