[Pnews] Even When Trans Women Win Transfers to Women’s Prisons, They Still Aren’t Safe

[Prisoner News]

truthout.org
<https://truthout.org/articles/even-when-trans-women-win-transfers-to-womens-prisons-they-still-arent-safe/>
Even When Trans Women Win Transfers to Women’s Prisons, They Still Aren’t
Safe
Victoria Law
July 15, 2024
------------------------------
[image: 2024_0715-trans-rights-1200x800.jpg]
Fans hold flags celebrating Pride Night during a game between the Houston
Dash and Angel City FC at BMO Stadium on June 25, 2023, in Los Angeles,
California.Katharine Lotze / Getty Images

After 17 days, Amber Kim has suspended her one-woman hunger strike
protesting her involuntary transfer to a men’s prison.

Since her incarceration in 2006, Kim had spent 15 years in men’s jails and
prisons. During that time, she fought both for gender-affirming medical
care and for a transfer to a women’s prison
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trans-rights-prison-amber-kim_n_6557ce06e4b0998d69a049d4>.
Finally, in 2021, she was transferred to the Washington Corrections Center
for Women (WCCW).

Three years later, this past March, Kim was issued a 504 disciplinary
ticket for allegedly engaging in consensual sex with her girlfriend, a
cisgender woman. (Sex, even consensual sex, is against prison rules
<https://apps.leg.wa.gov/WAC/default.aspx?cite=137-25-030>.)

Prison officials moved both women to a closed custody unit, also known as
punitive segregation. As the *Huffington Post* reported
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/washington-moves-trans-woman-to-mens-prison_n_667ef30ee4b0d079dd459357>,
Kim’s disciplinary report was leaked, seemingly by prison staff, to
the *National
Review*, which published an inflammatory story about the ticket and alleged
that trans women sexually exploit cisgender women in women’s prisons.

The ticket also triggered a review of Kim’s placement in a women’s prison.
Department of Corrections Communications Director Chris Wright told
the *Huffington
Post*
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/washington-moves-trans-woman-to-mens-prison_n_667ef30ee4b0d079dd459357>
that the “housing review was initiated because of Kim’s most recent sexual
contact with another incarcerated individual.”

In June, three months after she was issued the disciplinary ticket,
officers brought Kim out of her cell and told her she was being transferred
to a men’s prison. She asked to see the transfer paperwork. She also asked
to speak with her lawyer. When both requests were denied, she refused to
walk. In response, she told *Truthout* that guards threw her to the ground,
hog tied her, and drove her the 70 miles to the Monroe Correctional
Complex, where she was placed in the Intensive Management Unit, or solitary
confinement. She was issued two tickets for allegedly refusing to follow
staff orders and refusing a facility transfer.

In response, Kim went on hunger strike. She initially contacted *Truthout *nine
days into her strike. While LGBTQ+ people across the nation were
commemorating Pride with parades, protests and parties, Kim spent her
single hour outside her cell in a concrete yard calling the media and
trying her best to ignore hunger pangs.

Despite her repeated requests, no one has told her what steps she must take
to return to WCCW. She submitted an appeal, but despite prison policy
requiring a response within 15 business days
<https://www.doc.wa.gov/information/policies/files/490700.pdf>, has heard
nothing. “I’m writing another letter to [the head of the Department of
Corrections in] Olympia today,” she told *Truthout *in mid-July.

At Monroe, Kim has two choices: stay in extreme isolation or face continual
physical and sexual violence in general population. During her 15 years in
men’s prisons, she experienced continual physical and sexual violence —
including being called derogatory names in three languages every time she
left her cell, being beaten up, and facing men attempting to shove their
way into her cell after she rejected their advances.

“I am terrified of being put in a men’s general population,” she told
*Truthout.
*“If they put me in a cell with a random dude, there’s a pretty good chance
he’s going to victimize me. And if I’m in a pod full of men, I guarantee
you some of them will victimize me.”

Kim’s fears are neither irrational nor exceptional. Trans people behind
bars are over five times more likely to be sexually assaulted
<https://theappeal.org/new-jersey-transgender-prisoner-policy-demi-minor/#:~:text=the%202015%20U.-,S,-.%20Transgender%20Survey%2C>
by staff and over nine times more likely to be assaulted by other
incarcerated people, according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. The
survey also found that nearly one of every four respondents reported
physical assault by staff or other incarcerated people while one in five
reported being sexually assaulted.

In recent years, several states have implemented policies allowing trans
people — particularly trans women — to be placed in prisons according to
their gender identity. That’s why Kim was able to transfer to WCCW, and
finally feel safe from the constant threat of physical and sexual violence.
Now, Washington seems to be following a troubling trend in which states
that have recently adopted gender-affirming prison housing policies for
trans women
<https://truthout.org/articles/california-law-is-step-forward-but-fails-to-guarantee-safety-for-trans-prisoners/>
are rolling them back, particularly after barrages of transphobic media
reports.
*“Be Perfect or We Will Not Let You Be Safe”*

According to the Washington Department of Corrections, approximately 250
people in its 11 prisons (or 1.1 percent of the prison population) identify
as transgender or nonbinary. Nearly half (or 122 individuals) identify as
trans women.

Currently, 12 trans women are housed at WCCW.

Since January 2021, WCCW staff have issued 33 disciplinary tickets for 504
infractions (or infractions for having sex), according to an email from the
Washington Department of Corrections. Of those, only Kim’s has resulted in
a transfer. A prison spokesperson told *Truthout* that officials will
conduct reviews every six months and that Kim’s placement may be considered
then.

“I feel like [my transfer] sends a message of terror — you damn well better
be perfect or we will not let you be safe,” Kim reflected.

That’s what A.D. Sean Lewis, an attorney with the Prison Law Office’s Trans
Beyond Bars program, has seen as well.

Transferring trans women to men’s prisons or changing housing policies in
response to allegations of sexual activity divides them into categories:
those who are seen as safe and deserving to be housed in a women’s prison,
and those who no longer deserve safety considerations, he told *Truthout.*

That divide also “creates the implication that trans people present unique
safety concerns that non-trans people don’t,” he added, despite several
studies showing that incarcerated trans people are far more likely to
experience rather than perpetrate violence against their cisgender peers.
*“I Wish I Was Confident in the Broken System”*

In 2021, the New Jersey Department of Corrections (DOC) settled a lawsuit
filed by the ACLU over its treatment of trans people in custody. Under its
June 2021 settlement agreement, the DOC agreed to maintain a policy for at
least a year giving trans people the “presumption” to be housed according
to their gender identity.

In 2023, after a trans woman impregnated two women at the Edna Mahan
Correctional Facility, New Jersey’s sole women’s prison, the state reversed
its gender-affirming housing policy. The current policy requires
incarcerated trans women to undergo vaginoplasty
<https://theappeal.org/new-jersey-transgender-prisoner-policy-demi-minor/>,
a gender-affirming surgery which removes the penis, testicles and scrotum
and creates a vaginal canal and vulva, to eliminate any “reproductive
concerns.”

The new policy meant that, although no one had accused 61-year-old Gia
Valentina of any sexual activity, she was nonetheless transferred to the
men’s New Jersey State Prison. She had been at Edna Mahan for only 59 days
after a years-long fight. But on May 4, 2023, she was moved.

At the men’s prison, Valentina has spent the past 14 months in segregation
despite the state law restricting solitary confinement
<https://www.billtrack50.com/BillDetail/917759>to no more than 20
consecutive days. The law also limits the practice for vulnerable people,
including pregnant or disabled people, those under 21 or over 65 years old
and LGBTQ+ people. Although it has specific guidelines for the other
vulnerable populations, the law provides none for LGBTQ+ people
<https://boltsmag.org/new-jersey-trans-women-solitary/>.

Valentina had been requesting vaginoplasty since February 2022 and is
hoping that this will address prison administrators’ new-found
“reproductive concerns.” But behind bars, Valentina cannot schedule her own
medical appointments and must rely on the prison’s medical staff to do so —
and on the administration to authorize these appointments. Meanwhile, in
segregation and uncertain about her surgery, her days blur together.

“When you asked me what my typical day looked like, they [really] don’t
differ from day to day when it comes to dealing with my mental anguish of
not getting my vaginoplasty surgery (having this ‘thing’ still on my body)
and being in this men’s prison,” she wrote in an e-message to *Truthout.*
“The moment I wake up I am faced with having this penis! It’s a brutal
reminder of how I am being held captive in this body that is not mine. Then
I have to face all the discrimination, transphobia, misgendering, all the
weirdos, perverts, creeps. This is the worst I have ever had it and the
highest level of trans discrimination I have ever faced.”

In mid-June, Valentina had a ray of hope. Jamie Belladonna, another trans
woman at New Jersey State Prison, had obtained authorization for
vaginoplasty and was taken to an outside hospital for the surgery. “This is
a very historical moment for the Pride community inside these walls of the
prison industry and personally for me to see my sister get the medical
treatment she needs,” Valentina wrote on the day that her friend left*. *

“I am supposed to be next for surgery,” she continued. “I wish I was
confident in the broken system, but I am not. We shall see how things
unfold.”

Belladonna had previously been told that she would not be allowed to
transfer to the women’s prison until she obtained the surgery. She had
assumed that she would be transferred to Edna Mahan once the hospital
discharged her.

Instead, she was returned to New Jersey State Prison. There, prison
officials told her that she needed to fill out an official transfer
request. She also learned that the prison psychologist had flagged her as
moderate to high risk of committing sexual violence. When she met with him
in early July, she learned that his assessment had been based purely on her
pre-surgical genitalia. Since she had had vaginoplasty, he told her he was
removing his risk assessment that she would likely commit sexual violence.

Now, however, prison officials have deemed *her* as being at risk for being
a victim of sexual violence and have moved her to a protective custody
unit. Her friend Gisella Mann told *Truthout* that unit is even more
isolated than the segregation unit she had been in with Valentina. In
protective custody, Belladonna stays in her cell nearly all day. She has no
access to recreation, in contravention of the state’s Isolated Confinement
Restriction Act. She also has no access to electronic messaging, although
she can still use her tablet to call pre-approved phone numbers, like
Mann’s. (*Truthout *was unable to get on her approved phone list before her
surgery and subsequent isolation.)

Belladonna has since filled out the paperwork requesting a transfer to Edna
Mahan. Staff have told her that she may be waiting up to 30 days for a
decision.

“This is psychological torture,” she recently told Mann.

The New Jersey Department of Corrections did not respond to *Truthout’s*
questions before publication.
*“They Fear Continuing to Speak Up” *

In California, Senate Bill 132, or The Transgender Respect, Agency and
Dignity Act, went into effect on January 1, 2021. The Act allows trans,
nonbinary and intersex people to request to be housed and searched in a
manner consistent with their gender identity. Since then, 334 trans women
have requested to be placed in women’s prisons; 46 have been approved.
<https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/prea/sb-132-faqs/>

Unsurprisingly, the transfers of trans women to women’s prisons spurred a
flurry of transphobic media stories, which lobbed unfounded accusations of
trans women sexually assaulting and impregnating cisgender women. (A review
by the state’s Office of the Inspector General
<https://www.oig.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Special-Review-No.-22-01.pdf>
found no substantiated, or proven, instances of sexual assault or
impregnation by trans women.)

The firestorm of attention on the few dozen women transferred to Central
California Women’s Facility (CCWF) obscures the more prevalent violence,
said A.D. Lewis.

He noted that hundreds of trans women remain in men’s prisons. According to
the state’s data <https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/prea/sb-132-faqs/>, 70 trans
women were denied transfer and 93 changed their minds during their
classification hearings. Another 125 are still awaiting a decision.

In male prisons, trans women face extremely high rates of violence, sexual
harassment, sexual assault and trafficking. But the media furor has focused
not on the heinous and extreme violence facing trans women in men’s
prisons, but instead on the actions of dozens at women’s prisons.

In an email to *Truthout, *the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation stated that, since SB132’s passage, 13 transgender women
were transferred to women’s prisons and later transferred back to men’s
prisons. Eleven of those return transfers were voluntary. The agency also
pointed out that both federal and state law prohibit housing decisions
based solely on a person’s genitalia.

Jen Orthwein represents two trans women who were transferred to the Central
California Women’s Facility. Both were subjects of sustained media
attention after their transfers to CCWF and ultimately transferred back to
men’s prisons.

“Despite exercising multiple forms of advocacy, including letters to
stakeholders and litigation, we have been powerless to prevent our clients
from being subjected to prolonged isolation and irreparable harm while in
facilities for women,” Orthwein told *Truthout*.

“In response to being public advocates for themselves and other
incarcerated transgender people, our clients were each subjected to years
in isolation,” they continued. “Ultimately, they were returned to men’s
facilities almost immediately after their stories of tortuous treatment in
the women’s facility were published. They fear continuing to speak up and
face more retaliation. They have conveyed they just want to be able to
program to reduce their time and get out, which they have not been allowed
to do for years now.” (*Truthout *is not publishing Orthwein’s clients’
names to prevent further retaliation.)

Lewis has seen a similar pattern. “The people who advocate for themselves
and for the trans community at large are often targeted and face extreme
discrimination and retaliation,” he told *Truthout.* That harassment and
retaliation convey the message that advocacy, including filing grievances
about prison wrongdoings, will lead to repercussions.

Furthermore, he notes that sensationalistic media about trans women in
women’s prisons reverberate far past the individuals and prisons.

“These types of stories are widely shared among corrections officials,” he
explained. Lewis, who visits jails and prisons throughout California, has
been asked on multiple occasions about the alleged impregnations in New
Jersey and how officials can prevent similar scenarios.

Lewis notes that staff have been giving the media confidential information
about trans people. “There are people in prisons and jails who are actively
breaking rules, sharing confidential information and leaking information to
right-wing press. Then, when these stories are reported, these stories have
a huge reach nationally.”

That’s what happened to Kim while she was at the women’s prison in
Washington. Under prison policy
<https://www.doc.wa.gov/information/policies/files/490700.pdf>,
incarcerated people’s gender identities are confidential medical
information. Nonetheless, someone at the DOC leaked Kim’s disciplinary
report. In late March, a prison spokesperson told* HuffPost*
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/washington-moves-trans-woman-to-mens-prison_n_667ef30ee4b0d079dd459357>
that the agency was “concerned that someone disclosed private medical
information” about Kim and was investigating the leak. In mid-July, the
same spokesperson told *Truthout *that the investigation was ongoing.

Twelve days into her hunger strike, Kim was moved from segregation into the
prison’s medical unit to be monitored by health care staff. There, she
remains on segregation status. Because she has been on hunger strike,
nurses check her blood pressure and vitals. When they do so, she is either
handcuffed behind her back or placed in waist restraints.

On July 8, 17 days into her hunger strike, a prison doctor informed her
that one of her gender-affirming surgeries, which had been scheduled while
she had been at WCCW, would be canceled if she did not begin eating.

Kim suspended her hunger strike. “The state is trying to force me to choose
between safe housing or a gender-affirming surgery that will allow me to
live my life more fully,” she said in a statement to advocates and
supporters
<https://amberfayefoxkim.wordpress.com/2024/07/11/hunger-strike-update/>.

“The most important thing to consider is that I’m not an outlier. I’ve just
been able to gain attention for what is normal,” Kim told *Truthout* three
days after suspending her hunger strike. “The use of state-sanctioned
violence to force people into unsafe situations is normal for the DOC. The
disregarding of a person’s understanding of their safety is normal for the
DOC. Discrimination against LGBTQ people is normal for the DOC. I’m not
special. I just happened to have had some luck in bringing attention to the
issue.”
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