Transexuals

[TheRocketSurgeon]

It's also worth pointing out what going to jail for a pre-op transsexual means in Alabama.

It won't be a woman's jail, it will be a man's jail. So either the transsexual will have to spend their entire time in solitary confinement or will be at of risk rape on a daily basis.

To be quite frank, we need to fucking do something to reduce prison rape.  Jails need to be held accountable when it happens under their watch.

They did that, with the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA, or "pree-uh"), passed by the feds in 2003 to make federal and state prisons accountable.

It is a miserable failure, and amounts to a sort of inquisition - they can threaten to lock you up because they got an anonymous tip that you were in danger. Inmates and staff, both, can do this. Anyone who goes to them for help is guaranteed to be sent to the Hole, unless they sign a contract that waives the state of the prisoner's rights under that law. 

Among inmates, it's a foul joke, said with an ever-present sneer... and to mock its uselessness, they will shout "PREA! PREA!" whenever someone is getting beaten up or stabbed-- knowing the guards will do nothing but fill out the paperwork after-the-fact, and it will get the loser of the fight locked in Solitary for at least a year. [Edit to Add: I should point out that guards do break up fights as best they can, but inmates will try to fight in the blind zones, and the guards aren't really looking that hard, most of the time.]

In my case, the jail where I fought my case kept me for almost 2 1/2 years in Solitary, in a mental ward full of people who screamed 24/7 as if being axed, smeared pee/poo endlessly, and said the most horribly violent things you'd ever wish to forget you heard, as a way of pressuring me into giving them information I was Constitutionally within my rights to refuse them (I had no such info to give, but wasn't about to tell them that, as in addition to the principle of the thing, they would have assumed I was lying and probably made it worse), by saying I was such a "prettyboy" that I was likely in danger in Gen Pop. I wrote dozens of requests to get out, and was ignored. They sent a cop and a psychologist by my cell every week to ask me how things were going, after the cop asked if I had anything to say, and when I said no and to let me out into GP, he'd sign another week of isolation. The day after I lost my trial, I was in GP.

From then on, I was in GP (the prison had no reason to pressure me, in that way, though after I started winning some legal cases against them, I began to see conditions of where I was held rapidly deteriorate), and had very few problems. One guy tried to drag me into a cell at one point, and I had to fight, early on. After I split his skull on a staircase, having "thrown" him by reversing his grip on me, I was "referred" by the prison staff to go to county jail again, to be charged with a new crime (it was quickly dismissed by the DA, as he was a known rapist). After that, I had almost no problems because I kept my company carefully, equally, and I worked as a Law Clerk (or "jailhouse lawyer", as some call it) in the library, and everyone knew I was their potential savior in the case of a Disciplinary Report (DR) that might send--or already have sent--them to the Hole. I was the specialist for guys who were in Solitary, their one source of legal access. I could bring them legal documents they wrote to request, and give them advice on how to file things and stand up for their rights.

I did know know any trans inmates, though it is policy for the inmate to be housed according to biological sex, requiring permanent Solitary or daily assault... there have been cases of one being put in GP and dying during a gang-rape. (Likely, a literal one.) However, I did know what conditions were like for many of the gay inmates in there, and the issues they had to deal with when trying to report an actual rape or other abuse. PREA was used against them routinely, if they reported domestic violence or similar threats, asking if they wanted to invoke PREA (and thus permanent Solitary), and if they said no it was treated as "must not be that important". They would come to me looking for help, and all I could do was give them a photocopy of a list of organizations they could contact, warning them that any communications they sent out of the prison, by phone or by mail, had the potential to be monitored unless sent to a registered media person, certain approved clergy, or an attorney, and that what they wrote could have ramifications. I cannot imagine what they must have to go through, truly.

There are many, many things about the US prison industrial complex that need to be carefully examined by our public, and radically overhauled to bring us in line with other First World nations and align with international law (we have not signed treaties that require us to treat our prisoners by international standards). We say "put them Away™ and off the streets", and we do not realize what it means when they get to Away. As long as the trash is taken out, we don't care if it's the mafia running the garbage trucks, etc.

Edit to Add: Do not be wholly discouraged. There are those who are fighting back, and winning. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/trans...prisoners/