Transgender and prison?

[ignoramus]

Obviously (statistically) there must be transgenders in prisons...

Where does the law stand on this?
Do they just look at your gentials and throw you in the appropriate prison

I know there are lots of people who are transitioning at any given time. (hormone therapy ...with an operation to come some time in the near future?)
Obviously nobody wants those nasties in prison to fondle with your junk.

I s'pose this is no different from gays having their way with non gays with either sex.

[I_am_not_mafia]

I s'pose this is no different from gays having their way with non gays with either sex.

No it is very different.

If you are a gay man in a male prison then there are many other gay men to choose.

If you are a post-operative woman thrown into a male prison then you are the only woman they have access to.

This means that the trans-woman has to spend her entire prison sentence in solitary confinement for her own safety. This then becomes cruel and unusual punishment for being transgendered.

Luckily most countries will now put the trans-woman in a female prison, but it can still happen that they get thrown into a male prison even in countries that don't normally do this, especially if pre-op but otherwise have the body of a woman. And it has only relatively recently changed in many countries that they won't consider which prison to throw you into based on the sex you were assigned to at birth.

The reverse is also a problem with throwing a trans-man into a female prison.

It's also worth pointing out that because trans people are some of the most marginalised in the population, they are more likely to be forced into illegal work just to survive. So it's not a simple matter of thinking that they shouldn't have done the crime.

[Duty]

I seem to remember a UK case recently where a transgender woman was put in a female prison and basically raped a load of inmates. IIRC we are now opening our first trans women only incarceration facilities as a result.

[Yonadav]

 

I s'pose this is no different from gays having their way with non gays with either sex.

I feel that you sort of dangled this out there as bait. I decided to not be offended by it, because there is validity to it. One thing that has started to bother me in recent years is the way that trans issues frequently reveal that we have double standards concerning rape and molestation. I am appalled at the idea of putting a transwoman into a men's prison. But before her sex change, she would have been a ripe target for rape in a men's prison. Before her sex change, we basically wouldn't have cared about her being raped. After her sex change, it suddenly becomes super duper taboo to rape her.

Decades ago, police had a pretty free hand with their treatment of transsexuals. One of their 'tricks' to force transwomen to talk was to threaten to lock them up in a cell with men who would definitely try to rape them. Supposedly, the cops were required to get in there and break it up before actual rape happened. But I'll bet that they sometimes stood by and let it happen.

Transmen are also an issue in prisons. I have only known one who did prison time. He told me that he was not held with the general population for his own safety. Transmen very frequently get top surgery but not bottom surgery. And even when they do get bottom surgery, there is still a vaginal opening. So they have a big bullseye painted on their back if living in the general population of a men's prison.

Anyway, I no longer see it as just a trans issue. The trans issue has shined a lot of light on the fact that we need to start treating all rape equally. Getting raped is not supposed to be a part of a man's punishment in prison. It's pretty sick that we think prison rape is funny. We shouldn't need to be told that it's not funny. We should be able to derive that on our own. But we aren't so good at handling moral propositions unless they have been made 'popular'. And then the moral proposition becomes more meme than reason. And then the moral proposition is forgotten, and the meme takes on a life of its own that has nothing to do with the moral proposition, and it gets applied to all sorts of things that the moral proposition never would have been applied to. And people will get angry and confused if you try to reason with them on any other level than with memes.

My simple moral proposition is that everyone has a basic right to not be raped.

[Brian37]

Obviously (statistically) there must be transgenders in prisons...

Where does the law stand on this?
Do they just look at your gentials and throw you in the appropriate prison

I know there are lots of people who are transitioning at any given time. (hormone therapy ...with an operation to come some time in the near future?)
Obviously nobody wants those nasties in prison to fondle with your junk.

I s'pose this is no different from gays having their way with non gays with either sex.

I would say in general, not any specific prison or county or state, but in general the prisoner is going to be assigned the gender of their birth. 

It might be argued that some prisons segregate halls so that minority prisoners are less likely to be subject to abuse from others.