The gay and transgender wing at LA's Men's Central Jail is called K6G.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Men's Central Jail has a one-of-a-kind wing for gay and transgender inmates — and it's so popular that corrections officers actually have to test inmates on their sexuality to keep straight men out.
[A]mong the roughly 400 people housed in “K6G,” the gay wing of Men’s Central Jail, there’s little outward expression of racial prejudice or gang rivalry. Inmates in these three open-plan dorms don’t worry much about the gang politics and violence among the “general population.”
--Ani Ucar, LA Weekly
When Ucar, a woman, was allowed into the unit accompanied by a guard, she was greeted with, "I love those shoes."
In other parts of the jail, you try and smuggle in drugs and cigarettes. That didn’t happen in our wing.
If you were going to smuggle something in, it would be dresses and bras.
--Duncan Roy, a gay British film producer who was held in K6G for 89 days without bail in 2012, under ex–Sheriff Lee Baca’s controversial interpretation of “immigration holds"
You’re allowed to be with whomever you want to, talk to whomever you want and do whatever you want to, basically, as long as you do it in a respectable way.
--Yah Yah Williams
Yah Yah was elected
House Mouth by her fellow inmates.
MCJ’s gay wing was set up in response to a 1985 ACLU lawsuit, which aimed to protect homosexual inmates from a higher threat of physical violence than heterosexuals faced. But something unexpected has happened. The inmates are safer now, yes. But they’ve surprised everyone, perhaps even themselves, by setting up a small and flourishing society behind bars. Once released, some re-offend in order to be with an inmate they love. There are hatreds and occasionally even severe violence, but there is also friendship, community, love — and, especially, harmless rule-bending to dress up like models or decorate their bunks, often via devious means.
Filing down a plastic razor blade, say, to create a sewing needle, not a shank. “Smuggling” a rumored male seamstress from another bloc to handle custom work on a dress. And neatness counts among some of these men, who repurpose newspapers into long-handled brooms.
--Ucar
For some people, this is their home because a lot of their families have disowned them and shunned them, so we’re their family,
A lot of people’s walks in here have been hard walks.
I call [them] my kids. I try to give them the love that they aren’t receiving from their families.
--Yah Yah, a crack cocaine addict first jailed decades ago, at age 22
In New York, Riker's Island is opening a
new transgender wing this week.
The unit aims to provide a safer environment in the city-run facility for transgender women, who are up to 13 times more likely to experience violence in detention than cisgender (nontrans) inmates, according to a 2009 study cited by Lambda Legal.
Inmates will be housed in the 30-bed facility on a voluntary basis.
Because inmates are not all alike, the department is creating specialized housing for many specific inmate groups.
Just as adolescents, young adults, and mentally ill inmates have specialized needs, so do men who identify as women.
Providing [transgender women] with specialized housing and services is good policy and meaningful reform and is expected to reduce incidents involving these individuals while also leading to better long-term outcomes, including possible reductions in recidivism.
--DOC Commissioner Joe Ponte
Residents of the facility will be provided with appropriate medical and mental care, as needed.
Riker's holds 30-35 transgender inmates at any one time.
The former option to being held with the general population, where transgender women "face disproportionate rates of violence, rape, and harassment from both staff and other inmates" was being held in protective custody, which is a euphemism for solitary confinement...alone in a cell for 23 hours a day.
The safety and security of every person on Rikers Island-from officers to doctors and nurses to inmates-is a top priority for this administration.
We cannot continue on a path where violence is commonplace and inmates are treated in a manner that leaves them more broken than when they came in.
--Mayor Bill de Blasio
The lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender community has a “disproportionate contact with the justice system” due to “a history of bias, abuse, and profiling toward LGBT people by law enforcement.
Sixteen percent of transgender adults have been in a prison or jail for any reason. This compares with 2.7% of all adults who have ever been in prison.
--National Center for Transgender Equality
We are taking extra precautions to ensure these individuals are safe and receive appropriate support.
This includes recruiting dedicated staff who are comfortable working with this population and providing them with training on how to work with transgender women sensitively and effectively.
--Assistant Chief Yolanda Canty, who oversees the North Infirmary Command on the island, where the new housing unit will be located
Research at the University of Cincinnati by UC criminal justice doctoral candidate Gina Gibbs presents an overview of the
legal issues posed by transgender inmates. Gibbs is reporting on her findings at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology in San Francisco this weekend.
At the center of the debate are Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment, widely varying policies on the treatment of transgender populations and, Gibbs says, court crackdowns on prison systems, “ordering them to fix a problem that they don’t know how to approach.”
The title of Gibbs presentation is
Protecting the Punks, the Queens and Those in Between
[T]he word “transgendered” is just now emerging in prison research and literature, despite evidence that transgendered inmates have always been a part of the prison population. [I]n years past, transgender inmates had been referred to as “punks” or “queens” by the general prison population.
The most significant issues the transgendered pose to prison staff concern booking and processing procedures, housing selection and safety, security lockdown, daily rule infractions and health care concerns.
[This] includes varying policies regarding body searches, clothing allowances, segregation procedures, as well as issuing diagnosis and health care treatments.
Despite the numerous issues arising from these inmates, administrators and legislators continue to ignore them by refusing to develop cohesive policies, making employees and institutions vulnerable to costly litigation and court interference.
"Gender dysmorphia" (scare quotes mine...the diagnosis is correctly named gender dysphoria) is considered a medical condition. When the Eighth Amendment is applied to ignoring excessive medical conditions, prisons can be held liable. Yet it’s not clear whether hormone treatments should be required, because the U.S. Supreme Court is not clear on how to define transgendered.
--Gibbs
Gibbs says that the ultimate goal of her research is to apply her legal background to create a manual to guide prison institutions and administrators in dealing with transgender populations. Additionally, she hopes to develop principles of effective intervention specifically designed for the transgender population, including identifying the most effective risk assessment procedures, as well as identifying common response barriers. She also works in the UC Center for Criminal Justice Research’s Corrections Institute (UCCI). UCCI works to promote effective interventions and assessments for adult and juvenile offenders. Gibbs also holds a J.D. from Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
Certain groups within the inmate population are known for causing greater difficulty and therefore require clear-cut policies addressing issues specific to them. The transgendered population is one such group. Often, these separate policies are not developed until a crisis occurs, such as an inmate stabbing or violent rape, which requires administrators to act. Prior action indicates that administrators and Department of Corrections’ officials will once again wait for a crisis before addressing the issues created by transgendered inmates..
--Gibbs