{"id":327,"date":"2018-05-17T22:35:26","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T22:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/?p=327"},"modified":"2018-05-17T22:44:06","modified_gmt":"2018-05-17T22:44:06","slug":"transgender-prisoners-criminalization-healthcare-and-the-carceral-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/uncategorized\/transgender-prisoners-criminalization-healthcare-and-the-carceral-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Transgender Prisoners: Criminalization, Healthcare, and the Carceral State"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We all have some conception of prison and the peopl<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">e behind bars, but what about trans prisoners? Trans people in prison are among the most verbally and sexually abused people in our prison system today. How did they get to this point?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We begin by looking at the history of unfair targeting of trans folks. Trans people have long been the unfair target of law enforcement. All the way back to the Civil War and Reconstruction, law enforcement began cracking down on gender nonconformity with anti-cross dressing laws. In the 1960\u2019s, trans people fought back when a restaurant began charging a loitering fee to trans customers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We then shift to today\u2019s inequality. Today, the abuse manifests itself in the form of lack of necessary healthcare and the enforcing improper gender hygiene and appearance regulations. In addition, since these abuses often serve to perpetuate the inmates gender misalignment, trans inmates often act out, which leads to being written up and usually extended sentences. While there has been some effort to rectify the problem, such as the passing of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, it has been pretty superficial in effect, as only one state out of twenty-one has been found to pass the standards. We will also analyze famous case studies of trans prisoners such as Chelsea Manning and Shiloh Quine to get a more personal aspect of what it is like to be a trans prisoner in the United States. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Finally, we will look at possible solutions for the problem<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">s that plague trans people in America\u2019s prison system. Reform is direly needed, but how the best way to go about is the big question. Some scholars, lik<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">e Eli Vitulli believe that since prisons reflect what is desired by society (ie: not trans people), prison as we know it needs to be abolished. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Bios<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sydney is a fourth-year political science major at Grinnell College. She plans to move to Washington D.C. after graduation and work as a National Canvas Director for Grassroots Campaigns and eventually attend law school. She has a strong interest in prisoner rights and greatly enjoyed learning about trans inmates and the justice system.<\/p>\n<p>Derek is a first-year and member of the basketball team at Grinnell College. Originally hailing from outside Decatur, Illinois, Derek enjoys playing basketball, watching movies, hanging out with friends, playing the banjo, and listening to music. Derek intends to major in history with particular interest in military history and spend the summer volunteering in the History Room at the Decatur Public Library.<\/p>\n<p>Paige is a second-year philosophy and english double major at Grinnell College. This summer she will be doing gender, women, and sexuality studies research about American histories of non-monogamy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Media File<\/strong><\/p>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-327-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/HIS-224-Transgender-Inmates-51718-3.30-PM.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/HIS-224-Transgender-Inmates-51718-3.30-PM.mp3\">http:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/HIS-224-Transgender-Inmates-51718-3.30-PM.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Credits<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We would like to thank Eli Vitulli for his time, cooperation, and knowledge in our interview.\u00a0 We would also like to thank Gina Donovan for her technical support throughout the project. Additionally, we are grateful for Carolyn Lewis&#8217;s oversight and support\u00a0 during the semester.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Brown, George and Everett McDuffie. \u201cHealth Care Policies Addressing Transgender Inmates in Prison Systems in the United States.\u201d\u00a0<i>Journal of Correctional Health Care<\/i>. Vol. 15, No. 4. October 2009.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.1177\/1078345809340423\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.1177\/1078345809340423<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Dunham, Grace. \u201cThe Forgotten Ones: Queer and Trans Lives in the Prison System.\u201d<i>The New Yorker,\u00a0<\/i>February 8, 2016.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/books\/page-turner\/the-forgotten-ones-queer-and-trans-lives-in-the-prison-system\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/books\/page-turner\/the-forgotten-ones-queer-and-trans-lives-in-the-prison-system<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fenstermaker, Sarah and Jenness, Valerie. \u201cAgnes Goes To Prison: Gender Authenticity, Transgender Inmates in Prisons for Men, and Pursuit of The Real Deal.\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gender and Society <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">28:1, February 2014, 5-31.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/43669854<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cLGBT People and the Prison Rape Elimination Act.\u201d National Center for Transgender Equality. Last modified July 2012. https:\/\/transequality.org\/sites\/default\/files\/docs\/resources\/PREA_July2012.pdf<\/p>\n<p>Oberholtzer, Elliot. \u201cThe Dismal State of Transgender Incarceration Policies.\u201d Prison Policy Initiative. Last modified November 8, 2017.<a id=\"LPlnk264978\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/08\/transgender\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/08\/transgender\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pasulka, Nicole. \u201cLadies In The Streets: Before Stonewall, Transgender Uprising Changed Lives\u201d National Public Radio (May 2015) \u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/codeswitch\/2015\/05\/05\/404459634\/ladies-in-the-streets-before-stonewall-transgender-uprising-changed-lives\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/codeswitch\/2015\/05\/05\/404459634\/ladies-in-the-streets-before-stonewall-transgender-uprising-changed-lives<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pemberton, Sarah. \u201cEnforcing Gender: The Constitution of Sex and Gender in Prison Regimes.\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Signs<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. 39:1 (Autumn 2013), 151-175 <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.1086\/670828\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.1086\/670828<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/nation\/arresting-dress-timeline-anti-cross-dressing-laws-u-s<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shaer, Matthew. \u201cThe Long, Lonely Road of Chelsea Manning.\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The New York Times Magazine, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">June 12, 2017. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/06\/12\/magazine\/the-long-lonely-road-of-chelsea-manning.html?mtrref=www.google.com&amp;mtrref=undefined&amp;gwh=770FAB1C9974581E693E31E04918F7E3&amp;gwt=pay\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/06\/12\/magazine\/the-long-lonely-road-of-chelsea-manning.html?mtrref=www.google.com&amp;mtrref=undefined&amp;gwh=770FAB1C9974581E693E31E04918F7E3&amp;gwt=pay<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Stahl, Aviv. \u201cTransgender Prisoners: What an Inmate\u2019s Surgery Means for Trans Rights.\u201d\u00a0<i>Rolling Stone,\u00a0<\/i>November 9, 2017.<\/p>\n<p>Stanley, Eric and Nat Smith.\u00a0<i>Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex.\u00a0<\/i>Oakland: AK Press, 2011.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stanley, Eric A., Spade, Dean. \u201cQueering Prison Abolition, Now?\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">American Quarterly<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. 64:1 (March 2012), 115-127 <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/41412834\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/41412834<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">Vitulli, Elias. \u201cRacialized Criminality and the Imprisoned Trans Body: Adjudicating Access to Gender-Related Medical Treatment in Prisons.\u201d\u00a0<i>Social Justice<\/i>. 37:1, (2010-11), 53-68\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/41336935\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/41336935<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Vitulli, Elias. \u201cRacialized Criminality and the Imprisoned Trans Body: Adjudicating Access to Gender-Related Medical Treatment in Prisons.\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Social Justice<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. 37:1, (2010-11), 53-68\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/41336935\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/41336935<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Transcript<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Derek:\u00a0<\/b>You may have a certain image of prison from the media, whether you watch Orange is the New Black or read stories of violent incidents in the news. There are certain notions that people think of when they imagine prison, such as hyper masculinity or violence. One population that is often overlooked is transgender inmates. In this podcast, we will historically examine prison policies relating to transgender prisoners and utilize case studies to investigate the experience of trans people in the American prison system. My name Derek Jones and I\u2019m with Sydney Banach and Paige Oamek. Today is May 13, 2018 and we\u2019re at Grinnell College. By examining various aspects of the lives of transgender inmates, we hope to bring light to the mistreatment and expose why there are not better policies in place regarding trans prisoners.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Sydney:<\/b>\u00a0Prison is a place where people who are considered unfit for society end up. For many, including transgender folks, this is often not because of what they have done but how they live in a world whose structures exist to exclude them. To understand why this is and how transgender people exist in the prison system today we must look back in history and examine the criminalization of cross-dressing and gender non-conformity.<\/p>\n<p><b>Paige:<\/b>\u00a0Memphis, Tennessee, 1863, women disguised themselves as men to fight in the Civil War&#8211; in rebuttal laws were passed as a way to keep these women in their place and out of the battle fields. In the 19th Century, anti-cross-dressing laws began popping up city by city, 1879 being the year with the highest number of cross-dressing arrests of the century. Being a cross-dresser or dressing in a way not aligned with your sex at birth began to become officially criminalized and people who cross-dressed had to interact with the law because of their gender presentation. Going forward, these laws began to shift- for example, in 1954, Denver\u2019s law originally established 1886 that worked to fine or jail any person who appeared in a \u201cdress not belonging to their sex\u201d was changed to make it illegal for men to dress as women.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Eli:<\/b>\u00a0All of those laws existed before our current conceptualizations of transgender, which is really, like transgender was a really term that was arguably coined in the 1960s but didn\u2019t really come into use until the 1990s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Paige<\/b>: That\u2019s Eli Vitulli, Eli is visiting professor of History and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at Grinnell College. Eli brings up an important point when interrogating public gender performance and the law: Its integral not to equate the idea of \u2018cross-dressing\u2019 with being transgender. Transgender people are people are those who have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from their assigned sex at birth. Where as, cross-dressing refers to the act of presenting gender in a non-normative way, often through clothing. Over time, cross-dressing has been used for purposes of disguise, comfort, self-discovery, and more.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Eli:<\/b>\u00a0I think its important to differentiate that they weren\u2019t per se criminalizing transness because that wasn\u2019t a thing that people understood during that time but certainly cross-dressing, gender nonconforming etc.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Paige:\u00a0<\/b>With that understanding, we should examine how gender nonconforming or trans individuals interacted with the law and prison beyond the immediate idea of anti-cross-dressing laws.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Eli:<\/b>\u00a0There\u2019s long been gender nonconformity or people that we now label as trans in prisons and jails and most of them were there not because of cross-dressing laws. So that was one reason that people got incarcerated and also sodomy laws, police often have a long history of policing gay, trans, queer whatever you want to call it communities and incarcerating them and have also used things like public nuis<\/p>\n<div role=\"list\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_rp_o5\">\n<div class=\"_rp_05 ms-border-color-neutralLight ShowReferenceAttachmentsLinks ShowConsesusSchedulingLink\">\n<div class=\"_rp_d5 _rp_c5\">\n<div role=\"document\">\n<div id=\"Item.MessagePartBody\" class=\"_rp_25\">\n<div id=\"Item.MessageUniqueBody\" class=\"_rp_35 ms-font-weight-regular ms-font-color-neutralDark rpHighlightAllClass rpHighlightBodyClass\">\n<div class=\"rps_5fcc\">\n<div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<div id=\"x_divtagdefaultwrapper\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">ance and other types of laws that weren\u2019t specifically around gender and sexuality but were flexible.<\/p>\n<p><b>Derek:<\/b>\u00a0Now we move to 1966 at Compton\u2019s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. Police relations with the trans and queer community were escalating&#8230;Cafeteria staff had been calling police on transgender customers at the restaurant. The staff had felt that transgender customers were loitering and causing the cafeteria to lose business from more desirable customers. To combat this, staff began charging a service fee for trans people as an attempt to deter their business and if that didn\u2019t work management and staff attempted to use the law to police trans and queer people\u2019s presence in their cafeteria. In response, the transgender community began a demonstration against Compton\u2019s Cafeteria. The police were called on the protest, as one of the officers attempted to arrest a trans woman she threw coffee on his face&#8211; a riot broke out, Windows were smashed, dishes thrown, police and trans protesters spilled onto the street. This was one of the first known instances of collective queer resistance to police harassment in the United States.<\/p>\n<p><b>Paige:\u00a0<\/b>Antiquated anti-cross-dressing laws began to get overturned city by city and state by state around the 70\u2019s and world is beginning to construct and define the concept of transness as we know it today, but as we know, this does not somehow fix the law\u2019s punishment of gender non-normativity and deviance. The law and prison\u2019s relationship with gender-non-conforming and trans folks and the criminalization of transness is a much more complicated history. This story is one that involves: power structures, race, class, medicine, and more. The law and prison\u2019s very existence is tied up in bias and punishing deviance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Sydney:<\/b>\u00a0Fast Forwarding to the early 2000\u2019s, America\u2019s prison system has continued to fail to acknowledge and address safety issues relating to transgender prisoners. In 2003, Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Paige:<\/b>\u00a0This act provides the basis for almost all transgender policies in prison today. \u00a0PREA was passed in response to concern over the high level of sexual violence that occurs in prison, and in 2009 the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission identified transgender populations in prison to be at an unusually high risk of sexual assault and labeled them as a vulnerable population.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Sydney:<\/b>\u00a0While PREA is supposed to set a baseline, many states fail to comply with the standards that it outlines, leaving trans prisoners in danger. The Prison Policy Institute performed a study that measured the compliance by state to PREA\u2019s standards relating to transgender inmates. Out of 21 states, they found that only one, Pennsylvania, fulfilled all PREA requirements. Many of the facilities did not have separate showers, didn\u2019t consider gender identity when placing inmates in housing, and still performed searches to examine and label transgender inmates\u2019 genitals. In addition, the study measured whether the prisons had pass their PREA audits, where an examiner comes and checks whether the system is compliant. Even though many of these states had violations when the study examined them, they all passed their PREA audits. Every single facility. So one has to question not only why the transgender policies do not fulfill PREA standards but also why they can pass the audits with blatant violations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Paige:\u00a0<\/b>We asked Eli about the effects of the noncompliance to these PREA standards relating to placement in prisons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Eli:<\/b>\u00a0Its also really traumatic to be basically required to conform to gender grooming standards that misalign with your gender. So, men\u2019s prisons, women\u2019s prisons require a certain kind of gender grooming, disallow make up, really hard to get bras you usually have to have them medically prescribed to you as transwoman, you have to wear masculinized institutional clothing as a transwoman, some will alter their clothing, but that\u2019s technically an institutional violation so doing that means they often get written up which means that their sentences are extended or at least they lose good time, so trans people end up often staying longer because of these things, so there\u2019s a lot of trauma and violence that is kind of cyclical in a lot of ways.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Sydney:\u00a0<\/b>Eli explains\u00a0how gender nonconforming prisoners are not housed in the places where PREA requires them, leading to this cycle of incarceration. Trans inmates are forced to violate prisoner dress codes and grooming standards because officials fail to assign them to the correctional facility that aligns with their, which leads to longer sentences. The system seems to be structured to keep transgender people in prison and away from society as long as possible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Derek:<\/b>\u00a0In addition to these violations on trans prisoner placement, many gender nonconforming inmates experience an immense amount of trouble when it comes to accessing the health care that they need. Eli says that we must in mind that while trans prisoners may have a little more difficulty than other inmates in accessing their medical necessities, these difficulties exist in a broader, broken system.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Eli<\/b>: One piece of context that\u2019s really important is that basically all medical treatment in prison is terrible. People die or are disabled pretty regularly in prison and jails because the medical treatment is terrible. So there\u2019s incentive for a number of reasons for prison and jail administrators not to provide adequate medical treatment, which a lot of the time is monetary but is also about the ways that people who are incarcerated are not seen as human or not deserving and getting things for free so that\u2019s part of the really important context.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Sydney:<\/b>\u00a0Even while keeping this in mind, research on transgender prisoners shows that their access to healthcare is remarkably bad. A study was published in the Journal of Correctional Healthcare that sent freedom of information requests to al fifty correctional departments that asked a series of questions relating to trans inmate healthcare. They requested information surrounding access to hormones, psychiatric evaluations, and genital reassignment surgery. \u00a0Out of the 44 states that responded, 19 reported that they did not have any official healthcare policies on transgender inmates, failing to recognize them as a population. Many failed to list genital reassignment surgery as medical treatment, and some states said that they would only continue hormone treatment and would not take responsibility for diagnosing any new inmates without a prior diagnosis of gender dysphoria.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">Paige:\u00a0Eli explained how getting access to hormones without an existing legitimate diagnosis of dysphoria is extremely difficult in the prison setting even if a state does not have a policy prohibiting initiation of treatment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Eli<\/b>: So the problem is that most folks who come into prisons have not had access to insurance medical treatment may already be on hormones but may be getting them from the black market and don\u2019t have a legitimate diagnosis. And if you don\u2019t have a legitimate diagnosis and prescriptions, then they\u2019re not going to just provide it to you. So now folks often can request medical evaluations and go through various kinds of processes to get a diagnosis of what is now gender dysphoria diagnosis and a prescription for hormones. It can be really hard to get that, and often prisons will hire people who don\u2019t believe that it is very medically necessary to provide medicine for trans folks, or have a really high standard for that.<\/p>\n<p><b>Derek:<\/b>\u00a0The most famous case of a transgender prisoner by far is Chelsea Manning. She was the first to really bring attention to the injustice of trans prisoners into the mainstream media. Chelsea Manning, then Bradley Manning, was a US Army Intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq. During that time, Manning became disillusioned with America\u2019s seemingly pointless occupation of Iraq and the invisible brutality of war to Americans back home. She is most notoriously known for leaking hundreds of thousands of US military data, reports, and records to Wikileaks. She was subsequently charged with a score of crimes, including aiding the enemy, which carries a life sentence. She was ultimately sentenced to 35 years.\u00a0\u00a0It is important to note that Manning\u2019s case is slightly different from most trans prisoners because she was in a military prison. With that being said, there were still numerous similarities, such as the lack of proper health care, abuse from prison guards, and strict sex-related restrictions on hygiene and appearance. Manning recounted in a recent New York Times interview how she would often plead with guards and prison staff that she was a woman and needed to be treated as such under prison regulations only to be laughed and taunted at.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Paige:<\/b>\u00a0We asked Eli about the effects of the mainstream media attention on Chelsea Manning and if it has helped make progress with trans rights in prison.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Eli:<\/b>\u00a0She was probably the most visible incarcerated trans women so there was a level of visibility for people who think about incarceration and the conditions of confinement don\u2019t really think about oh there are women in men\u2019s prisons and vice versa. So I hope that it brought some public visibility but particular for folks who are already thinking about rights and experiences of incarcerated people because its often not talked about in prison activism and other kinds of work. In fact, the experience and existence of trans people is completely erased because of the binary sex assumptions and also structure of the system.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Sydney:<\/b>\u00a0Eli\u2019s emphasis on how \u00a0prisoner rights activists often fail to focus on trans prisoners mirrors the narrative that trans rights activist communities do not highlight incarcerated trans people in their work. But, trans inmate rights have become more of an emphasis for these groups in recent years, and this work will only continue to gain more attention in the future. In 2017, Shiloh Quine became the first inmate to receive state-funded gender reassignment surgery while incarcerated. While the steps are small, progress is being made. We asked Eli what a world would look like where the penal system was a perfect, safe place for trans inmates and what steps he thought should be taken to get a little closer to achieving this perfect world. He emphasized how giving trans inmates agency would help improve many of their situations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Eli:<\/b>\u00a0Having trans prisoners actually have a say of where they\u2019re housed and how they\u2019re housed in terms of assessing where they are the safest. Because there\u2019s no one answer for it. In part because the whole system is violent, but for some transwomen that means being housed in a men\u2019s prison in general population. For others that\u2019s being housed in a women\u2019s prison. For others that means being housed in a men\u2019s prison in segregation. Which is often where transwomen are actually housed they\u2019re not in general population they\u2019re housed in segregation. So there is no one size fits all, but transwomen often know where they\u2019ll be safest, especially if they have been in the system before, but the prison is set up so their choice and their thinking doesn\u2019t matter whatsoever. They\u2019re rarely believed and rarely consulted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Paige:\u00a0<\/b>It is not clear what the solution to helping transgender people in prison is&#8211; but some believe it may lie in abolishing the prison system we know today entirely. Many scholars and activists believe it&#8217;s important not to view the prison system as an isolated site but part of a society that reproduces, reflects, and is shaped by larger factors such as white supremacy, transphobia, and heteropatriarchy The power structures that exist in the penal system reflect those that exist in society. It\u2019s a deeply reciprocal system structured on who is valued in society vs who is deserving of punishment. Some people like Eli, believe the only way to restore this balance of power and give incarcerated people and transgender incarcerated people justice would be through reimagining how our system works entirely, through prison abolition.<b><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Eli:<\/b>\u00a0\u201cI will say that I am a prison abolitionist and that\u2019s actually the intellectual and activist tradition that I\u2019m coming from that is very connected to and thinking through prison abolition. Part of the basis of that is basically what I was just talking about in understanding that prisons are not isolated things and not shape but ground particularly white supremacy and heteropatriarchy and all of these things. For me its about and many of the organizations its about reforming how we enact justice where instead of it being retribution that is ultimately is harmful to literally everybody, and then continues this cycle of violence about having people held accountable and responsible and then working through the harm that they have done to other people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\"><b>Derek:<\/b>\u00a0In examining the lives of transgender inmates, we\u2019ve discovered this history and story to be a complicated one. We\u2019ve seen how trans people have been unfairly targeted in the past with conformity laws such as those banning cross dressing to blatant discrimination in businesses and queer resistance to these situations such as the Compton Cafe riot in the 1960s. Today, we see that mistreatment continuing in the form of abuse in the prison system. Trans people are far more likely to face verbal and sexual abuse in prison as well as suffer severe mental health problems. They are often denied hormone therapy and are forced to comply to improper gender regulations hygiene and appearance. Despite the good intentions of PREA, the law has been mostly ignored, as only 1 out of 21 states was found to comply to PREA\u2019s standards. Prison healthcare obviously needs reform, and standards like PREA\u2019s actually need to be enforced. Or maybe, as Eli Vitulli believes, prison as we know it need to be abolished.<\/p>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">\u00a0From Grinnell College, I\u2019m Derek Jones with Sydney Banach and Paige Oamek. Thank you for listening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_pe_d _pe_92\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_rp_85\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_rp_k\">\n<div class=\"_qc_F ms-bg-color-white _qc_G\">\n<hr class=\"_qc_B\" \/>\n<div class=\"_qc_y ms-border-color-neutralLight _qc_z\">\n<div class=\"_qc_A ms-border-color-neutralLight\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Abstract We all have some conception of prison and the people behind bars, but what about trans prisoners? Trans people in prison are among the most verbally and sexually abused people in our prison system today. How did they get to this point? We begin by looking at the history of unfair targeting of trans&hellip; <span class=\"kuorinka-read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/uncategorized\/transgender-prisoners-criminalization-healthcare-and-the-carceral-state\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Transgender Prisoners: Criminalization, Healthcare, and the Carceral State<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":403,"href":"https:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions\/403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu\/SexInAmericanHistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}