![]() ![]() ![]() State law prohibits sexual conduct between all prisoners. “They are being forced to be housed alone even though they’re begging for some sort of contact with others.”Ĭorrections department records state the women were put in confinement after the agency received confidential tips that both had engaged in sexual activity in the facility with cisgender women - those who were assigned the female gender at birth. “I couldn’t even recognize one of my clients, she was so pale,” Orthwein said after a recent visit. Orthwein said one has protested through hunger strikes and both are suffering mentally. Two trans women who moved to Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla (Madera County) have been in administrative segregation - a form of solitary confinement - for months. Orthwein said guards also inflamed anti-trans sentiment by telling female prisoners that men are coming to the facility and will harm them. Jen Orthwein, an attorney who represents trans people in prison and helped write the bill, said trans women who have been transferred to women’s facilities have been targeted and singled out by guards, who refer to them as men or deny them access to their belongings or razors. Trans women in California prisons are 13 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than men, and 59% reported being assaulted in prison, according to a 2007 study by UC Irvine researchers.īut the push to transfer them to women’s facilities has been met with backlash, and some trans women who have moved say they’ve faced discrimination. Research shows that trans women in men’s prisons face disproportionate risk of violence. Under SB132, the state must grant such requests unless it has an “articulable basis” to deny them for security reasons. The agency gave little further explanation for the slow pace of transfers. “Transfers are dependent on several factors including bed availability, and COVID-19 precautions have impacted overall inmate transfers,” Thornton wrote in an email. Twelve additional prisoners changed their minds. Spokesperson Terry Thornton said the agency is “being deliberate in its review of gender-based housing requests.”Įight requests from people seeking to transfer from men’s prisons to women’s facilities have been denied. None of those requests has yet been granted.Ĭorrections officials said the vast majority of transfer requests, for both trans women and men, remain under review. Nine people housed in female prisons have asked to transfer to male prisons. Of those, 41 requests have been approved, but only 25 people have actually been moved. 1, 288 people currently housed in male prisons have asked to be housed in female prisons, according to the corrections department. Gender nonbinary describes people who have a gender identity that isn’t exclusively male or female - or that could be neither. Intersex refers to people whose biological traits don’t fit typical definitions of female or male. Transgender is an umbrella term to refer to people whose gender is different from the one they were assigned at birth. Zy’aire Nassirah, a transgender man released from a women’s prison in February, works with a group to help freed inmates. Gavin Newsom approved SB132, which allows transgender, intersex and gender nonbinary people to decide whether to be housed in a men’s or women’s prison based on where they feel safest. It’s literally life or death for our folks.” “Our folks deserve safety and dignity, and they deserve it now,” said Alex Binsfeld, legal director at the Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project, an advocacy group in San Francisco. Transgender advocates, including incarcerated people and their allies, say the state is needlessly putting the safety and mental well-being of gender-variant people at risk every day by delaying such moves. Less than 10% of people who have asked to go to a women’s facility have been moved. But the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has so far allowed few people to make gender-based housing transfers. ![]()
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