De facto punishment of transgender individuals in the penal system.

[BarstowCowboy]

68. Some corrections professionals see the logic in not segregating someone just for being transgendered

Oddly enough, Donald L. Leach, a Jail Risk Management Consultant based in Lexington, Kentucky agrees with me, and the people at a website called correctionsone.com thought enough of his opinion to post it online:

http://www.correctionsone.com/correctional-healthcare/articles/2082675-How-should-agencies-manage-transgender-offenders/

Housing: Predator vs. prey
Regardless of sexual preference and gender identity, a fundamental objective in corrections must be to “separate the predators from the prey,” Leach said.

In many facilities, he said, “we’re not doing a good enough job of separating by classification.”

In other words, an inmate’s sexual identity or preference is only important to officers in so far as it helps them to decipher whether the inmate is likely to become a victim of abuse in the facility, Leach said. They should then be housed accordingly.

“We need to eliminate all types of violence,” he said. “Identify the predators and then remove them. It’s about protecting inmates from violence, sexual or non.”

Housing: Sexual preference
So, if our goal is to better protect vulnerable inmates, should we be using sexual preference as a method for classifying inmates? Leach says “no”, because knowing an inmate’s sexual preference shouldn’t affect how we house them or define whether or not they’ll be victimized.

“We don’t care what your preference is,” Leach said. “There is no sex in the jail - period.”

Leach also challenges the notion that because an inmate is sexually attracted to someone of their own sex that it means they’re going to have sexual relations while incarcerated.

“It’s not true that people will automatically couple-up,” Leach said, emphasizing that just because a man is gay, it doesn’t mean he will be attracted to all and any men.

Instead of focusing on issues of sexual preferences, Leach said, “what you look for is sexual identification”.

Housing: Sexual identity
When booking offenders, Leach said, it pays tenfold to ask the incoming prisoner whether they identify as male or female, regardless of what might seem like obvious physical characteristics to you and other staffers.

For instance, if someone is clearly (from a physical standpoint) a man but claims to identify as a woman, should this affect how we house them?

The best thing to do in these situations, Leach said, is ask. First, ask the transgender or intersexual offender whether they would like to be housed with men or women. If they say “with women”, then ask the women in the housing unit if they’ll be comfortable living with a man who identifies as female. In these situations, clear communication between all parties is critical and often very effective, he said.

This is not to suggest, Leach stressed, that inmates should be allowed to choose which gender they are to be housed with. It is simply another "predator vs. prey" risk to be considered by staff.

Once all predator vs. prey risks have been evaluated and the inmate has been housed, Leach reminds staffers to make sure to document the whole process that resulted in classification and housing of the offender, thus protecting themselves from any future liability risks.

There is, however, one specific case scenario Leach said to beware of: the male inmate who claims to identify as female simply to get a chance to prey on women sexually. However, this is again an issue of predator vs. prey and should be combated through a rigorous classification system.