DOJ to investigate California over housing of trans inmates
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday that it has opened an investigation to determine whether two women’s prisons in California unconstitutionally provided housing and preferential treatment to “biological male inmates.”
In a letter to Lieutenant Governor Attorney Gavin Newsom. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, chief of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said investigators will examine “widely reported allegations of disenfranchisement of female inmates” at the Central California Facility for Women in Madera County and the California Institution for Women in San Bernardino County.
Ministry of Justice he said in a press release He said there were allegations of “sexual assaults, rape, voyeurism and a widespread climate of sexual intimidation due to the presence of men in women’s prisons”.
Newsom’s office referred The Times to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, from which a spokesperson responded that the agency “is committed to providing a safe, humane, respectful and rehabilitative environment for all incarcerated people.”
The Justice Department also notified Maine Governor Janet Mills that it was launching an investigation into allegations that the state “allowed a male biological inmate to remain with women despite complaints that he had assaulted or harassed several female inmates.”
Dhillon said In a video published on X It was stated that the investigations were part of a new project called the “single-sex prisons initiative” to investigate potential civil rights violations in which female inmates were forced “to be in the same rooms with men who disguised themselves as women to get into women’s prisons.”
“There are reports that dozens of such men are being held in women’s prisons in California, which of course subjects these women to sexual assault and other forms of violence and harassment, which, if true, is deeply disturbing and could violate the civil rights of these women,” Dhillon said.
In 2020, Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 132, which gives transgender, nonbinary and intersex inmates in state prisons the right to be housed in men’s or women’s facilities. Opponents of the law filed a lawsuit the following year, claiming that the law was unconstitutional and created an unsafe environment for women in women’s facilities; Some plaintiffs claimed they were attacked.
At the time, LGBTQ+ advocates criticized the lawsuit as unfounded and damaging.
“How did they write [the complaint] Bamby Salcedo, president and executive director of the TransLatin@ Coalition, which co-sponsored SB 132, previously told The Times, “They are saying that trans women are men and that they are putting men in women’s prisons, which is completely false. They are making a claim that is not true and is not particularly respectful of trans women.”
The Women’s Liberation Front, which filed the lawsuit, announced this month that the federal court had dismissed the case but that they planned to appeal. Elspeth Cypher, executive director of the Women’s Liberation Front, called the new Justice Department investigations a “welcome progress” in a statement released Thursday, X.
“Every day, incarcerated women are subjected to sexual harassment and abuse because of the confession of men who say they are women,” Cypher said.
According to the bill that came into force in 2021, 1,028 prisoners in men’s prisons requested to be moved to women’s prisons. according to data As of March 4. The Ministry accepted 47 requests and rejected 132. Another 140 applicants also “changed their minds”, according to the ministry.
State officials said 84 inmates requested to be transferred from women’s prisons to men’s facilities. Seven of these were approved.
According to the Department of Corrections, 2,405 inmates identify as nonbinary, intersex or transgender. This population is said to be exposed to extreme violence in prison. 2007 UC Irvine to work The research, which included interviews with 39 transgender prisoners, revealed that the rate of sexual assault was 13 times higher in transgender individuals; 59% of survey respondents reported experiencing such encounters.
The Justice Department said in a statement Thursday that the investigation had just begun and “has not reached any conclusions regarding the allegations in these matters.”
“I am very committed to ensuring that no woman incarcerated in the United States is subjected to potential rape, sexual assault, or other civil rights violations as a condition of incarceration to satisfy the ideology evoked by the state,” Dhillon said. “If these states are violating these rights and they don’t stop, we will handle it through litigation.”
