We Can't Get No Justice

When I read an article in the Windy City Times about the plight of trans* prisoners I was amazed that the U.S. “…incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world—up to 20 percent of the world's prisoners” and if you are a trans-person it is even worst,

One in three transgender women can expect to be incarcerated in their lifetime. Fifty-seven percent of Black trans people have been incarcerated at some point in their life. Whether they are pre-or-post-operative, in the Cook County jail, in a downstate penitentiary or in a Federal Prison, the chances are that a trans-woman will be placed in a male facility. Once in prison, their choices are isolation or to be subject to physical and sexual violence both from other inmates or correctional officers. Standards of health care for them are minimal.

In the Cook County Jail, most trans-women are placed in Division 6- a medium security men's facility with limited interaction with the general population or in Division 9—a super-maximum security facility in which the inmate is placed in 23-hour-per-day-isolation.

A number of federal courts have ruled placing us in solitary confinement is cruel and unjust but placing us in with our birth assigned gender general prison population could be deadly. A number of prisons are creating special wings for trans-inmates or housing them in areas like the prison medical ward.

The article goes on to say why so many trans-people are arrested…

In addressing why so many trans people ( particularly trans women of color ) do end up in jail, Daniel-McCarter laid a good part of the blame at the foot of continuing and inordinate police profiling of transgender people along with systemic Transphobia and a lack of understanding about the transgender community on the part of law enforcement officials, states attorneys and even judges. "The kind of policing and discrimination that transgender women receive is related to police profiling of them," Daniel-McCarter said. "Walking while trans, driving while trans, hailing a cab while trans can all be construed as prostitution."

Many trans people, alienated from their families and denied basic housing and medical needs, might engage in survival crime: low-level drug trades or drug possession, retail theft, prostitution, loitering and trespassing. "They start as small A or B misdemeanor crimes but, after your third charge, they can become felonies," Daniel-McCarter noted. "Suddenly, you are doing time downstate."

We worry every time we call 911. I know of trans-people who were being harassed and when a police officer stopped to see what was happening guess who got blamed? I know of a trans-woman here in Connecticut who was a carpenter and was beat up on the job by other workers (When I saw her afterward she was all black and blue and parts of her face were still swollen from where they beat her with 2x4s). She called the police as she was explaining what happened to the police, the officer refused to arrest her attackers and instead arrested her for disorderly conduct.