She was a trans girl who was in CT Department Of Children and Families (DCF) where she was placed in an adult women’s prison and then later moved to a boy’s juvenile prison and placed in solitary confinement.
Juvenile detention centers struggle with transgender inmatesIncluding Connecticut, even though we have a gender inclusive non-discrimination law, the prison systems still goes by what is between your legs even though your birth certificate and all of your documentation says female.
LGBTQ Nation
By Marina Villeneuve, Associated Press
Monday, January 2, 2017
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The nation’s juvenile detention centers are largely ill-equipped to handle transgender teens, leaving them vulnerable to bullying, sexual assault, depression and suicide, advocates say.
Young transgender people are too often sent to girls’ or boys’ lockups based on their anatomy, not their gender identity, and can end up suffering psychologically and getting picked on by other inmates or staff members, according to advocacy groups. Even when they are assigned to detention centers that correspond to their gender identity, they are often victimized.
“There are many systems that are basically clueless as to what the best practice should be, and they end up mistreating transgender girls particularly, just placing them in hallways or handcuffing them to desks,” because the institutions don’t know where to house them, said Flor Bermudez, detention project director at the Transgender Law Center.
Advocates say juvenile centers too often put transgender youth in solitary confinement for their own safety. But the federal standards prohibit routine use of solitary for LGBT prisoners and require detention centers to look for alternatives, such as single-person cells within the general population.Yup, that is what they did here; they placed Jane Doe in solitary confinement in a boy’s prison.
No one appears to collect data specifically on assaults or suicides among transgender juvenile inmates. Even statistics on how many transgender youths are behind bars are scant, though they are believed to make up an outsized share of the nation’s more than 500,000 juveniles in lockup annually.And no one wants to because it will make the prison system look really bad.
Diana
ReplyDeleteHow can we forget Jane Doe. What a struggle that was. The folks in ANSWER Ct. really worked hard on freeing Jane along with many of other groups. A real united front. There is a beautiful picture of you, me, Jerimarie, Paul and others at one of the rallies. I was proud to stand up for our Trans sister Jane Doe and will continue to stand when needed.
I talked to Dr. Richard Stillson, aka Mucha and he is now heading a young Trans therapy group. He is very much interested in the work on anti-conversion bill and I will send him the link to your article.