Have You Ever Been In A Prison?

I have, I been in the maximum security prison at Garner Correctional Institution, I did training there a number of years back (You can read about it here.) but for many of us it is not a visit but incarceration and that is when our nightmare begins.

Advancing Transgender Justice
Illuminating Trans Lives Behind and Beyond Bars
Vera
By Kelsie Chesnut and Jennifer Peirce
Illustrated by Bea Hayward
February 20, 2024

Key takeaways

Transgender people are especially at risk for contact with the criminal legal system and, once in detention, at risk of harassment and violence inside prison. According to a 2022 survey of LGBTQ+ people in the United States, 31 percent had been in some form of incarceration at some point in the last five years. 3

Transgender people in prison are not monolithic in terms of their experiences or preferences. Policies designed to benefit trans people in prison need to account for this variability to have a meaningful positive effect on the lives of transgender people in custody.

This survey includes the views of 280 transgender people in state prisons, about 73 percent of whom were transgender women. About 46 percent of respondents were white, 24 percent were Black, 14 percent were Latinx, 11 percent were Native American, and about 5 percent were multiracial or other racial groups.

Transgender people who are currently incarcerated have clear suggestions for changes to the content and implementation of policies, and decision-makers should meaningfully include these views. These findings represent common themes across survey participants’ responses.

[…]

This report shares the findings of a survey of 280 transgender people who are in state prisons across the United States. 11  By sharing their perspectives, in their own voices, this report provides a window into transgender people’s daily lives in prison and their recommendations for how policymakers and prison authorities can change rules and culture in positive ways. The insights here also show the real harms of incarceration and underscore the urgency of reducing the use of prison in the first place.

Here in Connecticut we have,

Public Act No. 18-4 AN ACT CONCERNING THE FAIR TREATMENT OF INCARCERATED PERSONS.


Sec. 8. (NEW) (Effective July 1, 2018) Any inmate of a correctional institution, as described in section 18-78 of the general statutes, who has a gender identity that differs from the inmate's assigned sex at birth and has a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, as set forth in the most recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", shall: (1) Be addressed by correctional staff in a manner that is consistent with the inmate's gender identity, (2) have access to commissary items, clothing, personal property, programming and educational materials that are consistent with the inmate's gender identity, and (3) have the right to be searched by a correctional staff member of the same gender identity, unless the inmate requests otherwise or under exigent circumstances. An inmate who has a birth certificate, passport or driver's license that reflects his or her gender identity or who can meet established standards for obtaining such a document to confirm the inmate's gender identity shall presumptively be placed in a correctional institution with inmates of the gender consistent with the inmate's gender identity. Such presumptive placement may be overcome by a demonstration by the Commissioner of Correction, or the commissioner's designee, that the placement would present significant safety, management or security problems. In making determinations pursuant to this section, the inmate's views with respect to his or her safety shall be given serious consideration by the Commissioner of Correction, or the commissioner's designee.

For us, or at least for me this is the last place I would want to be in, especially in the red states. from the brief visit I had, they "try" to make jails safe for trans people but I doubt it is a walk in a park. Doing time is not a sentence to be raped or assaulted.