The Free Press has a story up today about housing trans women in women’s federal prisons. This is not the exception but the rule thanks to the Obama Administration which started the practice in 2010. It was formalized in 2012 when the Obama DOJ created a manual which said trans women would be housed by gender identity not biological sex.
The Trump administration reversed course and made housing trans women in women’s prisons the exception rather than the rule, but Joe Biden’s DOJ revoked that change in 2022 and expanded on the Obama policy:
The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has reissued its Transgender Offender Manual, which once again includes the Obama-era policy, Kristie Breshears, chief of public affairs for the agency, confirmed in a statement to The 19th. Under Trump, transgender people in federal prisons were housed based on sex assigned at birth alone. Biden’s policy builds off the Obama-era guidance and goes a step further, requiring prison staff to use a transgender person’s lived name and pronouns.
Showing respect for trans women, in practice, means putting biological men in women’s prisons. And as it happens a startling proportion of these self-proclaimed women are sex offenders.
At the last count on October 6, 2024, there are 1,487 incarcerated men who identify as women in federal prisons. According to the Bureau of Prisons’ own data, nearly half of transgender prisoners in women’s facilities are sex offenders—almost four times the rate of the general prison population.
Since the policies went into place, there have been multiple reports of sexual assault by male trans-identifying inmates toward female inmates. One woman who sued Rikers Island jail in New York in 2020, alleged that, after arriving in her cell, a male inmate introduced himself by saying, “I’m not transgender. I’m straight. I like women,” before groping and later raping her. Another female claimed she was raped in the prison shower by her six-feet-two-inches, 200-pound, bearded male attacker. In 2022, a trans-identifying male in a New Jersey women’s prison impregnated two prisoners.
Rhonda Fleming, a female prisoner who has sued to stop the practice of housing males with women, says the trans inmates stop presenting themselves as women once they settle into the women’s prison.
“When they initially arrive, they have long hair and look like they’re trying to wear makeup,” Fleming told The Free Press. “But after they have achieved the goal of getting into a women’s prison, they start letting their beard and their mustache grow out, they get a haircut like a man, and they’re walking around like a guy.”
Jeanette Driever, another female prisoner who has been imprisoned with trans women, said it goes beyond appearances. The trans women act like men too.
“They’re 100-plus pounds heavier than us, they’re way taller than us, their muscle density is stronger than ours, but behavior-wise they came over controlling, dominant. They wanted us to be submissive to them.”
Fleming agreed, saying that in the dinner line, “the men just walk in front of you, sometimes aggressively shoulder-checking you.”
The good news is that the incoming Trump administration should be able to reverse course on this once again and restore some sanity to the approach used in federal prisons. Fully intact men should not be housed with women who are expected to shower and use bathrooms with them. This shouldn’t be a tough call.
