Trans people are still being sent to the wrong prisons

Last month in Perth, Australia trans sex worker CJ Palmer was sentenced to six years in prison for transmitting HIV to a man she had sex with several times over an eight-month period. The jury rejected Palmer’s defence that she did not know her HIV status during that time and was convicted. Palmer has now been sent to men’s prison and has been denied access to hormone therapy.

In Western Australia, a convicted felon is sent to the prison that corresponds with the gender they had at birth. There are currently no provisions for transgender people. This corresponds with much of the rest of the world. Psychologists and experts warn treating trans people in such a way is traumatic and mentally damaging.

In 1997, a trans woman in New South Wales – who was kept in a protective unit because of her “overt feminine characterises” – killed herself after being raped by a male prisoner. In 2015, a trans woman was found dead in her cell after experiencing brutal harassment within a prison. Like Western Australia, Wales and England send trans prisoners to the jail that matches their gender at birth, unless they have a gender recognition certificate – which is often costly and means gender reassignment surgery.

A report by Junkee on the issue argued that “the most marginalised within the trans community are the most likely to be convicted and spend time in prison.” It is worth noting that an American study in 2011 found 47 percent of black transgender people will end up incarcerated, compared to 12 percent of white transgender people – and that 38 percent of black transgender people will end up sexually assaulted in prison.

Conflicting and unspecific laws on transgender people in prisons prove there needs to be an open dialogue about the issue. Sending marginalised people to an already marginalised group to a place where they will statistically end up being assaulted and raped is not a solution to this problem.

Tim Gibson - myGwork

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