Alvaro Martinez Lacabe

Transgender Population and the Prison Industry

Complex in the United States

On July 9th 2013, 30,000 inmates from different prisons in

California featured the largest hunger strike in the history

of the country. The goal of this massive non-violent action

was to denounce the ruthless living conditions of solitary

confinement, a correctional regime within the prison system in

which inmates stay in total isolation for twenty three hours

per day1. Common reasons advanced by prison authorities for the

implementation of solitary confinement include protection of

vulnerable prisoners from other inmates and disciplinary

punishment. Among theº prison population, queer inmates are

counted within the most vulnerable individuals as they face

the highest likelihood of experiencing sexual assault, and

therefore, one of the groups of inmates more prone to face

solitary confinement. In the case of transgender people, the

situation is even more dramatic because sex segregated

facilities do not respect the gender identity of many

transgender women and men who have not undergone sex

reassignment surgery2. For transgender people facing1 Peter Scharff Smith. ‘The Effects of Solitary Confinement on Prison

Inmates: A Brief History and Review of the Literature’ Crime and Justice, Vol.

34, No. 1 (2006), pp. 441-528.2 As Susan Stryker points out in her book Transgender History, the term

transgender is still under construction. I will use Stryker´s definition of

transgender, that ‘implies movement away from an initially assigned gender position´ and

‘refers to the widest imaginable range of gender-variant practices and identities´

1

imprisonment, gender is assigned according to their genitalia,

therefore, many transgender women end up in male facilities

and many transgender men end up in female facilities, making

them more vulnerable to sexual assault or being confined in

solitary confinement. According to the Sylvia Rivera Law

Project3, transgender people are exposed to arrest,

incarceration, police harassment and violence far more than

the average person. This situation is the outcome of multiple

vectors of oppression towards transgender population, in which

economies and administrative norms designed by neoliberal

structures play a decisive role.

According to John D´Emilio, the figure of the homosexual

is a recent production in history; the same could be stated

for transgender people. In his article Capitalism and Gay Identity,

D’Emilio explains how the transformation of the socio-economic

landscape, boosted by the expansion of capital, helped to

develop new erotic communities that were inexistent until that

moment. The nuclear family, which was the autonomous and basic

structure for most types of economies, evolved from being a

self-sufficient financial entity to be a cell part of a “free-

labour” broader system that made possible the

individualization of its members, being the adult males the

first ones that had access to an independent financial

3 The Sylvia Rivera Law Project is a legal aid organization form in August

2002 that serves transgender people. To learn more read report Injustice at

Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (2011)

2

autonomy. The free-labour system would also help people who

had same-sex practices to find others. The new urban landscape

brought about different spaces in which same-sex practices

were sheltered. In this way, D´Emilio points out that,

Already, in the early twentieth century, large cities contained

male homosexual bars. Gay men stalked out cruising areas, such

as Riverside Drive in New York City and Lafayette Park in

Washington. In St. Louis and the nation´s capital, annual drag

balls brought together large numbers of black gay men. Public

bathhouses and YMCA´s became gathering spots for male

homosexuals. (…) By the 1920s and 1930s, large cities such as

New York and Chicago contained lesbian bars.4

Historian Susan Stryker affirms that the economic model

that helped to create the new homosexual categories also

contributed to create anonymous spaces for people who moved

away from the role expectations of their assigned gender.

Stryker states that “Female bodied people who could

successfully pass as men had greater opportunities to travel

and find work away from the places where were raised and

known. Male bodied people who identified as women had greater

opportunities to live as women in cities far removed from the

communities where they had grown up.”5 For these people

survival depended upon their ability to perform as the

opposite gender. As happens with gay and lesbian identities,

it is misleading to talk of transgender identity during the4 John D´Emilio, ‘Capitalism and the Gay Identity’ from Making Trouble

(Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc., 1992), p 9.5 Susan Stryker. Transgender History (Seal Press, 2008) p.34.

3

XIX century as the modern categories gay, lesbian and

transgender were not constructed until the gay liberation

movement in the mid twentieth century. This is a widely

accepted notion in academia, however, it would be a mistake

not to consider how the seed of those identities was

germinated by the repressive frames of the late XIX century

and the first half of the XX century.

In United States legislation regulating dress codes was

passed in an effort to criminalize gender benders, this way

‘dozens of municipalities had ordinances making cross-dressing

a criminal offense.’6 Many states also maintained a very strict

legislation originated in the nineteenth century that punished

indecent exposure and disorderly conduct; legislation that was

updated to criminalize same-sex practices and targeted all

range of activities from holding hands to soliciting sex or

kissing in public. The extent of these laws affected also the

private sphere `by removing the public place requirement for

indecency, lewdness, or lewd sexual solicitation´7. Cities

would invest money in vice squads that would arrest

homosexuals and gender benders in name of the decency and

moral authority. It is a documented fact that more sexual

deviants were arrested for consensual same-sex intimacy than

heterosexuals for non-consensual sex actions.8

Capitalism, which in words of John D’Emilio ‘has created

the material conditions for homosexual desire to express

6 William Eskridge. Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet (Cambridge: Harvard

University) p. 723.7 Ibid., p. 707.8 Ibid., p. 726.

4

itself,’ punished all those individuals that would not fit in

its economic rationale. Capitalist societies need productive

procreative bodies to maintain the system, and since neither

homosexuals nor transgender people represented productive

values, at least in the1950s, they became the target for

punishment. Capitalist societies are based on production,

consumption and profits. Bodies that are not able to produce,

that cannot create benefits and which lack acquisitive power

are useless for the system. Leslie Feinberg, in hir9 pamphlet

Transgender Liberation, points to “the rise of private property, the

male dominated family and class divisions” as the main factors

that “led to narrowing what was considered acceptable self-

expression.”10 There is a juxtaposition of materialism,

patriarchy and class, which acts as a compound vector of

oppression. It is interesting to notice how this vector of

oppression works. The case of John ¨Bunny¨ Breckinridge, a

millionaire socialite member of Ed Wood´s troupe of actors who

expressed his desire for a sex change in several occasions,

also illustrates how punishment is apply differently depending

on the rank that the punished person occupies in the social

scale. Breckinridge was arrested at the Sea Cow bar in San

Francisco1955, a bar patronized by leathermen.11 He was sent to

prison but the charges were later dismissed by the court.12 The

9 Feinberg uses the pronoun ‘hir’10 Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Liberation. The Transgender Studies Reader 11 Gayle Rubin, “The Miracle Mile: South of Market and Gay Male Leather,

1962-1997”12 William Eskridge. Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet (Cambridge:

Harvard University) p.721.

5

Breckinridge family has included six members of the United

States House of Representatives, two United States Senators, a

cabinet member, two Ambassadors, a Vice President of United

States and an unsuccessful Presidential candidate. It is

difficult to believe that his family connections and influence

in the American legal apparatus did not anything to do with

the withdrawal of the most serious charges.

Albeit strict legislation, the number of transgender

people in the fifties and sixties that went to jail is much

lower than today. Several authors conclude that the main cause

of this is the unfair distribution of wealth that

Neoliberalism produces13. Neoliberalism, which is widely

understood as an economic doctrine, has its roots in an effort

to liberate markets from any kind of regulation perceived to

inhibit a company´s development. As an economic and political

doctrine, Neoliberalism conceptualises people as beings

endowed with entrepreneurial skills. This doctrine believes

that a state of well-being can be achieved by guarantying

rights of private property to the entrepreneur and creating

deregulated markets and trade. The role of the neoliberal

state is to protect the individual in his/her entrepreneurial

skills and activities by creating legal, military, defence and

police structures.14 New markets are created through

privatisation, which is another distinctive neoliberal mark.

Thus, traditional state competences such as education, water,

health care, electricity, welfare or social care, which are13 See Dean Spade, Normal Life. Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits

of Law. (South End Press) p. 50,14 David Harvey. A Brief Story of Neoliberalism (Oxford) p.2.

6

needs considered as universal rights by international

organisms, are now being privatised and deregulated. This

privatisation, which normally characterised by monopolistic

practices, benefits only powerful companies that rapidly grow

in capital since they don’t have competitors and can raise the

price of their services at their will. Underlying this

economic doctrine is the concept that individuals are nothing

but homo-æconomicus. Neoliberalism extends its rationale to

social institutions and the ethics of social institutions

change now to talk in economic or financial terminology. It is

not uncommon to hear politicians talk about administrative

mistakes instead of talking in ethical terms15

.

The rationale of Neoliberalism praises individuals who

are able to live without relying in social welfare and

condemns those who need help from the state to survive. In

1996 the US administration passed the Personal Responsibility and

Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which clearly stresses the

government´s demand for the people to be responsible of their

own welfare16. One strategy of the neoliberal systems is to

criminalise poor population through public campaigns

denouncing fraudulent benefit claiming. In his book Normal Life,

Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, And the Limits of Law, Dean Spade

states that ¨ the notion of people defrauding welfare and

Social Security Disability benefit systems was popularized by

media “exposes” on the topic, contributing to the racist15 Wendy Brown. Neoliberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy. Theory and Event V7 16 Eric A. Stanley, Nat Smith. Captive Genders. Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industry

Complex p. 21.

7

portrayal of the poor as criminal and supporting policies

reducing poverty alleviation programs and enhancing punishment

systems.”17 Incarceration as a punishment system could be seen

as a major input into the Prison Industry Complex (PIC), which

is a phenomenon characteristic of neoliberal societies.18

According to Dylan Rodriguez, the PIC refers to a set of

‘non-antagonistic’ organisms and structures such as police,

judiciary system, and private companies that work together in

symbiosis to support the penitentiary system. As other

industry complexes such as the Military Industry Complex or

the College Industry Complex, the PIC has its origins in the

privatisation of an area traditionally linked to state

competencies. In the case of the PIC, private companies take

charge of prisons whose maintenance is funded by public money.

It is a perfect business since the work of the companies in

charge of the prisons is rarely questioned or monitored, and

the voice of the population incarcerated has little or non-

repercussion in society. Therefore, the recent strike in

California with 30,000 people refusing to eat only achieved a

´compromise for dialogue´ between prison authorities and

inmates.19 One per cent of the population of United States is

currently imprisoned, ensuring that the PIC has secured its

future growth in revenues and profits.20 The cost of the17 Dean Spade, Normal Life. Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of

Law. (South End Press) p 5718 Dylan Rodriguez, State of Terror p.1.19 http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/california-prisoners-suspend-

hunger-strike-against-solitary-confinement20http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/

sentencing_and_corrections/one_in_100.pdf (pg5)

8

prisons and the inmate population rises year by year; For

example, the case of the State of Florida is particularly

striking, according to the report ‘One in 100: Behind Bars in America

2008,’ ‘between 1993 and 2007, the State´s inmate population

increased from 53,000 to over 97,000’.21 In relation to costs,

California spends the most of any state, $8.8billion, and

experienced a growth in costs of 216% between 1988 and 2008.22

With one percent of the population behind bars and

billions of dollars coming from tax payers, the PIC needs to

carefully select the groups of individuals who are going to be

jailed or imprisoned. For example, The War on Drugs and the

War on Terror have supplied prisons and jails with a

continuous contingent from Black and Latino communities, the

two biggest minorities in United States. According to the Pew

Centre report from 2008, one in nine black men ages 20 to 34

and one in thirty-six Hispanic men ages18 or more was

incarcerated that year. Punitive policies like three strikes and you

are out, which increases the serving time of habitual offenders

from 25-year-to-life sentence, also contribute to the growth

of population in prison. This law is applied in twenty seven

states being California one of the states in which the law is

more extremely practiced since non-violent crimes such as

residential burglary can be deployed as one strike23. A

special report of the Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2002

states that only 25.4% of the population of jail inmates had

21 Ibid., p. 11.22 Ibid., p. 13.23 Franklin E. Zmring, Gordon Hawkins, Sam Kamin, Three Strikes and You´re Out in

California, Punishment and Democracy. p. 4.

9

perpetrated violent offenses, the rest of the jail population

had committed crimes related to property ( 24.4 %), drugs

(24.%) and public order (24.9%).24 Therefore, crimes related to

poverty living conditions, such as drug dealing or sex work,

represent a substantial cause of the incarceration of a large

of the penitentiary population.

Sex work on streets is one of the illegal activities more

traditionally linked to public disorder public. Authors Mogul,

Ritchie and Whitlock state in their book Queer (In) Justice that

‘Street-based prostitution is generally considered to be one

of the hallmarks of social disorder that must be rooted out by

quality of life policing. An assumed association between sex

work, the drug trade and violent crime is constantly used to

justify sweeps of areas where prostitution is believed to take

place’ 25.Transgender population, which is one of the sectors

of population more exposed to poverty and therefore, more

prone to illegal activities, that helped them to survive, are

therefore an easy target for police scrutiny. Although the

legal framework has changed significantly since the fifties

and sixties and charges as cross-dressing have disappeared,

transgender population is still targeted by legal and police

structures that contribute to the development of the PIC and

to their marginalization. Currently, many transgender persons

24 U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Profile of Jail

Inmates, 2002 ( Revised 10/12/04)

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/pji02.pdf25 Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, Kay Whitlock. Queer Injustice. The

Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. P. 61.

10

get arrested under charges of loitering and soliciting26. In

the case of black transgender population, it is not uncommon

to get arrested while walking in the street just because of

the way they look27.

Finding accurate data about the number of transgender

people who are imprisoned is extremely hard for the simple

reason that the vast majority of penitentiary institutions do

not acknowledge transgender as a gender category. When a

transgender person is sent to prison, normally this person is

categorised as woman or as man, therefore it is impossible to

know the exact number of people imprisoned. However, the

report Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender

Discrimination Survey (2011) helps to estimate a general idea of how

the PIC affects the transgender population. According to the

report and the National Centre for Transgender Equality,

¨nearly one in six transgender people (16%) (Including 21% of

transgender women) have been incarcerated at some point in

their lives—far higher than the rate for the general

population. Among Black transgender people, nearly half (47%)

have been incarcerated at some point”28. These rates indicate

that transgender population is the most persecuted amongst the

general population in United States. The situation usually is

aggravated by the treatment within the walls of the prisons

and jails.

26 Sylvia Rivera Project, It´s War in Here. p. 45.27 Ibid. p.16.28 National Centre for Gender Equality. Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National

Transgender Discrimination Survey. (2011)

11

Transgender population, from the moment they get into

prison, suffer a bigger discrimination than the general

population in prison. Prisons and jails in the United States,

as many other institutions, are sex segregated facilities, and

as such, divide population in the cultural conception of

gender. The culture of gender in United States classify people

according to the low genitalia. If you have a penis you are

classified man, if you have a vagina you are considered woman.

If you are a woman with breasts but still have a penis, you

are considered a man. If you are a man who has undergone a

mastectomy, is taking testosterone but still have a vagina,

you will be considered as a woman in most of the penitentiary

institutions of the United States. Waking up in a place

surrounded by people from the opposite gender is the everyday

inflected punishment added to the sentence administrated by

the judge. The prisoner´s gender identity is stolen by the

system, but this is not the only abuse that transgender

prisoners have to endure.

Transgender population is more vulnerable to sexual

assault than any other sector of population in prisons or

jails. For the same reason that it is not possible to find out

the exact number of transgender people in prison, it is also

very difficult to find out the exact number of transgender

people who has suffered sexual assault in prison. Moreover,

reporting sexual assault is many times problematic and might

be life threatening. However, it is possible to deduce,

regardless of the number of reports, that the rates of sexual

assaults is among the highest in the transgender population

12

according to the data provided by the Bureau of Justice

Statistics (BJS). The BJS´s report Sexual Victimization in Prisons and

Jails Reported by Inmates 2011-2012 states that inmates who reported

their sexual orientation as gay, lesbian, bisexual or other

were the population with highest rates of sexual victimization

in 2011-2012: “Among jail inmates, heterosexual inmates

reported lower rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization

(1.2%) and staff sexual misconduct (1.7%) than non-

heterosexual inmates (8.5% for inmate –on-inmate and 4.3% for

staff sexual misconduct).”29 Although gender identity and

sexual orientation are different concepts, penitentiary

institutions make clear that people who take distance from

heteronormative positions and gender role expectations are

more vulnerable to sexual assaults.

Prisons and jails´ sexual and gender codes mirror

heteronormative sexualities and traditional gender roles,

punishing anyone who fails to perform faithfully those

sexualities and roles. The way in which gender is perceived in

jail is utterly linked to sexual orientation, and to perform

appropriately the codes of masculinity is key to avoiding

sexual assault. The better someone performs the codes of

masculinity, the more possibilities of avoiding sexual

assault. Within the penitentiary institutions exists the

belief that the person who is gay (understanding gay as the

stereotypical effeminate man who have sex with other men), is

not a real man, and therefore, he can be subject to rape30.

Russell K. Robinson, in his article Masculinity as Prison: Sexual29 Bureau of Justice Statistics. Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by

Inmates 2011-2012

13

Identity, Race and Incarceration, points out the different positions

that inmates might occupy in prisons´ sexual hierarchies.

Inmates who never get penetrated are placed on top of the

sexual hierarchy. These persons engage in homosexual

relationships not only without fear of being stigmatized, but

aware that it will reinforce their position on top of the

hierarchy. Lamark Moore, an inmate serving twenty years in

Alabama´s Limestone penitentiary for gang shooting explains

that “in prison, your ‘boy’ or your ‘sissy’ is like your wife

or your woman in the street.” 31 Moore, who is feared and

respected by the population in Limestone Correctional, has had

several homosexual relationships, but he does not consider

himself gay. Moore´s conception of his own sexual identity is

similar to the hustlers´ that don’t consider themselves queer

albeit practicing sexual activities with other men.32 It is

also comparable with the ancient Mediterranean concept of

masculinity that still exists, in which only the penetrated

men are considered effeminate, and therefore queer.33 On the

bottom of the prison hierarchy, according to Robinson´s

article, are “punks” which are heterosexual men who have been

assaulted sexually and forced to adopt traditional feminine

roles, such as cleaning or tiding the rooms. Robinson´s

article also states that transgender women are seen as

valuable because they represent the closest idea of a woman

30 Russell K. Robinson. Masculinity as Prison: Sexual Identity, Race and

Incarceration31 Jonathan Swartchz. Turned Out: Sexual Assault Behind Bars32 Gayle Rubin. Deviations.pg 32733 Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 81-91.

14

and makes them very vulnerable to sexual assault.34Yolanda

Valentin, a twenty-one transgender woman, narrates in the

documentary Cruel and Unusual the way she was assaulted the first

night that she went to jail: “they put this guy in the same

room, that first night he said ‘look, this is why I got you in

my room, to be my, you know, wife’ and stuff like that, and he

got a little violent with me and tried to hit me, so I did not

want problems so I went along with being his jail wife, cause

that´s how they call it in here. That´s what all these guys

want it in here, they just want a pretty looking transgender

so they can have their cake and eat it too”35.

Along with the stripping of their gender identity and

sexual assault, transgender population has to endure the

double standards that medical and penitentiary authorities

deploy to deny access to hormone treatment while being

incarcerated. Although gender identity disorder is classified

as a psychiatric disorder, most of the penitentiary facilities

consider the hormones treatment not a medical necessity but a

cosmetic one. Only few facilities would supply hormones

treatment if the person is able to demonstrate that she or he

has a medical record that states a previous hormone treatment

before entering in prison or jail. The majority of transgender

people, who has not access to medical insurance, would get the

hormones through non official ways, and although they might

have been taking them for years, they cannot show to the

penitentiary authorities the official medical report. It is34 Russell K. Robinson: Masculinity as Prison: Sexual Identity, Race, and

Incarceration, p. 1351.35 Janet Baus and Dan Hunt. Cruel and Unusual. 2006

15

important to note that the neoliberal rationale does not

contemplate a change of sex as a productive medical procedure,

and therefore, the vast majority of insurance companies, which

have a market rationale, do not cover this kind of operations,

the same way they don’t cover treatments for long term

patients, especially if they are old.

Once a transgender person is detained, the consequences

of abruptly interrupting the hormone treatment are very

dangerous. From psychological distress that includes suicidal

tendencies to depression, the penitentiary authorities do not

much to help this situation. It is even harder, not to say

impossible, to begin the hormone treatment once the person is

in penitentiary facilities. The case of Chelsea Manning

illustrates perfectly the latter situation. Chelsea Manning, a

soldier of the US Army convicted to 35 years for non-espionage

related offences under the Espionage Act 1917, declared her

wish to undergo hormone therapy “as soon as possible”36

Although Manning has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria,

which might led her to psychological distress including states

of anxiety and suicidal tendencies, the US Army refused to

take care of her medical condition. When asked about Manning

case, US Army spokesman George Wright stated that “the Army

does not provide hormone therapy or sex-reassignment surgery

for gender identity disorder.37” This response also applies to

36 http://www.today.com/news/i-am-chelsea-read-mannings-full-statement-6C1097405237 It is interesting to note how mass media approached this news in

Neoliberal terms and reduced the conundrum of the problem to financial

terms. The title says “The Army won’t pay for Bradley Manning Gender

Operation.” To read the whole story http://politi.co/15d64Iy

16

other transgender people who are in civil penal facilities as

it is documented.38 Another problem related to health care is

HIV.

Transgender population is also one of the populations

with higher risk of contracting HIV, especially black

transgender women39. Inadequate treatment of HIV has been used

as a way to punish inmates in jails and prisons, as it is

documented in Human Rights Watch´s report “Chronic

Indifference: HIV/ AIDS Services for Immigrants Detained by

the USA.” Among other cases, the report includes Victoria

Arellano´s, a twenty-three year old transgender woman who died

in jail victim of medical negligence.40 Victoria´s case is the

outcome of a culture of fear and segregation whose maximum

exponent in United States are HIV segregated prisons in

Alabama and South Carolina, where human rights are

systematically overlooked.41

The combination of HIV and isolation confinement might be

extremely dangerous because the impunity that shelters guards,

but first, it would be necessary to understand why transgender

people is so vulnerable to end up in isolation confinement. As

stated in the introduction, solitary confinement´s official

aims are disciplinary punishment and protection of inmates

undergoing vulnerable situations. While it seems reasonable

38 Eric A. Stanley, Nat Smith. Captive Genders. Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industry

Complex p. 107.39 http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/risk_transgender.pdf40 http://www.hrw.org/node/10575/section/141 Eric A. Stanley, Nat Smith. Regulatory Sites in Captive Genders. Trans Embodiment

and the Prison Industry Complex (p. 99 to 122)

17

to segregate vulnerable prisoner from the general population,

solitary confinement does not seem to be the right solution.

The effects of being isolated in long periods of time (usually

twenty-three hours per day, seven days a week) have been

described as harmful to health, both psychological and

physical42.These effects are more negative in younger inmates.43

Isolation affects prisoners in different ways, from

disorientation to suicide, but there is a consensus that it

affects almost everyone who is subject to it. There are

different testimonies within transgender population regarding

their experiences in solitary confinement. Some transgender

people feel that the climate of violent towards them is so

extreme that they prefer to be in solitary confinement. This

is the case of a client of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project

identified as ´Jacquie,’ she stated that “Prison is a horror

show. (…) The best thing about it, it is being locked up 23

hours a day, 7 days a week. Otherwise I would have to survive

in open population”44 The same feeling of danger is shared by

other former inmate who states: “Can you imagine what it must

have been like for me to have requested that? (Staying in

solitary confinement) But they wouldn’t even do that for me”45 These testimonies reveal how dangerous was to be in general

population for them. Yolanda Valentin, who spent twelve months42 The Effects of Solitary Confinement on Prison Inmates, A Brief Story and

Review of the Literature ( pg 503 -504)43 Human Rights Watch, Growing Up Locked Down. Youth in Solitary Confinement in Jails and

Prisons Across the United States, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2012/10/10/growing-

locked-down44 Sylvia Rivera Project. It´s War in Here p. 18.45 Ibid.p.18

18

in solitary confinement described the experience as being in a

“mental hospital”:

“it’s just a room, you don’t have anything you need or should

have, a window you can’t even open, you don’t even get air

your feel like an animal then the room ends like in a big

window so everyone can see you, it´s an entertainment for them

to see a person in this room going crazy, everyone is

laughing, everyone is walking by, look at the fag, look at the

homo, it really feels like you are in a mental hospital”46

Valentin is addressing the psychological aspects of being

locked down almost twenty-four hours per day, but there are

also testimonies of persons who has been physically abused in

solitary confinement by the guards.47

Approaches about how to manage the transgender population

in penitentiary institutions vary largely. Currently, there is

a trend to reform the regulation involving transgender

population, with some prisons and jails in the world creating

specific modules for queer population. This is the case of the

K6G unit, a unit specifically designed to house gay and

transgender population in the world´s largest jail, Los

Angeles County Men´s Jail.48 Although a priori it seems a good

idea to segregate gay and transgender people from the general

population, there are some voices that think that creating new

units for transgender people will ultimately make stronger the

46 Janet Baus and Dan Hunt. Cruel and Unusual. 200647 Eric A. Stanley, Nat Smith. Captive Genders. Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industry

Complex p. 107.48 Russell K. Robinson: Masculinity as Prison: Sexual Identity, Race, and

Incarceration, p.1311

19

Prison Industry Complex: “We know that if they build it, they

will fill it, and getting trans people out of prison is the

only real way to address the safety issues that trans

prisoners face.”49 This rationale is framed within the abolitionist

approach that advocates for deep and transformative solutions

affecting not only trans population but the whole prisoner

population: “Building a trans and queer abolitionist movement

means building power among people facing multiple systems of

oppression in order to imagine a world beyond mass

devastation, violence and inequity that occurs within and

between communities50” The abolitionist approach opposes

reformism and it seems to share Michael Foucault´s

observation: “ One should also recall that the movement for

reforming the prisons, for controlling their functioning is

not a recent phenomenon. It does not even seem to have

originated in a recognition of failure. Prison reform is

virtually contemporary with the prison itself: it constitutes,

as it were, its program”51. Reforms might solve very punctual

problems, but the status-quo of violence and punishment remains

the same along the years, this is the stance of the

abolitionist movement.

However, it would be interesting looking at other

countries in which radical reforms have brought positive

results. Netherlands, for example, closed eight prisons in

2013 because the lack of prisoners. A comparative study would

49 Eric A. Stanley, Nat Smith. Captive Genders. Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industry

Complex p.3450 Ibid p.,3551 Michael Foucault: Discipline and Punish. The birth of Prison p. 234.

20

help to understand why this happens, but it is clear that the

legal apparatus in Netherlands works very differently from the

United States. For example, the legal approach to reoccurrence

in a drug crime is addressed to the recovery and recuperation

of the person who committed the crime. Detentions are made

with the purpose of making the offender collaborate in a rehab

program and come back to society as a valuable member.52

Another factor is the treatment given to the inmates in jail.

Solitary confinement is limited to two weeks at maximum and,

although inmates cannot take part in academic or social

activities, they have right to visits53. There is a huge divide

between the US prison industry complex and the Dutch prison

system, and transformative reforms could help to create a

better penitentiary system in United States that would help

not only transgender population but the general population

too.

As I said at the beginning, transgender population is

subject to multiple vectors of oppression that make them

vulnerable to end up in prison. Neoliberal structures, such as

the Prison Industry Complex that feeds itself from civil

population, create more and more inequalities in a

meritocratic society that firmly believes that if someone is

imprisoned it is because this person has done something which

merits imprisonment. The hunger strike of August 2013 is proof

that it is very difficult to make society perceive this

differently. Thus, if the number of transgender people in jail

52 The Dutch Criminal Justice System, p. 157.53 Ibid., p.176.

21

is growing and the PIC presents itself as a powerful, growing

and almost indestructible system of punishment, it will be

necessary to change the societal circumstances that lead to

the marginalisation of transgender people and force them to

survive on the borders of legality. Whilst the adoption of

abolitionist ideas in a Neoliberal society such as the United

States may appear utopic, I consider they help to envision a

more just and less cruel society.

References

Baus, J. Hunt, D. Cruel and Unusual. DVD. Reid Production.2006

Brown, Wendy. Neoliberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy. Theory andEvent V7

Bureau of Justice Statistics. Sexual Victimization in Prisons and JailsReported by Inmates 2011-2012. Retrieved fromhttp://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/svpjri1112.pdf

D´Emilio, John. Making Trouble (Routledge, Chapman and Hall,Inc., 1992)

Department of Health and Human Services USA. HIV among theTransgender People in the United States. 2013. Retrieved fromhttp://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/risk_transgender.pdf

22

Eskridge,William. Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet(Cambridge: Harvard University)

Feinberg, Leslie. Transgender Liberation. The Transgender StudiesReader

Foucault, Michael. Discipline and Punish. The birth of Prison. Vintage. NewYork 1977.

Harvey,David. A Brief Story of Neoliberalism .Oxford Press. 2005.

Human Rights Watch. Growing Up Locked Down. Youth in Solitary Confinementin Jails and Prisons across the United States (2012)http://www.hrw.org/reports/2012/10/10/growing-locked-down

Human Rights Watch. Chronic Indifference: HIV/ AIDS Servicesfor Immigrants Detained by the USA. Vol 19, N5, Dec.2007

Mogul, Ritchie and Whitlock. Queer Injustice. The Criminalization of LGBTPeople in the United States

National Centre for Gender Equality. Injustice at Every Turn: A Report ofthe National Transgender Discrimination Survey. (2011)

Rodriguez, Dylan. State Terror and the Reproduction of Imprisoned Dissent.Social Identities, Volume 9, Number 2, 2003

Rubin, Gayle. “The Miracle Mile: South of Market and Gay Male Leather, 1962-1997”

Scharff, Peter. ‘The Effects of Solitary Confinement on Prison Inmates: A BriefHistory and Review of the Literature’ Crime and Justice, Vol. 34, No. 1(2006),

Spade, Dean. Normal Life. Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, andthe Limits of Law. (South End Press)

Stanley, Eric, Nat Smith. Captive Genders. Trans Embodiment and thePrison Industry Complex

Stryker, Susan. Transgender History (Seal Press, 2008)

23

Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the NationalTransgender Discrimination Survey (2011)

Swartchz, Jonathan. Turned Out: Sexual Assault behind Bars.DVD.(2004)

The Pew Center of the States. One in One Hundred: Behind Barsin America. 2008. Retrievedhttp://www.pewstates.org/uploadedFiles/PCS_Assets/2008/one%20in%20100.pdf

U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Profile ofJail Inmates, 2002 (Retrieved 10/12/04)http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/pji02.pdf

24