Recent changes to the Bureau of Prisons’ Transgender Offender Manual will lead to increased violence against trans prisoners. The changes will sort trans people not by the gender they are, but the gender they were assigned at birth. Trans women will be sent to men’s prisons, and trans men to women’s prisons, except “in rare cases.” Under the guise of “safety concerns,” they have endangered trans people’s lives, despite the fact that trans prisoners are nine times more likely to be sexually harassed or assaulted.
In many places across the United States, the previous rules, which recommended serious consideration of trans prisoners being placed with those of their own genders (i.e., trans women with other women), were often ignored; now trans prisoners do not even have the meager protections of these rules. Over a fifth of trans people have been in jail or prison, many of them targeted by profiling (such as in New Orleans, where black trans women are routinely profiled as sex workers by NOPD) or arrested for acts of selfdefense (as in the case of Cece McDonald, a trans woman charged with manslaughter for defending herself and her friends against attack).
The recent changes by the Justice Department will also bring an end to the tracking of LGBTQ victims of crimes. The collection of statistics on these crimes have been a useful tool in the past, helping to highlight homophobic and transphobic hate-crimes and showing the need for action against oppressive policies. These new rules will mean more and more trans people will face harassment, assault, rape, or even murder in prison.