Transgender inmates get new options
San Francisco County will allow inmates to be housed by their gender preference.
By the end of the year, San Francisco’s county jails will be among the first in the nation to house transgender inmates by their gender preference, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi said.
The county currently puts transgender inmates in an isolated wing of its downtown jail facility. But under the policy announced Thursday, Mirkarimi said, he hopes to have transgender inmates living with their preferred population before 2016.
Those who choose to remain in segregated housing or to continue living with inmates who share the gender they were assigned at birth will be able to do so, said sheriff ’s spokeswoman Kenya Briggs.
“I carry the perspective forward that the transgender population is marginalized on the streets of America,” Mirkarimi said. “Consider how magnified that treatment is inside prisons and jails.”
Currently, six of the county’s 1,257 inmates are transgender, he said.
Inmates who seek to have their housing status changed will be subject to a review process, but Mirkarimi said decisions will not be based solely on an inmate having gender reassignment surgery or a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
“It’s not going to be based on genitalia alone. We will have an advisory committee, experts that help represent the transgender population,” he said. “There will be complicated incidences where we’ll have to decide if this is the proper fit or not.”
The policy differs vastly from other correctional facilities in California and around the nation.
The state prison system places transgender inmates who have not had reassignment surgery into the population that corresponds with the gender they were assigned at birth, according to Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. In Los Angeles County, the Sheriff ’s Department houses transgender inmates and homosexual inmates in a housing unit separate from the general jail population, according to Capt. Joe Dempsey.
California became the first state in the nation to agree to pay for a transgender inmate’s reassignment surgery, in a decision announced last month. But the inmate, a transgender woman, will not be placed in a women’s prison until the operation is complete.
State prisons have 385 transgender inmates receiving hormone therapy, according to the Corrections Department. Of those, 363 identify as female and 22 identify as male.
Michael Silverman, executive director of the New York-based Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, hailed Mirkarimi’s move as an example other correctional agencies should follow.
“If implemented effectively, San Francisco’s program can turn out to be a model for the nation,” Silverman said. “It’s a positive step toward ensuring transgender people in San Francisco’s jail are protected.”
Silverman said transgender inmates are much more likely than other inmates to be sexually assaulted in prison. And trying to protect transgender inmates by segregating or isolating them also is harmful, he said.
“In many prisons and jails around the country, protection today currently consists of isolation. That’s not protection. That’s additional punishment,” Silverman said. “It can’t be the case that transgender prisoners are isolated from other human beings for the vast amount of time they spend in jail under the guise of protecting them.”
San Francisco’s policy will be rolled out in two phases, Mirkarimi said. First, transgender inmates will be granted access to the jail system’s charter high school, substance abuse programs and women’s empowerment classes in the next several weeks. The housing moves will come next.
james.queally@latimes.com Twitter: @JamesQueally