Even When Trans Women Win Transfers to Women’s Prisons, They Still Aren’t Safe

After 17 days, Amber Kim has suspended her one-woman hunger strike protesting her involuntary transfer to a men’s prison.

Since her incarceration in 2006, Kim had spent 15 years in men’s jails and prisons. During that time, she fought both for gender-affirming medical care and for a transfer to a women’s prison. Finally, in 2021, she was transferred to the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW).

Three years later, this past March, Kim was issued a 504 disciplinary ticket for allegedly engaging in consensual sex with her girlfriend, a cisgender woman. (Sex, even consensual sex, is against prison rules.)

Prison officials moved both women to a closed custody unit, also known as punitive segregation. As the Huffington Post reported, Kim’s disciplinary report was leaked, seemingly by prison staff, to the National Review, which published an inflammatory story about the ticket and alleged that trans women sexually exploit cisgender women in women’s prisons.

The ticket also triggered a review of Kim’s placement in a women’s prison. Department of Corrections Communications Director Chris Wright told the Huffington Post that the “housing review was initiated because of Kim’s most recent sexual contact with another incarcerated individual.”

In June, three months after she was issued the disciplinary ticket, officers brought Kim out of her cell and told her she was being transferred to a men’s prison. She asked to see the transfer paperwork. She also asked to speak with her lawyer. When both requests were denied, she refused to walk. In response, she told Truthout that guards threw her to the ground, hog tied her, and drove her the 70 miles to the Monroe Correctional Complex, where she was placed in the Intensive Management Unit, or solitary confinement. She was issued two tickets for allegedly refusing to follow staff orders and refusing a facility transfer.

In response, Kim went on hunger strike. She initially contacted Truthout nine days into her strike. While LGBTQ+ people across the nation were commemorating Pride with parades, protests and parties, Kim spent her single hour outside her cell in a concrete yard calling the media and trying her best to ignore hunger pangs.

Despite her repeated requests, no one has told her what steps she must take to return to WCCW. She submitted an appeal, but despite prison policy requiring a response within 15 business days, has heard nothing. “I’m writing another letter to [the head of the Department of Corrections in] Olympia today,” she told Truthout in mid-July.

At Monroe, Kim has two choices: stay in extreme isolation or face continual physical and sexual violence in general population. During her 15 years in men’s prisons, she experienced continual physical and sexual violence — including being called derogatory names in three languages every time she left her cell, being beaten up, and facing men attempting to shove their way into her cell after she rejected their advances.

“I am terrified of being put in a men’s general population,” she told Truthout. “If they put me in a cell with a random dude, there’s a pretty good chance he’s going to victimize me. And if I’m in a pod full of men, I guarantee you some of them will victimize me.”

Kim’s fears are neither irrational nor exceptional. Trans people behind bars are over five times more likely to be sexually assaulted by staff and over nine times more likely to be assaulted by other incarcerated people, according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. The survey also found that nearly one of every four respondents reported physical assault by staff or other incarcerated people while one in five reported being sexually assaulted.

In recent years, several states have implemented policies allowing trans people — particularly trans women — to be placed in prisons according to their gender identity. That’s why Kim was able to transfer to WCCW, and finally feel safe from the constant threat of physical and sexual violence. Now, Washington seems to be following a troubling trend in which states that have recently adopted gender-affirming prison housing policies for trans women are rolling them back, particularly after barrages of transphobic media reports.

“Be Perfect or We Will Not Let You Be Safe”

According to the Washington Department of Corrections, approximately 250 people in its 11 prisons (or 1.1 percent of the prison population) identify as transgender or nonbinary. Nearly half (or 122 individuals) identify as trans women.

Currently, 12 trans women are housed at WCCW.

Since January 2021, WCCW staff have issued 33 disciplinary tickets for 504 infractions (or infractions for having sex), according to an email from the Washington Department of Corrections. Of those, only Kim’s has resulted in a transfer. A prison spokesperson told Truthout that officials will conduct reviews every six months and that Kim’s placement may be considered then.

“I feel like [my transfer] sends a message of terror — you damn well better be perfect or we will not let you be safe,” Kim reflected.

That’s what A.D. Sean Lewis, an attorney with the Prison Law Office’s Trans Beyond Bars program, has seen as well.

Transferring trans women to men’s prisons or changing housing policies in response to allegations of sexual activity divides them into categories: those who are seen as safe and deserving to be housed in a women’s prison, and those who no longer deserve safety considerations, he told Truthout.

That divide also “creates the implication that trans people present unique safety concerns that non-trans people don’t,” he added, despite several studies showing that incarcerated trans people are far more likely to experience rather than perpetrate violence against their cisgender peers.

“I Wish I Was Confident in the Broken System”

In 2021, the New Jersey Department of Corrections (DOC) settled a lawsuit filed by the ACLU over its treatment of trans people in custody. Under its June 2021 settlement agreement, the DOC agreed to maintain a policy for at least a year giving trans people the “presumption” to be housed according to their gender identity.

In 2023, after a trans woman impregnated two women at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, New Jersey’s sole women’s prison, the state reversed its gender-affirming housing policy. The current policy requires incarcerated trans women to undergo vaginoplasty, a gender-affirming surgery which removes the penis, testicles and scrotum and creates a vaginal canal and vulva, to eliminate any “reproductive concerns.”

The new policy meant that, although no one had accused 61-year-old Gia Valentina of any sexual activity, she was nonetheless transferred to the men’s New Jersey State Prison. She had been at Edna Mahan for only 59 days after a years-long fight. But on May 4, 2023, she was moved.

At the men’s prison, Valentina has spent the past 14 months in segregation despite the state law restricting solitary confinement to no more than 20 consecutive days. The law also limits the practice for vulnerable people, including pregnant or disabled people, those under 21 or over 65 years old and LGBTQ+ people. Although it has specific guidelines for the other vulnerable populations, the law provides none for LGBTQ+ people.

Valentina had been requesting vaginoplasty since February 2022 and is hoping that this will address prison administrators’ new-found “reproductive concerns.” But behind bars, Valentina cannot schedule her own medical appointments and must rely on the prison’s medical staff to do so — and on the administration to authorize these appointments. Meanwhile, in segregation and uncertain about her surgery, her days blur together.

“When you asked me what my typical day looked like, they [really] don’t differ from day to day when it comes to dealing with my mental anguish of not getting my vaginoplasty surgery (having this ‘thing’ still on my body) and being in this men’s prison,” she wrote in an e-message to Truthout. “The moment I wake up I am faced with having this penis! It’s a brutal reminder of how I am being held captive in this body that is not mine. Then I have to face all the discrimination, transphobia, misgendering, all the weirdos, perverts, creeps. This is the worst I have ever had it and the highest level of trans discrimination I have ever faced.”

In mid-June, Valentina had a ray of hope. Jamie Belladonna, another trans woman at New Jersey State Prison, had obtained authorization for vaginoplasty and was taken to an outside hospital for the surgery. “This is a very historical moment for the Pride community inside these walls of the prison industry and personally for me to see my sister get the medical treatment she needs,” Valentina wrote on the day that her friend left.

“I am supposed to be next for surgery,” she continued. “I wish I was confident in the broken system, but I am not. We shall see how things unfold.”

Belladonna had previously been told that she would not be allowed to transfer to the women’s prison until she obtained the surgery. She had assumed that she would be transferred to Edna Mahan once the hospital discharged her.

Instead, she was returned to New Jersey State Prison. There, prison officials told her that she needed to fill out an official transfer request. She also learned that the prison psychologist had flagged her as moderate to high risk of committing sexual violence. When she met with him in early July, she learned that his assessment had been based purely on her pre-surgical genitalia. Since she had had vaginoplasty, he told her he was removing his risk assessment that she would likely commit sexual violence.

Now, however, prison officials have deemed her as being at risk for being a victim of sexual violence and have moved her to a protective custody unit. Her friend Gisella Mann told Truthout that unit is even more isolated than the segregation unit she had been in with Valentina. In protective custody, Belladonna stays in her cell nearly all day. She has no access to recreation, in contravention of the state’s Isolated Confinement Restriction Act. She also has no access to electronic messaging, although she can still use her tablet to call pre-approved phone numbers, like Mann’s. (Truthout was unable to get on her approved phone list before her surgery and subsequent isolation.)

Belladonna has since filled out the paperwork requesting a transfer to Edna Mahan. Staff have told her that she may be waiting up to 30 days for a decision.

“This is psychological torture,” she recently told Mann.

The New Jersey Department of Corrections did not respond to Truthout’s questions before publication.

“They Fear Continuing to Speak Up”

In California, Senate Bill 132, or The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, went into effect on January 1, 2021. The Act allows trans, nonbinary and intersex people to request to be housed and searched in a manner consistent with their gender identity. Since then, 334 trans women have requested to be placed in women’s prisons; 46 have been approved.

Unsurprisingly, the transfers of trans women to women’s prisons spurred a flurry of transphobic media stories, which lobbed unfounded accusations of trans women sexually assaulting and impregnating cisgender women. (A review by the state’s Office of the Inspector General found no substantiated, or proven, instances of sexual assault or impregnation by trans women.)

The firestorm of attention on the few dozen women transferred to Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) obscures the more prevalent violence, said A.D. Lewis.

He noted that hundreds of trans women remain in men’s prisons. According to the state’s data, 70 trans women were denied transfer and 93 changed their minds during their classification hearings. Another 125 are still awaiting a decision.

In male prisons, trans women face extremely high rates of violence, sexual harassment, sexual assault and trafficking. But the media furor has focused not on the heinous and extreme violence facing trans women in men’s prisons, but instead on the actions of dozens at women’s prisons.

In an email to Truthout, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation stated that, since SB132’s passage, 13 transgender women were transferred to women’s prisons and later transferred back to men’s prisons. Eleven of those return transfers were voluntary. The agency also pointed out that both federal and state law prohibit housing decisions based solely on a person’s genitalia.

Jen Orthwein represents two trans women who were transferred to the Central California Women’s Facility. Both were subjects of sustained media attention after their transfers to CCWF and ultimately transferred back to men’s prisons.

“Despite exercising multiple forms of advocacy, including letters to stakeholders and litigation, we have been powerless to prevent our clients from being subjected to prolonged isolation and irreparable harm while in facilities for women,” Orthwein told Truthout.

“In response to being public advocates for themselves and other incarcerated transgender people, our clients were each subjected to years in isolation,” they continued. “Ultimately, they were returned to men’s facilities almost immediately after their stories of tortuous treatment in the women’s facility were published. They fear continuing to speak up and face more retaliation. They have conveyed they just want to be able to program to reduce their time and get out, which they have not been allowed to do for years now.” (Truthout is not publishing Orthwein’s clients’ names to prevent further retaliation.)

Lewis has seen a similar pattern. “The people who advocate for themselves and for the trans community at large are often targeted and face extreme discrimination and retaliation,” he told Truthout. That harassment and retaliation convey the message that advocacy, including filing grievances about prison wrongdoings, will lead to repercussions.

Furthermore, he notes that sensationalistic media about trans women in women’s prisons reverberate far past the individuals and prisons.

“These types of stories are widely shared among corrections officials,” he explained. Lewis, who visits jails and prisons throughout California, has been asked on multiple occasions about the alleged impregnations in New Jersey and how officials can prevent similar scenarios.

Lewis notes that staff have been giving the media confidential information about trans people. “There are people in prisons and jails who are actively breaking rules, sharing confidential information and leaking information to right-wing press. Then, when these stories are reported, these stories have a huge reach nationally.”

That’s what happened to Kim while she was at the women’s prison in Washington. Under prison policy, incarcerated people’s gender identities are confidential medical information. Nonetheless, someone at the DOC leaked Kim’s disciplinary report. In late March, a prison spokesperson told HuffPost that the agency was “concerned that someone disclosed private medical information” about Kim and was investigating the leak. In mid-July, the same spokesperson told Truthout that the investigation was ongoing.

Twelve days into her hunger strike, Kim was moved from segregation into the prison’s medical unit to be monitored by health care staff. There, she remains on segregation status. Because she has been on hunger strike, nurses check her blood pressure and vitals. When they do so, she is either handcuffed behind her back or placed in waist restraints.

On July 8, 17 days into her hunger strike, a prison doctor informed her that one of her gender-affirming surgeries, which had been scheduled while she had been at WCCW, would be canceled if she did not begin eating.

Kim suspended her hunger strike. “The state is trying to force me to choose between safe housing or a gender-affirming surgery that will allow me to live my life more fully,” she said in a statement to advocates and supporters.

“The most important thing to consider is that I’m not an outlier. I’ve just been able to gain attention for what is normal,” Kim told Truthout three days after suspending her hunger strike. “The use of state-sanctioned violence to force people into unsafe situations is normal for the DOC. The disregarding of a person’s understanding of their safety is normal for the DOC. Discrimination against LGBTQ people is normal for the DOC. I’m not special. I just happened to have had some luck in bringing attention to the issue.”