After hundreds of male inmates who identify as female have been transferred by request to women’s prisons in California, many female inmates have become victims of assault at the hands of these transfers.
Lauren Adams, legal counsel for the Women’s Liberation Front, told Just the News that “no one is listening” to the female inmates who are afraid of men being transferred to their prisons by request after a new California law went into effect on the first of the year.
“One of the first assaults we heard of was a man who was victimized in the men’s prison,” Adams said.
“It’s documented, he sued the state over it, and has transferred, and within weeks had attacked his female cellmate. And then they took him away, put him in prison jail, right — administrative segregation — for a couple of weeks and then dumped him on a different yard,” she said.
Last fall, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that allows incarcerated “transgender, non-binary and intersex people” to choose if they want to be housed in a male or female prison, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
By April, there had been 261 requests for transfers, the Los Angeles Times reported.
All but six of the requests were for housing at a women’s facility, and no transfer requests had been denied.
Just 1 percent of California’s prison population identifies as nonbinary, intersex or transgender, according to the Times.
