DCTC has submitted public comments to the US Department of Justice regarding the Standards for the Prevention, Detection, Response and Monitoring of Sexual Abuse in Detention currently under review by the US Attorney General. (Click to read all of our testimony.) As grassroots organizers, we wanted to share the experiences and perspectives of our local communities, and to ensure that the unique needs of trans prisoners are not left out. As we state in our testimony, the present system for preventing sexual abuse in detention is broken, and trans individuals often feel the brunt of this. For the trans community and for many others, it is urgent that we adopt these standards without delay as an important step toward addressing the massive human rights violations that go on every day across this country. Here is an excerpt from our comments:
In the 1994 Farmer v. Brennan US Supreme Court case, a trans woman incarcerated in a male prison complained that the prison administration had shown “deliberate indifference” to the repeated sexual abuse she faced. The Supreme Court declared that the prison has a duty under the Eighth Amendment to provide humane conditions of confinement, including the obligation to ensure that inmates receive adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care, and are protected from violence at the hands of other prisoners. Placing an individual who presents herself and lives her life as female in a male unit is practically ensuring that she will be raped. To fully eliminate sexual abuse in detention, correctional systems must also acknowledge that trans individuals are at a heightened risk and that protecting them from abuse will require flexible housing policies that prioritize their safety. The obligation to prevent sexual abuse requires correctional systems to end the practice of making housing placement decisions based solely on genitalia, or excessively relying on protective custody and administrative segregation.
The standards under review are an extremely important step toward fixing this problem. No matter how big or how small, all corrections facilities must institute basic policies and practices to keep inmates safe. The final standards should include a broad definition of prisoner rape, acknowledging vulnerable prison populations including trans individuals. Whatever form sexual abuse takes, it is always wrong; unchecked harassment frequently leads to more serious abuse. Morally, we must end rape without delay.
Below the cut, read more about the Standards, the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and how to submit your own comments to DOJ, in a press release from Just Detention, International.
Continue reading DCTC’s Comments on Proposed Prisoner Rape Standards
