Last week, ABC’s mini-series When We Rise took audiences across the country on a trip down to memory lane, where we got to re-live the struggles the LGBT community has courageously overcome in the last four decades, including the issue of extreme violence towards queer inmates in prisons throughout the U.S. and abroad.
“I’m a woman, always have been. They still put me in that man’s cell in jail. Thought I was gonna die in there,” a troubled Seville, played by transgender actress Alexandra Grey, says in an LGBT support group scene aired in the show’s last episode. “When Paul came and told me my old partner had died of AIDS, I thought to myself: ‘This is how I’m gonna die.’ So, I said to myself, if I could survive jail, I was gonna find the salvation that he couldn’t.”
In an ideal world, transgender people would serve time in prisons that match their gender identity. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. In Texas, for example, the law requires a person to be housed according to their biological gender.
“I am feminine, a feminine person, a transgender woman,” Tyniesha Stephens, a transgender inmate serving time for prostitution in an all-male jail told TPM news. “And some guys look at me, you know, with that eye. I feel very uncomfortable.”
She added, “There would also be officers in there who had grudges against gay people and they would just come in here and tear up our stuff for no reason. They would come in and talk to us like we’re animals and handle us like we’re animals. It was unfair and unjust.”
In the United States of America, the rules vary from state to state. However, the director of policy for the Washington-based National Center for Transgender Equality, Harper Jean Tobin, argues that: “Transgender women have to be eligible for women’s housing. That is where they will be safest. These are women who are psychologically women.”
Netflix’s original series, Orange is the New Black, was the first TV show to develop a powerful narrative featuring a lovable transgender character, Sophia Burset, played by transgender actress Laverne Cox.
El chiste de ayer fue cuando me dijeron que Vicky era idéntica a Sophia Burset de #OITNB pic.twitter.com/PlfVGWW6PG
— Nabih Arámbula (@nabiharambula) August 22, 2016
“What I think is so brilliant about Sophia’s story line and that particular moment [Burset being placed in solitary confinement] is that it shows the truth of the experience that a lot of transgender folks have in prison every single day,” Cox said during an interview with Vulture back in 2015. “Far too often, trans people who are incarcerated are place in solitary confinement allegedly for ‘our protection.’ And sometimes trans women are placed in men’s prisons, where they put us in solitary confinement, which is cruel and unusual punishment allegedly for our protection.”
She continued, “So when writers came up with this, it’s from reality. This is what happens to many transgender people who are incarcerated every single day. I’m executive-producing a documentary called Free CeCe about CeCe McDonald, who’s an African-American transgender woman who spent 19 months of a 41-month prison sentence in a men’s prison for defending herself against a racist and transphobic attack. And three different times when she was incarcerated, she experienced being placed in solitary confinement allegedly for her protection. She fought to get herself taken out of solitary, but this is just the reality for a lot of transgender people all over the country today.”
Gay and lesbian inmates are also victims of said violence and discrimination in other parts of the country as explained by Cox’s co-star, Lea DeLaria.
“You know that thing when Michael Harney‘s character, Healy, says to Piper that if it was up to him he’d put all the dykes into one section of the prison,” DeLaria described during a dinner party filmed for Chelsea Handler‘s show, Chelsea. “I was reading an article about that. They were saying all the things that Orange gets right, and that was one of them…that there is a prison in Georgia where they do that. I lost my fucking mind. I went insane about that. They segregate the lesbians from the population.”
#fuckracism #fucksexism #fuckclassism #fuckqueerphobia #fuckxenophobia #fuckituptheasswithnolube pic.twitter.com/HqPuI8mvHv
— Lea DeLaria (@realleadelaria) December 16, 2016
Truth is, segregation is still an issue in the jails of most American cities. In 2014, New York opened a voluntary transgender wing but recent legal issues are threatening its survival. In Los Angeles, the County’s Men’s Central Jail received orders from the court to make room for a gay wing, which subjects potential residents to a screening process that quizzes them on lingo such as “glory hole,” which often has the effect of eliminating Black and Latino applicants, according to research by University of California, Berkeley law professor Russell K. Robinson.
So, in a country that seems to be going back in time regarding these kinds of issues, should we even start the argument about creating safe places for LGBT offenders: Should queer inmates have their own jails?
While surfing the World Wide Web to find opinions on the subject, I stumbled upon Penny Pieper‘s point of view. Pieper, who describes herself as a retired prison guard, explained: “I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it might keep them safer, but on the other hand giving them a place of their own, which would actually place them in a situation where they have like-minded fellow inmates, and they may actually ENJOY mixing up with like-minded people.”
She added, “I want to be clear: I mean they will like it because they will be locked up with other people that like the same kind of sex they do. It could very well be a wonderland for them. I, for one, do not think a prison should be enjoyable. On the other hand, isn’t it true that LGBT want to be EQUAL? Then they should be equal to straight inmates and be locked up together.”
Facebook/Penny Pieper/LGBT prisons
While America is still debating on what equal rights actually stand for, places like Thailand and Turkey are starting to contemplate options to better protect LGBT members inside the prison’s walls.
Thailand has around 300,000 prisoners, of which more than 6,000 are registered as sexual minorities. For this reason, the Thais government is considering what could be the world’s first prison facility exclusively for LGBT inmates. While the plans are still being discussed, in Pattaya Remand and other prisons across Thailand LGBT prisoners are kept apart to prevent violence, officials say.
“If we didn’t separate them, people could start fighting over partners to sleep with,” Pattaya Remand Warden Watcharavit Vachiralerphum told AP. “It could lead to rape, sexual assault, and the spread of disease.”
In Turkey, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judgment prompted the Justice Ministry to reconsider the problems of LGBT inmates, resulting in a decision to build a prison just for LGBT individuals. According to various sources, the now labeled “pink prison” would begin housing queer offenders this year.
The “pink prison” concept seems to be yet another act of segregation to many members of the community. Some argue that acceptance and education in prisons across the globe would be a better solution to the violent acts gay, lesbians and transgender people suffer inside the prison system.
I am very interested to know your opinion on the subject: Are you for or against LGBT prisons around the world?
