On January 1, a California state law allowing male inmates who identify as female to request transfer to women’s prisons went into effect. Since then, the state has received over 250 transfer requests from men asking to be transferred. According to documents obtained by Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), more than one man who has already been transferred has been convicted of sexual assault. Due to a similar policy in Washington state, Washington Correctional Center for Women currently houses a serial rapist. Connecticut and Massachusetts have both passed similar legislation.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Abigail Shrier explains that, unlike most men’s prisons, women’s prisons do not separate inmates based on the severity of their crimes. Also unlike men’s prisons, Central California Women’s Facility in Cowchilla, which currently houses eleven male inmates, houses eight inmates to a room, with a sink and toilet inside the cell and only a cowboy door for modesty. This allows neither privacy nor escape for women who are uncomfortable or feel unsafe being housed with male prisoners.
Inmates in these women’s prisons have spoken up, expressing fear and discomfort as they prepare for an influx of male inmates. Staff have also raised concerns, and according to one whistleblower, a woman at Washington Correctional Center has already been assaulted by a male prisoner who requested transfer.
The ACLU has pointed out that the majority of women in prison have experienced sexual abuse or assault at some point in their lives. Policies like those in California and Washington and those being demanded by the Biden administration place women who have already experienced trauma directly in harm’s way and forces them to share an enclosed space with almost no privacy protections with men who have been convicted of violent crimes. And yet, the ACLU criticizes policies that protect single-sex spaces, including requirements that inmates be placed in facilities that correspond with their biological sex. President Biden has said that “in prison, your sexual identity is defined by what you say, not what the prison says.”
Ignoring the biological distinctions between men and women puts women’s safety and privacy at risk. Policies that force women to share an enclosed space with little to no privacy with men who have committed violent crimes violate the safety and dignity of those women and violates the Constitutional commitment not to inflict cruel and unusual punishment. President Biden’s insistence that sexual identity is based on an individual’s feelings, rather than biological reality, is dangerous.
(Image: Washington State Department of Corrections)
