In court documents filed yesterday, the US Justice Department backed a lawsuit brought by a transgender inmate.
Ashley Diamond, a 36-year-old transgender prisoner in the Georgia system, had been undergoing hormone treatments from the time she was a teenager until her internment in a men's prison in 2012. There, her treatments were stopped because, according to officials, she was not identified as trans in her papers.
While it's not something I support, I will say that, in fairness, Georgia's policy is like that of most other states: Prisoners are placed according to the sex on their birth certificate and receive treatments if they are indicated as transgender. (In 2005, Wisconsin stopped treatments for all inmates; a few other states have followed their lead.) Still, according to the Justice Department, ending such treatment is cruel and unusual punishment.
That's not hard to see in Ms. Diamond's case: Since the withdrawal of hormones, she has attempted suicide as well as self-castration and other forms of self-mutilation. And she has been in a nearly constant state of depression.
Needless to say, I think the DoJ is doing the right thing. And they have put the nation's prison systems and jails on notice that policies prohibiting treatment for new prisoners are unconsitutional.
Ashley Diamond, a 36-year-old transgender prisoner in the Georgia system, had been undergoing hormone treatments from the time she was a teenager until her internment in a men's prison in 2012. There, her treatments were stopped because, according to officials, she was not identified as trans in her papers.
While it's not something I support, I will say that, in fairness, Georgia's policy is like that of most other states: Prisoners are placed according to the sex on their birth certificate and receive treatments if they are indicated as transgender. (In 2005, Wisconsin stopped treatments for all inmates; a few other states have followed their lead.) Still, according to the Justice Department, ending such treatment is cruel and unusual punishment.
That's not hard to see in Ms. Diamond's case: Since the withdrawal of hormones, she has attempted suicide as well as self-castration and other forms of self-mutilation. And she has been in a nearly constant state of depression.
Needless to say, I think the DoJ is doing the right thing. And they have put the nation's prison systems and jails on notice that policies prohibiting treatment for new prisoners are unconsitutional.
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