San Francisco has just announced another victory for the transgender community: you’ll be able to pick whether you go to a male or female jail by the end of the year.
Currently, transgender inmates in San Francisco are housed in isolation in the city’s downtown jail. But, by the end of the year, the San Francisco Sheriff, Ross Mirkarimi, hopes to house them in the general population–with whatever gender they “identify” with.
The reason? Nebulous claims of “social justice” for transgender Americans.
“I carry the perspective forward that the transgender population is marginalized on the streets of America,” Mirkarimi explained. “Consider how magnified that treatment is inside prisons and jails.”
Transgender inmates allegedly won’t just be able to declare a gender–they’ll be subjected a review process, to determine whether they’re actually transgender. But San Francisco offers no objective reasoning for how they’ll determine that, and it’s not clear that the so-called review will be anything more than a politically-correct rubber stamp.
Most surprisingly, it would allow a man or a woman who have not not yet had gender reassignment surgery to go in the prison of their choosing–a transgender inmate still built as their birth gender could wind up in a prison with their self-identified gender.
“It’s not going to be based on genitalia alone,” Mirkarimi clarified.
This kind of policy would be the first in the country–including other prisons in California. California has a liberal policy on transgender immigrants, including paying for their reassignment surgery, but doesn’t allow pre-operation transgenders into the regular population. San Francisco’s new policy will change that.
Currently, just 6 prisoners, out of San Francisco’s 1,257 inmates, are transgender.
