North Carolina denies transgender inmate's request to transfer to women's prison
ABC Eyewitness News
2/21/18

​LILLINGTON, N.C. --
A transgender inmate convicted of insurance fraud is serving time at a men's prison in North Carolina despite repeated requests to transfer to women's housing.

The News and Observer reports 37-year-old Kanautica Zayre-Brown is believed to be the state's only post-operative transgender prisoner. The state recognizes Zayre-Brown as a man and by birth name, which was legally changed.

Imprisoned as a habitual felon in 2017 after completing a surgical transition, Zayre-Brown is serving up to 9 years and 11 months. Zayre-Brown showers and changes in front of other biologically male inmates, despite having breasts and sex-reassignment surgery. Zayre-Brown said being assaulted is a constant fear.

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Transgender inmate gets rare transfer to female prison
ABC News
Michael Tarm

A transgender woman serving a 10-year sentence in Illinois for burglary has been moved from a men's to a women's prison in what could be a first for the state, her lawyers announced Thursday.
Deon "Strawberry" Hampton , 27, was moved after a yearlong legal battle and resistance from the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Hampton, of Chicago, requested the transfer in 2017 on grounds she'd be less vulnerable to the sexual assault, taunting and beatings she was subjected to in male prisons, according to federal lawsuits filed on her behalf by the MacArthur Justice Center and the Uptown People's Law Center in Chicago.
She was moved within the past week from an all-male prison in Dixon, in northern Illinois, to the women's Logan Correctional Center more than 100 miles away in central Illinois, her lawyers said.
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A Transgender Inmate Says She Was Raped
Time : By Kathleen Foody May 3, 2018

(DENVER) — A transgender inmate who is suing Colorado’s corrections agency says she was raped at a men’s prison hours after a federal judge denied her request to block the prison from keeping her in a disciplinary unit, according to court records and the woman’s attorney.

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Trump rolls back Obama Rules that helped transgender prisoners
USA Today : By Christal Hayes

The Bureau of Prisons rolled back some measures on Friday that helped prevent transgender prisoners from being harassed, assaulted and sexually abused.
The rules, posted just two days before President Trump's inauguration, laid out a number of guidelines for how prisons and guards should treat transgender inmates.
The manual instructed prisons to "recommend housing by gender identity when appropriate." 
Now, under Trump, some of the policies have been altered, according to an updated manual posted to the Bureau of Prisons website Friday. 

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The Impact of the Trump Administration’s Federal Criminal Justice Initiatives on LGBTQ People & Communities and Opportunities for Local Resistance

​Source:
Richard Saenz, Lambda Legal, Kara Ingelhart, Lambda Legal, and Andrea J. Ritchie, Barnard Center for Research on Women

​This report offers an overview of the wide-ranging impacts of the Trump Administration’s federal criminal justice initiatives on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people and communities, with a particular focus on impacts on LGBTQ people of color and immigrants.  Our hope is that this information will serve as a resource to support the work of advocates working at the state and local levels to resist, avoid, limit, or lessen the impacts of federal criminal justice initiatives that harm LGBTQ communities, and to inform broader federal criminal justice reform and police accountability efforts.

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