Homophobia, Fear of AIDS Allegedly Drove San Bernadino County to Skip Safety Checks for LGBTQ Prisoners

In a white male supremacist society, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) prisoners face the compounded misery of discrimination based on their race, income, and/or sexual orientation and gender identity.

They are three times more likely to be assaulted behind bars than other prisoners, and are grossly overrepresented in our prisons — particularly our disgraceful juvenile detention centers. While only 4-8% of youth identify as LGBTQ on the outside, 13-15% of prisoners in juvenile prisons are LGBTQ.

In some jails, administrators willfully place transgender inmates with the wrong gender population — for instance, placing a transgender woman in a male population. In California, transgender women in men’s prisons were found to be 13 times more likely to be assaulted than other prisoners.

Former Louisiana Corrections Officer Argues 14 Year Old Prisoner ‘Consented’ to Being Raped

The age of consent in the state of Louisiana is 17. The girl was 14 at the time of the incident. This is textbook statutory rape.

Read the whole report if you can stomach it. But I think this quote from a local attorney and children’s advocate sums up the issue perfectly:

“To say that a 14-year-old mentally and emotionally distressed girl with a history of having been abused and neglected as a child should be found at fault for consenting to be raped by a male guard while in confinement at the hands of my local government, which is charged with the responsibility of keeping her safe, not only sets the cause of children’s advocacy back a hundred years, but I believe the parish government commits ‘documentary’ sexual assault against the child by taking this position in a public record.”

Dozens of Inmates Assaulted in ‘Ass to the Glass’ Hazing Tradition at Texas Private Prison

In Texas, a lawsuit filed against Corrections Corporation of America sheds another sliver of light on the notorious culture of violence at private prisons.

An unnamed prisoner alleges he and over 50 others were violently assaulted during a hazing tradition known as ‘ass to the glass,’ which involves “forcibly stripping an individual, turning him upside down and slamming his buttocks against the glass of a guard’s station.”

Incarcerated Women in California Pen Open Letter Against GEO Group’s New Private Prison

In April, The Bakersfield Californian reported that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) signed a contract with private prison company GEO Group to re-open and operate a women’s facility in Mcfarland, California.

GEO Group will own and operate the 260-bed facility and is expected to make around $9 million per year at full occupancy. Unfortunately, due to the lack of public access to private prison contracts, most of the details are unknown.

This week, a group of ten female prisoners from the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) and the California Institution for Women (CIW) have written an open letter calling on “California state legislators to direct CDCR to cancel the contract with GEO and implement existing release programs instead of opening a new prison!”

The women write that they are being “shuffled around without regard for our well-being or our human rights” due to overcrowding. They note that CCWF’s facility is currently operating at 185% capacity, and as a result, prisoners’ access to critical services such as food and healthcare have declined.

They are concerned, however, that this move by the state will not positively impact its mass incarceration problem, and women transferred to GEO Group’s new facility might not see their treatment improve.