‘PREA Is a Joke’: A Case Study of How Trans PREA Standards Are(n’t) Enforced

Abstract

In 2012 PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) added specific guidelines to protections already enacted to reduce prison rape. These new protections were specific to trans and intersex folx currently in prison. Although these are federal “mandatory guidelines,” the enforcement of these standards varies between facilities. Drawing from a subsample of 9 trans participants (from a broader interview study) who experienced incarceration while identifying as trans, I focus primarily on the narrative of Naomi, a Black trans woman, who experienced confinement in the state of Virginia. This chapter will be an analysis of current PREA standards and their effects on trans folx, the action/inaction of facilities, and policy suggestions concerning trans inmates through a case study of Naomi’s experience in addition to the narratives of 8 other participants from a broader interview study of that focuses on trans people’s experiences with the criminal legal system (police, courts, and corrections). This chapters also incorporates current literature, present guidelines regarding trans inmates, and other issues concerning trans inmates. These incidents will serve as a representation of trans life behind bars as both positive and negative experiences occurring within the duality of laws on the book and laws in (in)action.

A Mixed-Methodological Inquiry of Correctional Population Responses Toward the Prison Rape Elimination Act

“…Such findings are not that uncommon. Carrillo (2022), for example, surveyed over 1,100 incarcerated individuals, and found that nearly all of them perceived PREA as a "joke." Respondents further thought that PREA regulations were not being followed, thus discouraging them from taking the policy seriously.…”

The Structure and Operation of the Transgender Criminal Legal System Nexus in the United States: Inequalities, Administrative Violence, and Injustice at Every Turn

“…The experience of transgender people in carceral spaces is shaped by their demeaned social status in a hypermasculine prison/jail culture in which masculinity is valorized and femininity is subordinated and disdained. It is also shaped by the social organization of prison politics, the ways in which heterosexism and homophobia manifest in prisons and jails, and the failure of corrections officials to enforce zero-tolerance policies for assault (sexual or otherwise) (Carrillo 2022, Donaldson 2001, Kunzel 2008, Stanley & Smith 2015. Undergirding these contextual features of carceral spaces, a gender binary that assumes that there are two (and only two) sex categories (i.e., male and female) and two (and only two) genders (i.e., men and women) positions transgender people as either illegible or legible in ways that leave them vulnerable to discrimination, violence, and other harms ( Jenness & Fenstermaker 2014Rodgers et al 2017).…”