Jailing criminals by gender preference is a thing. It’s a liberal-Democrat thing, and ridiculous for the obvious reasons. Penises confined with vaginas. Things happen. Unwanted things. Things that get you sent to jail. Unless you are already in jail.
But then things like that happen in men’s prisons.
Career criminal Andre Patterson, “has been in prison since 2008 after multiple convictions in Cook and Livingston counties on charges including second-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery and attempted aggravated arson.” But Andre goes by the name Janiah Monroe now. He’s a she. And ‘she’ claimed last year that she is a victim of multiple sexual assaults by inmates and staff at the men’s prison.
In a federal lawsuit aimed at forcing corrections officials to adequately treat gender dysphoria and improve care for transgender inmates, Dr. William Puga, head of psychiatry for the Department of Corrections, last year testified that Monroe wasn’t welcomed when she was moved to Logan last spring.
“Dr. Puga received information that Monroe threatened staff and other inmates,” U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Rosenstengel wrote in a December injunction ordering the Department of Corrections to provide hormones to transgender inmates and cease making housing assignments based on genitalia or physical appearance. “Women at the facility filed complaints against Monroe under the Prison Rape Elimination Act; some were false but many were legitimate.” Puga also testified that Monroe stopped taking hormones after arriving at Logan.
Patterson/Monroe was moved to the women’s prison late last year. A judge ordered the change, over objections by the state and corrections staff. But since being transferred along with her penis, inmates at her knew Diggs have reported accusations of multiple sexual assaults and rapes at the hands of the transwoman inmate in just the few months since the transfer.
It may be that the biological women don’t want him there (and made the stories up) or that Monroe is as unstable in this confinement as any other. There are stories of genital mutilation, attempted self-castration, and suicide. Gosh, who’d have thought someone previously involved in assault and battery, arson, or attempted murder could be so unstable?
Clearly this individual needs help but I don’t think taxpayer-funded chemical castration or actual surgery is the cure for what ails Monroe who is not eligible for parole until 2051 when h/she will be 60-years-old.
The answer may be that there isn’t one political leaders have the stones to make regardless of gender. Men get sexually assaulted by men in the men’s prison and women by women. The problem is not who is housed with whom.
Maybe we need to end the practice of gen-pop and limit criminals to individual spaces for the duration of their confinement without access to entertainment, exercise equipment, or the company and catalog of criminal knowledge available to them by interacting with other inmates.
Make sure they are not unhealthy but not much else. Allow them the option of limited remote learning from a shortlist of options. Someone decides everything they can figure it out.
And put body cams with working audio on all prison staff and no one interacts with an inmate (which should be limited anyway) if they are not on and working. No exceptions. There will be logistical problems and snafus. Rules about this or that.
And that’s not going to happen. And I’m sure that’s not the answer either. But neither will we resolve it by making taxpayers pay to remove Andre Patterson’s penis and by calling him Janiah or by housing him with men or her with women.
Some problems can’t be solved because we made them impossible to resolve.
