New California Law Could Put Male Serial Rapists Into Women’s Prisons
A new California law that gives male inmates the right to be housed in female prisons provides no protection for women inmates or guards.
By Margot Cleveland
April 22, 2021
On January 1, California’s SB-132, which mandates housing prisoners according to their gender identity, took effect. Since then, 261 transfer requests have been made under the law — nearly all men seeking transfers to women’s prisons.
To date, only a few transfers have occurred, with the Department of Corrections blaming COVID. While an evergreen excuse, in reality, SB-132 created a nightmare scenario, leaving prisons unable to protect female inmates if they actually do what the law requires.
Last September, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB-132 into law, declaring the statute represented another step forward in the march toward equality for LGBTQ people. Those championing the law, such as the bill’s author, state Sen. Scott Wiener, cheered the statute as supporting “the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s efforts to provide a safe, humane, respectful and rehabilitative environment for the incarcerated transgender, non-binary and intersex community.â€
Instead, SB-132 creates unworkable mandates for the California prison system that place female inmates and correctional officers at risk. The only way to safeguard these women is for prisons to feign compliance with the law.
SB-132 consists of four sections, with Section 1 merely providing a marketable title for the bill, “The Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act.†Section 2 declares the legislative findings on which the state relied to enact the substantive provisions of the statute that follow in Sections 3 and 4.
Among other things, Section 2 explains what transgender, non-binary, and intersex mean, such as that “’transgender’ is broad and inclusive of all gender identities different from the gender a person was assigned at birth including, but not limited to, transsexual, two-spirit, and mÄhÅ«.â€
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https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/22/new-california-law-could-put-male-serial-rapists-into-womens-prisons/
