This prison is in trouble for telling a trans inmate to ‘kill herself’
A court has ruled that a transgender inmate who was told to kill herself by a prison guard and called “it”, was mistreated.
Sandy Brown was sent to the state prison in Patuxent, Maryland in February 2014.
She was kept in solitary confinement for 66 days, despite the jail warden instructing staff not to separate her from the prison population.
During the time in solitary confinement, Brown was harassed by guards who poked fun at her, sometimes while she showered.
One guard told her to kill herself.
“She told me I should kill myself, and that I’m not a woman, that I’ll never be her,” Brown said
In the ruling, Administrative Law Judge Denise Oakes Shaffer said that Brown’s treatment was in violation of the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act.
She said the prison “failed to train all employees in how to effectively and professionally communicate with transgender inmates.”
Shaffer’s ruling will force Maryland prisons to develop policies for dealing with trans inmates appropriately.
“The majority of Patuxent’s witnesses specifically testified that they never had any training with how to work with transgender inmates and further testified that Patuxent did not have any policies in place to provide such guidance,” Shaffer wrote,
A spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services told the Associated Press there had been a “total shift in thinking” since Brown’s complaint.
He said the state had since created specific policies for handling transgender inmates.
