Same Difference: Triangulating Staff and Prisoner Perspectives on Transgender Prisoners

• In Event: Perceptions and Treatment of Transgendered Populations

Abstract

This paper examines the culture and experiences of transgender prisoners in four Pennsylvania men’s prisons through individual and group prisoner and staff accounts. Based on qualitative data from face-to-face interviews with transgender prisoners, focus groups with a stratified random sample of prisoners, and focus groups with a purposive sample of staff, our findings from these three perspectives facilitate a more complete understanding of transgender prisoners’ position within the larger prisoner culture and among prison operations. Findings reveal a common contention among both staff and prisoners that transgender prisoners are (according to staff) and should be (according to prisoners) treated just like everyone else. The strong stated and desired commitment to equity expressed by both staff and prisoners alike runs counter to other key findings which demonstrate that transgender prisoners in men’s prisons are uniquely situated in myriad ways. In acknowledgement of this, staff respondents report perceived challenges to efficient operations that could best be dealt with in terms of differential treatment of transgender prisoners. Because of this tension, staff continually defer to the fact that the facility is designated as a men's prison—and the attendant implication that it only houses men—despite ample evidence to the contrary.

Authors

• Jennifer Sumner, California State University, Dominguez Hills

• Lori Sexton, University of Missouri - Kansas City