Roundtable: Transgender People Involved with Carceral Systems: International Perspectives

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract/Description

This panel includes papers emerging from a newly published edited collection, Transgender People Involved with Carceral Systems: International Perspectives published by Routledge in 2024. With its international focus, this volume provides the first account of how gender diverse people are incarcerated and punished around the world. This edited collection focuses on the conditions of confinement across diverse prison jurisdictions and distinct prison populations, with this panel including papers from Canada, the UK and US. Reading across these chapters, it becomes clear that the context matters in each of these chapters and the papers in this panel, especially the historical, legal, and cultural context in which these prisons incarcerate people. Likewise, it is evident that there are striking similarities in transgender experiences across the globe. Critically, diverse jurisdictions generally maintain the long-held gender binary used to organise prison systems. Prison administrators remain largely committed to upholding this structure, regardless of the diversity of the people entering these systems and for whom they are, at least presumably, responsible for providing care. The impacts of this decision are widely felt by transgender people as a distinct lack of care.

Sub Unit

• Area VI. The Criminal Justice System / 46. Jails & Prisons

Individual Presentations

• Transgender People Involved with Carceral Systems: International Perspectives - Matt Maycock, Monash University; Valerie Jenness, University of California, Irvine

• Trans/Feminist Tensions, The Canadian Media & Canadian Prisons - Victoria Ginsley, Ontario Tech University; Carla Cesaroni, Ontario Tech University

• The Lived Experience of a Transgender Individual Incarcerated in a Canadian Men’s Correctional Institution - Lee Vandenbroeck, Correctional Service Canada