How Queerness Affects Perceptions of Incarcerated Victimhood in Court Trials

• In Event: Discrimination, Microaggressions, and Biases against Queer and Trans People

Abstract

Transgender people face disproportionate discrimination and violence as incarcerated individuals, suffering some of the highest rates of sexual assault among the prison population. In 2003, the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) was passed to establish a no-tolerance standard for sexual violence in federal corrections facilities. Since then, it has been used to support civil rights lawsuits that claim violations of constitutional rights or other legal protections. This study attempts to determine whether there are any differences in how the legal system categorizes, defines, and rules on rights violations depending on the gender and victimhood status of the (incarcerated) plaintiff. The methodology involves analyzing lawsuits filed against federal correctional institutions, compiled from the Justia website using the keywords “PREA,” “violation,” and “transgender,” and exporting the documents into the qualitative analysis software Atlas.ti. It is expected that court systems will be more sympathetic to cisgender female plaintiffs compared to transgender/gender non-conforming plaintiffs, and that this bias will be expressed through the legal precedents and legislation cited in the rulings. This paper calls into question the effectiveness and integrity of PREA regulations, and argues that protective legislation alone is insufficient to eliminate victimization of the incarcerated transgender population.

Author

• Kawain Lo, The Pennsylvania State University