Transgender People Involved with Carceral Systems; International Perspectives

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Decades of successful grassroots activism, policy advocacy, and legal change have raised the visibility of transgender people, including by bringing attention to the ways in which transgender people are differentially criminalised and policed, judicially discriminated against, and suffer the pains of imprisonment in disparate ways. As the Prison Policy Initiative in the United States succinctly observed, “trans people are criminalised and discriminated against for simply being trans” (Herring and Widra, 2022, p. 4), an insight that has been affirmed in reports by the United Nations and publications by academics outside the U.S. (Rodgers, Asquith, and Dwyer 2017). This reality is increasingly recognized by researchers, politicians and policymakers, advocates, and corrections officials who publicly proclaim a commitment to ensuring fair treatment of transgender people who have contact with the criminal legal system, including those in carceral spaces. Evidence now exists in many jurisdictions that has analysed aspects of the 'criminal legal nexus' in relation to the experiences of transgender people in contact with carceral system.

Within this context, each speaker will address the following questions:

What is the central contribution of the new book (Transgender People Involved with Carceral Systems) and other emerging work in this area?
What remains unaddressed and is ripe for future research?
What enables and disables research in this area?

Subtopic

• Topic 5: Social Control and Criminal Justice / Imprisonment, Prisons, Prison Life and Effects of Imprisonment (Prisons WG)

Chair

• Valerie Jenness, University of California, Irvine (UCI)

Discussants

• Aurore Vanliefde De Keyser, KU Leuven

• Saoirse O'Shea, The Open University

Individual Presentations

• Transgender People Involved with Carceral Systems; International Perspectives - Matthew Maycock, Monash University; Valerie Jenness, University of California, Irvine (UCI); Aurore Vanliefde De Keyser, KU Leuven; Saoirse O'Shea, The Open University