The Department of Justice (DOJ) plans to dismantle protections for trans and intersex people in federal, state, and local prisons, jails, and youth detention facilities, according to a government memo obtained by Prism.
The memo, dated Dec. 2, takes aim at existing standards of the Prisonremoved Elimination Act (PREA) that the department says do not comport with the Trump administration’s first-day executive order that, among other things, targeted protections for trans people behind bars. PREA was passed in 2003, and President Barack Obama added new protections for LGBTQIA+ people to the DOJ’s PREA rulebook in 2012.
The proposed changes would affect all facilities that are subject to PREA standards, including adult prisons and jails, lockups, community confinement facilities such as halfway houses, and juvenile facilities
The memo was sent by Tammie M. Gregg, the principal deputy director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, to all DOJ-certified PREA auditors, who are the only people permitted to review whether facilities are following guidelines under PREA.
While the changes are not yet official, the memo instructs all PREA auditors to ignore those challenged provisions in their audits. It states that facilities “shall not be held to subsections of the PREA Standards that may conflict with” President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order until the updates are finalized.
The planned changes to PREA specifically target rules regarding how trans and intersex people are screened for their risk of sexual abuse at a facility, as well as how facilities use that information to determine where trans and intersex prisoners are housed. The memo also threatens trans and intersex people’s ability to shower separately from other prisoners.
The changes also target review protocols for incidents of sexual abuse that take into account whether the abuse was motivated by, among other things, whether the victim was trans or intersex. The memo also mentions rules that bar strip searches and cavity searches of people by officers of different genders than the prisoners, except in specific circumstances, as well as employee training regarding how officials are required to treat and communicate with trans and intersex prisoners.
