If I ever go to jail, I hope it's in California. [Dave Chappelle]

submitted by Tom_BombadilBombadildo from 9gag.com

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[–]Hematomato 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

They decided that a women's prison was the most appropriate venue for 48% of the petitioners, and they decided that a men's prison was the most appropriate venue for 52% of the petitioners.

The DCR doesn't really give a shit about "right" or "wrong." All they care about is maximizing the chance that the incarceration will be peaceful and cost-effective.

[–]NastyWetSmear 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (11 children)

Well, I was joking to rile you up, but I bet they care a little bit about the public image of being progressive, otherwise they'd just make those prisoners keep the wig and make up on and send them back to the male gaol to be molested to death.

[–]Hematomato 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

It's just important to recognize that this truly is something that has to be taken on a case-by-case basis.

A transgender woman like Nong Poy would not do well in a men's prison. She'd be raped on a daily basis. It's flat-out inhumane to throw her in there.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETpF4FHUUAAMAUt.jpg

Whereas a transgender woman like Lia Thomas doesn't belong in a women's prison. She's much stronger than her fellow inmates and she's attracted to women. She would become an alpha predator among the prison population.

https://snworksceo.imgix.net/dpn/5b8ec8cb-6393-4bf4-8ced-57915b659fb5.sized-1000x1000.jpg

And frankly, the DCR has it right. Any one blanket decision about placement is going to lead to problems. It should be taken on a case-by-case basis.

[–]NastyWetSmear 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

I don't agree. But stay with me here...

I know a lot of people on here will tell you that trans people aren't real. Well, I don't believe that. They clearly are, and they need help. My stance doesn't come from a place where I'm pretending that this isn't a real phenomenon.

That being said, I'm also not under the impression that a man can become a woman, or that we should adjust our world to compensate for people who think they are the opposite gender. We make small exceptions, like we do for any other mental of social problem a person has, but if someone has social anxiety or auditory hallucinations or Tourette's, we don't flip the world for them - We acknowledge their unfortunate problem and we do our best to be sympathetic, but at the end of the day they need to do the right thing to help control and mitigate the illness.

In this case, we look at a man who claims to be a woman and we say: "For your sake, we'll move you into the women's prison"

On the surface of that, it seems the fair and reasonable choice, but it ignores that in placating the symptoms of someone's sexual dysmorphia, we have now punished the whole female prison system, and we have created a totally subjective hole in the system for any number of people who don't respect a system to worm through - people like criminals, who have shown they already have less respect for the system then their own personal needs.

If there were some physical, reliable diagnosis of sexual dysmorphia, like a blood test or a scan, maybe something like this could be considered, but as it is all we have to go on is the word of the claimant and the best guess of a team. The end result is we put biological men into the women's prison, putting the women at risk in an environment that is already specifically segregated because of violence and rape, and create a way for men who simply want to be the top dog and rape anyone they please to slip between the gaps.

You can't keep making exceptions for every possible situation. Flamboyantly gay men will end up in prison, small, weak men will end up in prison, huge men who can't control their anger will end up in prison, cold and intelligent serial killers will end up in prison - We can't make a prison for each different kind of person, and we can't just shuffle the weaker men into the women's prison and the stronger women into the male prisons, so at the end of the day the problem that needs to be addressed is the violence and sexual assault taking place in prison, not the whim of a prisoner who is under the illusion that they are the wrong gender.

I don't believe this is the correct approach, and I think reinforcing this thinking does more harm than good to all parties. More time and effort needs to be spent on helping understand the cause of the various problems and finding a fix, not passing the problem from one location to another and shrugging your shoulders when it doesn't resolve the matter.

And, naturally, the ultimate solution for a person who thinks they wouldn't survive in prison?... Don't commit crimes.

[–]Hematomato 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

You can't keep making exceptions for every possible situation. Flamboyantly gay men will end up in prison, small, weak men will end up in prison, huge men who can't control their anger will end up in prison, cold and intelligent serial killers will end up in prison - We can't make a prison for each different kind of person

Not for each and every different kind of person - but in a general sense, this is exactly what the Bureau of Prisons already does. They have minimum, medium, and maximum security prisons. There are hellhole prisons that house the most violent offenders, and there are prisons that guards sarcastically refer to as "Prisneyland."

And there are no strict rules about which people end up in which - only guidelines. The BoP considers questions like: where will inmates be the safest. Where do we need to assign the most hardened guards and where can we assign more novice guards. That's for a reason.

Let me just ask you this. This is Scott Percy. Scott was born with a vagina. Biologically female.

https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/scott-a-percy03-6479fbd145ab6.png

Do you honestly think a women's prison is the right place to house Scott Percy, if he committed a violent crime like rape? That we should have a strict rule saying "Scott's roommate must be a woman"?

[–]NastyWetSmear 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

The point is, Minimum, Medium and Maximum already exist, and you knew that, and you know it's not really answering my point - You can't expect them to continue to create more and more niche prisons to accommodate all varieties of people, nor should they be mixing the population at the whim of the convict.

As for Scott there, yeah, if she's a woman, women's prison. Nothing stops any woman in a woman's prison from bulking up, pumping iron and doing whatever steroids and hormones Sarah there does as well, meaning that unless, again, you want to start having weight divisions and height sections and a prison for people born with broader shoulders and a prison for people born with thinner shoulders, you have to accept the basics - Big people in prison will pick on little people, but a woman, no matter what she calls herself and what drugs she took at what age, is a woman. If "The Mountain" from Game of Thrones got caught robbing from a charity box, would you demand a prison just for him because he's bigger than all the men in the men's prison, so it isn't "Fair"?

Again, the best way to avoid meeting a "Scott" seems to be not to be a criminal.

At the very least, Scottina there won't be impregnating the people she rapes.

[–]Hematomato 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Again, the best way to avoid meeting a "Scott" seems to be not to be a criminal.

It's almost as though you want to make prison conditions worse.

There are plenty of people in prison for reasons like "They hurt their back, and they got addicted to their Percocet prescription, and when it ran out they couldn't handle the withdrawals so they switched to heroin, and they got caught with some."

And now you're like: well, do the crime, get raped a lot. The prisons should prioritize picking a side in the culture wars over preventing that.

[–]NastyWetSmear 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I think it's very telling of where our conversation is going that you've been reduced to that argument. It takes some very desperate reimagining to look at the things I've said and try and summarise my point in that way.

But I'll cut you some slack on that and say, instead, that it was a good conversation before this point. We don't agree, but that's okay. In theory, that's why there are elections, so that many points of view can be put forward and people can vote for the ones they agree with the closest, putting them in practice.

[–]Hematomato 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Well, that's where the conversation goes when you don't even try to justify putting Scott Percy in a women's prison. The only two identifiable arguments you make are "You can't give everyone their own prison" and "Theoretically some cis woman could get steroids on the inside."

And it's like - so what? How are either of those sane or rational arguments for putting Scott Percy in a cell with a tiny woman, who quite possibly did nothing worse than get addicted to an opiate?

[–]NastyWetSmear 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Awww, there, see? You can be less reliant on reductio ad absurdum... Slightly... Pretty straight forward, you just summed them up nicely:

You can't continuously create new criteria that don't fit the current criteria and generate a need for more and more individual prison environments. It's an endless task that can really only lead to financial ruin as you attempt to categorize everyone more and more until you require dozens and dozens of different types of prison facilities simply to house the current load of prisoners.

Yes, any woman can bulk up. Your concern over "Scott" is that she's too manly, but the only thing about her that is manly is how big she is and her beard. Assuming you aren't concerned over her beard, your concern is that she's too strong for the other prisoners - If that's the case, you are essentially creating Weight Classes of prisoners, because any woman can work out and become stronger than the other women, at which stage they also meet your criteria. You can't draw a line in the sand and say: "She's the second strongest woman in the women's prison, but she thinks she's a man, so we sent her to the men's prison. Meanwhile, the stronger woman continues to beat, murder and rape her fellow inmates because she never said she was a man."

As I said much earlier, but you chose to forget in order to put that ludicrous and disingenuous post down you made earlier:

at the end of the day the problem that needs to be addressed is the violence and sexual assault taking place in prison

As for your point about "Joining the culture war", choosing to start allowing men and women to swap prisons is joining the culture war. That wasn't something that ever happened before, but because of the culture war, it's happening now. My stance is the opposite - not caving into the pressure to join the culture war - maintaining the current rules for prisoners: Men in the men's prison, women in the women's prison.

So, yes, larger people will always pick on smaller people. The fact that they claim to be the opposite gender isn't relevant to that discussion. Moving a population that is naturally born stronger across to the prison of the opposite gender knowing that prisoners are so desperate for sexual activity that they will perform gay acts then claim to be straight, many of whom are already violent and can not only sexually interfere with their cell mates but, on average, can overpower and impregnate them isn't a great choice, especially when it's numerical fact that, given the number of people in society who are trans and the number of prisoners who want to join the opposite gender prison, many of them are faking it to escape issues in their current holdings or to inflict misery, violence and rape on people who are naturally smaller and weaker than them isn't a good move, isn't helping anything or anyone and is performative at best. In the absolute least favourable interpretation - criminals are the last people who should be getting such leniency.

I'm going to leave it there. I'm not going to change your mind, and I doubt you're on the Californian Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, so I don't see this going much deeper than an interesting conversation that went a little sour. Again: If being in prison is an issue, don't do the crimes. "I really wanted pain killers so I took heroin" isn't really tugging at my heart strings. The prison system needs to try and resolve internal violence and sexual assault, and if you think people being hooked on pain killers and turning to hard drugs is a common story, it sounds like your medical system needs a review as well.