Nearly 90% of Incarcerated Trans People Have Been Put in Solitary Confinement, Study Shows
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Nearly 90% of incarcerated transgender people have been held in solitary confinement in prison, according to a recent study — a practice that is classified as torture by human rights experts.
The study, published in February by the groups Vera Institute of Justice and Black & Pink National, surveyed 280 trans people in state prisons between 2021 and 2022 about their experiences and recommendations for future policy. Eighty-nine percent of those surveyed said they had been held in solitary confinement — meaning they were housed in an isolated cell for 22 to 24 hours per day — at least once during their time in prison. One-fifth of respondents were held in such conditions at the time they were surveyed. (In comparison, a 2023 study found that roughly 6% of all people in U.S. federal or state prisons were being held in solitary confinement.) The report did not specify the length of the terms, but participants reported “frequent and lengthy stays” in solitary averaging between seven and eight separate terms over their total time in prison, with 10% saying they had been placed in solitary 15 or more times while imprisoned.
In a rulebook governing the treatment of prisoners named after late South African president Nelson Mandela, the United Nations determined that“indefinite” or “prolonged” periods of solitary confinement, in which a person is isolated for 15 or more days, is a form of torture, and should only be used as “a last resort.. But in the U.S., where solitary confinement is frequently and arbitrarily deployed, such treatment is the norm for trans people in prison, according to the report. While some trans people legitimately request to be isolated for their physical safety (which some described as their “least-bad option”), 47% were placed in “protective custody” (another euphemistic name for solitary) for a disciplinary reason, while another 21% were told by staff that the move was for their own safety. One respondent said that they had been moved to solitary after filing sexual harassment claims against a guard, while another told researchers they were targeted by their unit’s warden, who described solitary as “a place for things like you.”
“The fact that [solitary confinement] is presented as the only option for physical safety in a lot of cases just speaks to the crux of the problem,” said Jennifer Peirce, senior research analyst at the Vera Institute and a co-author of the report, in comments to The Appeal earlier this month. “[W]e need to have rules and criteria that, yes, are clear, but that also give several options for people to do what works for them and not make assumptions that what creates safety for one person should therefore be applied to everybody in that category.”
The report also investigated other areas of trans life in prison, including access to healthcare and implementation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Although the PREA theoretically prohibits prisons from housing people based on genitalia alone and establishes rules about acceptable searches, the report alleged that many prisons are still violating the law while also using some of its statutes to police trans people’s relationships with others, including hand-holding. Trans people imprisoned in states like California say that guards have written them up for complaining about PREA violations, creating an accumulation of “points” that are then used to justify further time in solitary. The PREA also requires that any trans person not housed in a gendered facility matching their gender identity must be held in a separate cell. Vera and Black & Pink researchers noted that, in many prisons, this policy effectively means that “restrictive housing cells are the only option.”
The plaintiff says that she was denied her hormones as well as access to her regular caregivers, even when she became suicidal.
The issue of prolonged solitary confinement is widespread in the U.S. mass incarceration system, but it has disproportionately affected Black and brown trans people like Layleen Polanco, who died in isolation on Rikers Island in 2019 after she was unable to pay a $500 bond. (One in every six trans people in the U.S. has been incarcerated during their lifetime, according to Lambda Legal; that ratio climbs to one in two Black trans people.) Participants in the study offered a variety of suggestions to improve prison conditions, ranging from more housing units specifically for LGBTQ+ people to major reforms in how the system identifies and punishes officials who break the rules.
“We hope that this report gets people to think differently about the reasons that people experience some of the things that they do and the effects on them,” Peirce told The Appeal. “And that it also, of course, motivates change in policy and practice, but also just more open-mindedness to listen and believe people.”
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