At a women’s prison in New Jersey, two inmates are now pregnant after engaging in sexual activities with transgender inmates behind bars.
The state Department of Corrections informed NJ.com that the unidentified inmates at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility became pregnant as a result of “consensual sexual relationships with another incarcerated person”.
It is not clear whether the women had sex with the same transgender inmate or different inmates. The current stages of their pregnancies and their plans are also unknown. An investigation has been initiated.
This development comes a year after New Jersey implemented a policy allowing prisoners to be housed based on their preferred gender identity.
The Jersey correctional facility is currently home to over 800 prisoners, with 27 being transgender women. The facility does not mandate gender-reassignment surgery for trans women to be housed there.
The policy necessitates state prisons to offer increased protections for transgender, intersex, and nonbinary individuals.
Prisoners are to be housed according to their gender identity rather than their assigned sex at birth. The policy also allows prisoners to declare a change in gender identity while incarcerated, as reported by the Daily Mail.
The policy grants transgender inmates single-cell housing until permanent placement, private shower time, and prohibits physical examinations to determine an inmate’s sex.
Transgender inmates also have the right to participate in housing decisions and appeal the determinations made by DOC.
Additionally, male officers are barred from conducting pat-down searches on transgender women in accordance with the policy.
The union representing the corrections officers at the facility expressed concerns about the new policy, stating that it heightened the level of danger.
The union issued a statement criticizing the allowance of transgender females to be incarcerated at Edna Mahan:
‘We opposed this policy change believing it would be detrimental to the general population of female inmates being housed at Edna Mahan and also bring added stress to our correctional police officers assigned to this institution’
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