Last Updated 00:01:43 UTC Monday, December 16, 2019

US — Delano, California. Last Thursday, an inmate who was serving a life sentence for first-degree murder at Kern Valley State Prison in Delano was sentenced to death after he was found guilty of murdering his transgender cellmate, who was serving life for second-degree murder. On October 13, 2013, Miguel Crespo, then aged 42, bound, gagged and strangled to death 48-year-old Carmen T. Guerrero within eight hours of being placed in the same cell. Mr Crespo said he had told prison officials prior to his move to the cell that he would not be compatible with that inmate: “I had a restriction not to be housed with a fa***t.”

The murdered inmate, Carmen Guerrero, was in prison for murdering his longtime live-in girlfriend, Mary Perkins, while their 14-year-old daughter was in the home. Nevertheless, mainstream media outlets like NBC News suggest that the murder of the inmate could have been avoided if “trans people” were “housed in facilities consistent with their gender identity” as they “deserve.” Niche transgender advocacy website Planet Transgender slammed the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Prisons for adopting “an illegal policy of almost entirely housing transgender people in federal prison facilities that match their sex assigned at birth.”

Prison Safety

Such outlets ignore that three murders had previously occurred that year at that prison. None of the other victims apparently identified as transgender.

Bureau of Justice statistics (opens as PDF) show that 841 inmates were murdered in men’s state prisons between 2001 and 2014. Four inmates were murdered in women’s state prisons during the same time span.

Federal Bureau of Investigation 2017 statistics reveal that 87.5% of persons arrested for murder are male. Women comprise 50.8% of the total US population, and 7% of the state and federal prison population. 70% of these female inmates are incarcerated for non-violent offenses.

Meanwhile, “[l]ifetime estimates of incarceration range from 19% to 65% among transgender women, compared to less than 3% of the US general population,” finds “Creating, Reinforcing, and Resisting the Gender Binary: A Qualitative Study of Transgender Women’s Healthcare Experiences in Sex-Segregated Jails and Prisons,” published 2018 in the International Journal of Prisoner Health.

A study by the University of California at Urvine found that 42.2% of transgender inmates in California prisons are incarcerated for “crimes against persons,” and 20.5% of transgender inmates in California are registered sex offenders. 16% of the total California prison population are registered sex offenders, the Public Policy Institute of California finds, meaning transgender inmates are significantly more likely to be registered sex offenders than other inmates.

From this data, we can conclude that male persons have a significantly higher rate of crime than do women, and are far more likely to engage in sexual and violent criminality, and that these facts remain true of male persons who identify as transgender women. Therefore, housing female inmates with transgender inmates has the effect of making female inmates less safe from sexual and violent crime.

Men’s Rights Activism & the Trans Rights Activism Branch

A man on Twitter randomly tweeted us at @women_are_human that he “must applaud” the transgender movement “on the mirror they have put before the nation”:

This is going to sound beyond the pale but hear me out: the fact that men are changing their gender to woman shows the kid glove treatment that women prisoners get. They get shorter sentences, better accommodations […] get prison nurseries […] get benefits no man could dream of getting. Also the rape and abuse of male prisoners (and those who are not prisoners) is frequently seen as legitimate karma. […] I just find it clever how some biological men have revealed gender bias against them in the justice system (perhaps without even knowing it)!
Scott Mair, Twitter user

Women’s prisons tend to be lower-security, more relaxed environments than men’s, because women in prisons usually choose to be less violent. Where guards and inmates are at less risk of danger, security can afford to be more lax. Women’s prisons tend to have nurseries, because young children require breast milk for longterm health, women’s prisons have fewer dangerous and sex offenders, and women are usually primary care takers of their children, whether partnered with a man or not, and whether the male partner is employed or not. 62% of women in state prisons have minor children.

Transgender Rights Activists (TRAs) come from the same disgruntled place as Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) like Scott Mair. These groups are not interested in working toward making men’s prisons safer for men, including more at-risk groups like gay and trans inmates.

MRAs and TRAs have chosen to export the problem to women’s prisons so that women’s prisons are unsafe, too. Not only will imprisoned men continue to be subjected to rape, assaults and murder at high rates, but imprisoned women would, too. 86% of female inmates are survivors of sexual abuse; researchers have speculated that sexual abuse may be a “pathway to prison” for women. As corrections officers in Canada are finding, an influx of male inmates in women’s prisons would require importing maximum security procedures.

Thus, what drives both groups is not concern for men and dedication to improving men’s safety behind bars, but bitterness, resentment and envy toward women, a need to punish women, to show women how it feels. Like locker room and shelter laws that enable everyone to enter based on self-ID or conversion of all such spaces to gender neutral, it is driven by spite.

The power for men’s prisons to be safer is, and always has been, in men’s hands. Men in prison can choose to not murder, assault or rape. If men practice abstaining prior to incarceration, these behaviors won’t become habits. Men not in prison can rally for the rights of men in prison, just as women’s advocacy has made women’s prisons increasingly healing and rehabilitating. Men are not helpless. Socioeconomic power is concentrated in male hands; women had to petition men in order to get a few human rights enshrined. MRAs and its TRA branch refuse to take accountability and put in the work to make change.

It is not incumbent on women to sacrifice our safety and human rights to protect men from men, like human shields. It is not incumbent on women to be men’s furniture, sacrificing human rights to be passively present so that our existence will serve to validate male persons’ wish to believe that they have transitioned into women.

SB 132, legislation sponsored by California Democratic State Senator Scott Weiner, will mandate that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation ask inmates their “gender identity” during intake, and house them with inmates of the sex they say they feel like. The bill passed the Senate, Assembly Public Safety Committee and Assembly Appropriations Committee, and is expected to come up for a vote by the full Assembly in 2020. Richard Masbruch, the first transgender inmate placed in women’s prison in California, was accused of raping women and making women uncomfortable.

To let your voice be heard, contact the following:

Ian Calderon
California State Assembly Majority Leader
Email (Contact Form): lcmspubcontact
Address: CAPITOL OFFICE: State Capitol, P.O. Box 942849, Sacramento, CA 94249-0057 | Tel: (916) 319-2057 | Fax: (916) 319-2157
Address: DISTRICT OFFICE: 13181 Crossroads Parkway North, Suite 160, City of Industry, CA 91746-3497 | Tel: (562) 692-5858 | Fax: (562) 695-5852
Twitter: IanAD57
Facebook: AssemblymemberIanCalderon

Marie Waldron
California State Assembly Minority Leader
Email (Contact Form): lcmspubcontact
Address: CAPITOL OFFICE: State Capitol, Suite #3104, Sacramento, CA 94249 | 916-319-2075
Address: DISTRICT OFFICE: 350 W. 5th Avenue, Suite 110, Escondido, CA 92025 | 760-480-7570

Updated 00:01:43 UTC Monday, December 16, 2019: Details of Carmen Guerrero’s conviction added