Transgender Inmate Moved To All Female Prison In British Columbia

Transgender inmate Bianca Sawyer says reforms that allowed her to be transferred to a facility of her gender identity have exceeded her expectations. Photo: Facebook | The Georgia Straight.

Prison has always been a particular level of hell for transgender inmates. Only a few times in history has a transgender inmate been housed with their correct gender, a bias that has led to harassment, sexual abuse, and murder.

So while it is sad to call a single case of the right thing being done a victory, there has been a small victory in British Columbia, Canada. Bianca Bailey Lovado was transferred from Kamloops Correctional Centre, an all-male prison, to Alouette Correctional Centre for Women.

In Kamloops Lovado was bullied by the male inmates and forced to wash the dishes for her unit because she 'wanted to be a woman.' Her treatment there, she says, led to disassociation and depression, and a perpetual feeling of being unsafe. A report in The Georgia Straight provides insight into this story:

“For three days my face hurt from smiling,” she wrote in a letter to the Straight.
 Born Jaris Lovado, Sawyer is the first transgender individual that B.C. Corrections has allowed to be transferred to a facility of the gender she identifies as, rather than one selected on the basis of physical attributes.
 “I am the first pre-op male-to-female transgender to be transferred from a male B.C. provincial jail to a female once,” she writes. “B.C. Corrections is calling it ground breaking.”

Lovado’s fear wasn't unwarranted. Trans women in male prisons are at particularly high risk. Ashley Diamond, a transgender woman incarcerated for burglary in a Georgia, U.S. Prison for violent male offenders, is suing the state for allowing her to be raped seven times, for her treatment by prison officials, and for having been consigned to solitary confinement for months a time for her 'protection.'

Transgender men, assigned to women's prisons, typically report being put straight into solitary as there's “nowhere else to put them.”

Lovado's transfer comes just ahead of the installation of a new policy regarding transgender inmates that will hopefully set a new standard for Canada, and a lodestone for policies worldwide.