To address these concerns, the CDOC has agreed to house transgender women in one of three areas, including two new units, depending on what the person wants. These can include living in the general population at one of the state’s women’s facilities or the integration unit at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility, which would help an incarcerated trans woman adapt before moving into the women’s general population. Another option is living in the voluntary transgender unit at the men’s Sterling Correctional Facility, the largest prison in the state’s system.
Julie Abbate, a lawyer and advocate, said it is clear that a lot of thought and attention to detail was put into the Colorado agreement. “This consent decree seems to have drawn on lessons learned in the field that if you just throw a bunch of people who have lived in a facility designated for men into a facility for women — without any kind of transition period or warning — then it can really be an awful situation,” she said. Abbate worked for 15 years in the civil rights division of the Department of Justice and is now the national advocacy director for Just Detention International.
Shawn Meerkamper, managing attorney at Transgender Law Center, who worked closely on the Colorado lawsuit, said that the housing options laid out in the consent decree should help both transgender and cisgender incarcerated people adjust to new living situations. The integration unit is meant to be a temporary place to ease the transition for everyone involved, they said — while the voluntary unit is meant for trans women who don’t want to leave the only prison system that they know and have experience navigating.
Having so many options for transgender women is unique, and is a significant achievement for state advocates, said A.D. Lewis, attorney and project manager for Trans Beyond Bars at the nonprofit Prison Law Office. Although PREA requires prison officials to ask transgender people how they want to be housed, none of his clients have ever been asked, he said.
“In the vast majority of prison systems, they will be housed by the external appearance of their genitals at the time of booking,” he said. Some trans women are placed into women’s facilities based simply on that criteria, while others are placed into solitary confinement or isolated from the general population — often because they are such a target for violence.
The Colorado consent decree outlines a process for making housing placement requests for transgender inmates and it sets deadlines for when the CDOC must respond. Any of the placement requests that are denied for the integration unit, voluntary transgender unit or women’s general population must be reviewed every six months.
The agreement also directs the CDOC to update its clinical standards for medical care and to work with an independent medical and mental health consultant to provide training for staff. It allows for flexibility depending on the type of medical care an incarcerated trans woman may want, Abbate said.
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