Gender and Prison

Across this country there are dozens of women forced to serve time in mens’ correctional institutions. Our sex-segregated facilities aren’t the friendliest places for those with non conforming genders. Transgender women, especially those who haven’t undergone a total physical transformation including sex reassignment surgeries, are still regularly housed with male inmates. What is that experience like? What can be done to improve the situation? What happens to a trans person who is arrested in Portland? What other ways does gender impact the experience of inmates?
 
Gender Blender co-hosts Laura Calvo and Jacob Anderson-Minshall address these issues and more on this hour-long program. They will be speaking with a number of guests including a former police officer who now consults with correctional facilites on managing trans inmates; Ruth Kovacs, host of KBOO’s Prison Pipeline; and a representative from Multnomah County—one of the first localities to develop protocols for dealing with transgender inmates in their facilities.