Transgender inmates at Cook County Jail can now be housed, dressed and searched according to the gender they identify with rather than their sex at birth under a new policy that advocates hope will keep some of the facility's most vulnerable detainees safe.Since March 21, transgender inmates entering the jail have been screened by a Gender Identity Committee that decides where and how they should be housed. Previously, all inmates automatically were assigned to live among the gender they were born with, regardless of how they self-identified, a situation that attorneys said put them at high risk for physical and sexual abuse.
...Sheriff Tom Dart first revealed the new policy to the Windy City Times newspaper, saying it came about when he realized the jail didn't have a policy for housing transgender inmates.
...The new seven-page policy applies to housing, clothing, showering, grooming and searches, among other categories. The Gender Identity Committee has broad discretion over what clothes and toiletries inmates should have access to and what gender security officers can search them. The policy requires sensitivity training on gender identity disorder and the Gender Identity Committee for all officers and supervisory staff.
The Illinois Family Institute (IFI) isn't happy. From WorldNetDaily's Jail to house transgender men with women inmates; Critic wonders who's paying costs of special panel to evaluate needs:
In a move the Illinois Family Institute suggests is more worthy of a skit on the television show "Saturday Night Live," Cook County Jail in Chicago has instituted a new policy that assigns men and women to cells based on their perceived gender.The concept that a man believes he is a woman or a woman believes she is a man was in the news just days ago when lawmakers in Maryland considered a bill that would ban statewide "discrimination" based on the gender people feel.
Responding to Cook County's new policy, the Illinois Family Institute said "sexual anarchists" are seeking "to manipulate language in an attempt to convince the public that cross-dressing and elective amputations of healthy body parts are not signs of disordered thinking."
"These rhetorical stratagems must be opposed at every turn, whether they occur in anti-discrimination and anti-bullying laws and policies, comprehensive sex ed, or fatuous, costly jail policies," IFI commented.
IFI asks the following in Laurie Higgins' piece Lola Comes to Cook County Jail:
So who, pray tell, is footing the bill for the "Gender Identity Panel" with whom the gender-confused detainees get to consult? And who is footing the bill for the mandatory sensitivity training administered to corrections staff, physicians, and therapists?Here's another pragmatic thought: Does anyone actually believe that women who wish they were men will want to be detained in the men's facility at Cook County Jail? Doubtful. What we're really talking about then is housing men who wish they were women in the women's facility at Cook County Jail. Men who wear women's cosmetics and women's clothing are, in reality, men. Even men who take female hormones and have their penises amputated are, in reality, men. Why should female detainees have to room with seriously confused men?
Ah, the misogyny expressed by Laureie Higgins of the IFI.
Well, this news, despite what WorldNetDaily and the IFI believe, is definitely an improvement for trans people in Cook County, Illinois. It will no doubt help protect trans people from some forms of jailhouse abuse -- such as sexual assault due -- in Cook County jails.
What folk like IFI's Laurie Higgins forget is that this policy is designed with the safety of transgender detainees in mind. She would rather trans women be physically endangered because of what she believes regarding societal sex and gender norms -- belief that she expressed as crudely as she possibly could for her article.