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Twenty-one percent of transgender women have spent time in prison or jail, versus 5 percent of all people in general.

The number of people in prison or jail who identify as LGBTQ is roughly twice that of their general population. And whereas about 8 percent of all youth identify as LGBTQ or gender non-conforming, 20 percent of youth in several juvenile detention sites across the country identified that way, including 40 percent of girls.

All these findings are included in a new report from the Center for American Progress and the Movement Advancement Project called Unjust: How the Broken Criminal Justice System Fails LGBT People. The report details how LGBT people of color are particularly affected.

According to the report, LGBT people are more likely to interact with law enforcement and enter a criminal justice system where they are treated unfairly and more likely to be locked up and to face abuse once there. They also face additional challenges upon leaving incarceration and trying to rebuild their lives.

The report frames the issue in the broader context of a criminal justice system that is more likely to seek out and punish people of color, particularly African Americans. It also highlights individual stories, such as that of a gay youth mistreated by the child welfare system who spent time on the streets; several accounts from transgender people in prison; and a black gay man's ongoing consequences of being convicted under an HIV criminalization statue in Louisiana.

Andrea Ritchie, one of the partners in the report, recently spoke about it in an interview with HuffPost Live.

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There are twice as many LGBTQ people in prison as in the general population

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Twenty-one percent of transgender women have spent time in prison or jail, versus 5 percent of all people in general. The number of people in prison or jail who identify as LGBTQ is roughly twice that of their general population.

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In the visiting room at San Quentin state penitentiary, 25 miles north of San Francisco, Lady Jae Clark looks around the room. "You see," she says, "everyone is looking at us."

The large space is filled with inmates and their families. Everyone is talking, playing card games, and eating food from the vending machines. Because San Quentin is a men's prison, the inmates are all men - except for Lady Jae, who has been in the prison system for more than 20 years.

Mid-discussion, Lady Jae speaks animatedly about "wanting to have boobs down to her knees, like an old southern lady" before adding she "just wants [them] to keep getting bigger and bigger".

She is an imposing presence: brash, tall and indeed large-chested, which is obvious despite the unflattering chambray prison uniform (the same worn by all male prisoners). Her hair is cropped short but is curled on top - a style she achieves, she tells me, by twisting paper towels into long worms and using them as curlers.

Lady Jae came out in 1973, at the age of 12, and presents to any observer as a woman. Nevertheless, she's categorized as a man by the California department of corrections and rehabilitation (CDCR). She's just one of more than 300 transgender inmates in California prisons statewide (the national estimate for transgender inmates is about 700).

Lady Jae is also frank about her unusual position. When asked about her experience, her response is simple.

"How raw do you want it?''

Those behind bars like Lady Jae must confront a hostile and violent system. According to a study by University of California Irvine professor Valerie Jenness, more than half of all transgender inmates experience rape.Prison culture also creates an atmosphere where transgender inmates may submit to sexual assault for protection from physical violence - all under the callous indifference of prison authorities.

Lady Jae describes the violence in Calipatria state prison during the 1990s, where she quickly landed in administrative segregation "mainly for fighting, not obeying orders, and refusing to stand during count".

There, Lady Jae says that she participated in gladiator-style fights staged by correctional officers. Her fighting earned her a kind of respect. "It sounds really crazy, but deep down I was looking forward to the fight," she writes in a letter. "I was the only transgender to my knowledge that had ever participated ... I was part of the movement."

In addition to rape, transgender inmates face the threat of death at the hands of other inmates.

Two years ago in California, a transgender woman named Carmen Guerrero was killed by her cellmate, Miguel Crespo, at Kern Valley state prison in California's Central Valley. Crespo was in prison for a murder in LA County.

Guerrero's previous cellmate, Jonathan Wilson, was her romantic partner. He said that he feared for her life following his transfer to another prison. On 28 October 2013, Wilson had been transferred to Salinas Valley state prison without much warning. "I fell for the kindness and sweetness in her heart," he wrote in a letter. Over the phone, he later said that it didn't matter to him that Guerrero was a transgender woman, and that he loved her and wanted to protect her.

He said that before he left, he tried to request for Guerrero to be placed in a cell with someone who would be "nice" to her, "but the CO didn't want to". After a day or two, he heard that Crespo had become her new cellmate.

According to Wilson, Crespo told the CO on duty that he would kill Guerrero if forced to bunk with her. On 1 November 2013, Crespo allegedly tied Carmen up, choked her to death, and informed the night CO that he had killed his cellmate.

Crespo was taken into custody, and the case is under investigation. The assistant district attorney prosecuting the case wouldn't confirm whether Guerrero was female, but she did tell me that "everyone referred to [Carmen] as she" and that "by all appearance, [Carmen] presented as a woman". The CDCR does not comment on pending litigation.

Prison Rape Elimination Act not a weapon

In an effort to protect transgender inmates, many prison authorities place them in solitary confinement, which the United Nations denounces as inhumane.

In 2012, the federal government implemented the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which now requires all prisons to determine housing for transgender inmates on a case-by-case basis.

Lady Jae says the law is all well and good - except that it doesn't take any effect until after the attack has already occurred. "It doesn't protect you if you think it might happen," she says. Granted, she also understands this approach because "people would be clamoring to change their rooming assignments all the time".

Part of Lady Jae's outreach in the prisons is to inform people about the regulations, and exactly what they encompass. "You have to be attacked," she says. "Most people don't understand that. PREA isn't a weapon."

Most states are moving slowly on implementation.

I'm not a victim. I would just as soon cut someone if they messed with me

Jennifer Orthwein, an attorney at the Transgender Law Center, says that often, when transgender inmates report sexual assault, "prison staff dismiss their reports, [suggesting] the sexual contact was consensual. Assault is often perceived by staff to be the victim's fault, just because they are transgender and therefore somehow brought it upon themselves."

I asked Lady Jae about feeling harassed or intimidated. Danger could come from anywhere, she says, from guards or other inmates. But she isn't afraid to stand up for herself.

"I'm not a victim," she says. "I would just as soon cut someone if they messed with me." She explained that once, a correctional officer had inappropriately brushed her breasts with the palm of his hand (they are only supposed to use the back of the hand), cupping them inappropriately. She told the guard to stop, and threatened to report him. He stopped.

Lady Jae understands that it's not always easy for people to stand up for themselves. She credits her mother for helping her to feel confident. Her mother, she said, always told her to be whatever it was that she wanted to be. She never thought any differently.

Identity hangs in the balance

When the CDCR decided to house Sherri Masbruch, a transgender woman, in a women's prison, both the media and advocacy groups were distressed. Masbruch was convicted of brutally raping a woman, and her presence at a women's prison troubled many. No transgender woman has been moved to a women's prison in California since.

Some jails, like Cook and LA County, have begun to house transgender inmates in special housing units, where they are safer and can gain access to counselling and medical treatment. However, on the whole, transgender inmates are automatically placed in situations that might be dangerous.

Valerie Jenness, a criminology professor at University of California Irvine who has worked extensively on the issue. Her study, based on interviews with more than 300 transgender women inmates, indicates that the majority prefer to be housed with men, despite the inherent risk for assault.

When I asked her about this surprising finding, she pointed out that, for many transgender people, affirmation of their sexual identity takes precedence over physical protection.

In one instance, she said, a transgender woman described a moment when a male inmate carried her lunch tray. This simple act of courtesy affirmed her experience as a woman. "Their identity hangs in the balance," Jenness said.

For many transgender people, affirmation of their sexual identity takes precedence over physical protection

Valerie Jenness

Shawn Thomas Meerkamper, a legal fellow at the Transgender Law Center, agrees with Jenness that gender confirmation is a major factor in housing choice and speculates that some inmates may not even see women's prisons as an option. Some also think that there may be anxieties about not being accepted by other women if they were in a women's prison, whereas their gender is affirmed by male inmates.

For Lady Jae, romantic companionship became an important facet of her life - both to survive the violence and hostility of other inmates and to assert her femininity in a place that denied it. Soon after being processed, she met her first male cellmate. "I knew he was going to be my husband," she recalls. The relationship was a source of comfort, and presented a welcome change to the violence around her.

A legal system out of touch?

The fight for transgender inmate rights has traditionally focused on medical treatment, namely the right to take hormones. In most jurisdictions, including California, regulations permit transgender inmates to receive prescribed hormone therapy. Courts have made it clear that such medication is necessary when accompanied by an official diagnosis. However, as the ACLU points out, individual prisons may not always provide treatment, and access to any medical treatment in prison can often be difficult.

More contentious is sex reassignment surgery, which, to date, has never been provided to any inmate.

Michelle Norsworthy, a California inmate, succeeded before the ninth circuit in her lawsuit for gender confirmation surgery, and a date was initially set for 9 July. In a powerful ruling, district judge Jon Tigar wrote that the court was "not persuaded that CDCR's safety and security concerns override Norsworthy's interest in receiving constitutionally adequate care", and found that the CDCR's expert's report "overwhelmingly relies on generalizations [...] contains illogical inferences; and admittedly includes references to a fabricated anecdote".

A spokeswoman for the federal receiver in charge of health care argued that the surgery would cost nearly $100,000 and was "not medically necessary". Orthwein, Norsworthy's attorney, told me that this figure is simply incorrect. "The cost is closer to $15,000," she says. Orthwein posited that the CDCR was given an overly inflated figure to defend its position against the surgery, an argument the courts did not buy.

The latest wrinkle in Norsworthy's journey occurred last month - she was granted a parole hearing. If released on parole, the CDCR will not be responsible for her surgery although she would still qualify under Medi-Cal. The ninth circuit has stayed her case until later this August, she's recommended for parole and awaiting a definitive outcome.

Another California inmate, Mia Rosati, has a case pending in which she also requests gender confirmation surgery. Rosati states that her gender dysphoria diagnosis has a negative impact on her mental health (she attempted self-castration) and that the CDCR must provide her with surgery under current law (the CDCR did not comment on either case because of pending litigation).

Until two years ago, the CDCR didn't even recognize transgender inmates as such. Instead they were "effeminate homosexuals", emphasizing their subservient role. This attitude reflects the once-prevailing idea that transgender inmates were faking it for the prison stay, rather than recognizing that transgender inmates sought their true identity both in and out of prison.

There's hope, however, that conditions are slowly improving. For one thing, as Jenness emphasized, prison authorities are simply more aware. She gives the CDCR "great credit" for supporting her study and seeking information to improve their facilities and policies.

Orthwein cautiously agreed: "well-meaning people make the rules, but implementing them is a different beast." She acknowledged that California is "slightly better" because the Bay Area tends to be more progressive in this realm. Thanks to Jenness's findings, the CDCR instituted an official policy of employee training.

'God does not make mistakes'

These days, Lady Jae speaks out for transgender women in San Quentin. She meets with youth and talks to them about prison and their troubles at home and school. She was the first transgender woman to play a female lead in San Quentin's production of Macbeth. In her queen's crown and draped in a decorated shawl, she looked the part.

If Lady Jae is found eligible for parole, she fears for her life outside of prison. But she also believes that she can present a positive role model for other people struggling with the same issues. "Through all the adversity I've been in my life, I held true to myself", she said. "God does not make mistakes ... Once you learn to love yourself, the issue will disappear."
Correction, 4 August 2015 at 14:51: CDCR did not provide this estimate of the cost of sex reassignment surgery for inmate Norsworthy. A spokeswoman for the federal receiver in charge of health care did

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Life as a transgender inmate: confronting a hostile system behind bars and in court

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In the visiting room at San Quentin state penitentiary, 25 miles north of San Francisco, Lady Jae Clark looks around the room. "You see," she says, "everyone is looking at us." The large space is filled with inmates and their families. Everyone is talking, playing card games, and eating food from the vending machines.

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(Image: PA)

A transgender woman has been found dead in her cell in an all-male prison.

Convicted rapist Martin Eatough was discovered in her cell at Parkhurst jail, Isle of Wight.

Eatough, 35, also known as Jade, was taking hormone replacements as the first stage of gender reassignment.

She was found during a routine check at 5am in her cell on August 19.

Eatough, is the fourth transgender prisoner to kill herself in a male jail in the last couple of years.

A source said: "She was not on a suicide watch and was living normally.

"An officer checked her but got no response, entered the cell and found her."

Paramedics also tried resuscitation but she was declared dead at 5.45am.

Eatough was not on a ACCT (suicide supervision) at the time of her death.

She had been living as a woman, but had not yet had gender reassignment surgery.

The police and coroner have been informed.

The death follows in the wake of criticism of the Prison Service after a series of suicides by transgender inmates.

In November 2015, Joanne Latham was discovered hanging in her cell at high security Woodhill prison in Milton Keynes.

A month earlier, transgender Vikki Thompson, 21, committed suicide in HMP Leeds.

Eatough was serving a life sentence after committing two sex attacks in the same night.

He followed a 19-year-old girl in the centre of Blackburn in June 2005.

Eatough, of Osaldtwistle, indecently assaulted her on her doorstep.

Less than two hours later he raped a 15-year-old near Blackburn town centre.

Judge Slinger told Eatough that the first attack might have been much worse and the second victim had been terrified and humiliated, adding that there was a "real and significant risk or further very serious offences being committed by you".

Prisoners are normally held in the prison of their gender unless they have a 'gender recognition certificate' that states otherwise.

A Prison Service spokesperson said: "HMP Parkhurst prisoner Jade Eatough died in custody on Saturday 19 August 2017.

"As with all deaths in custody there will be an independent investigation by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman."

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this article you can freephone the Samaritans on 116123

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Transgender woman found dead in her cell at all male prison

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A transgender woman has been found dead in her cell in an all-male prison. Convicted rapist Martin Eatough was discovered in her cell at Parkhurst jail, Isle of Wight. Eatough, 35, also known as Jade, was taking hormone replacements as the first stage of gender reassignment.

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Photo via Flickr user torbakhopper

Ky Peterson has been waiting to hear back about his parole request for nearly three months. Peterson-a black transgender man who is serving a 20-year sentence in a women's prison for involuntary manslaughter after killing his rapist, which he alleges he did in self-defense-submitted his request in October, along with a post-incarceration plan. According to Pinky Shear, an Atlanta-based community advocate and Ky's partner of three years, it was "extensive." It included medical and financial planning, letters from supporters, proof of housing, a job offer, a plan for continuing education, and a letter from Ky himself detailing all that he accomplished while incarcerated. Despite its thorough nature, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles has yet to render a decision-one that his supporters expected to be delivered by early December at the latest.

In the meantime, Peterson is pushing forward with a different kind of request: top surgery, a procedure involving breast reduction and chest reconstruction that more than one third of all trans men pursue, according to a 2015 survey from the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), one of the nation's leading trans rights advocacy groups. If successful, Ky would become the second trans inmate in the country to receive state-funded gender confirmation surgery while incarcerated, following Shiloh Quine in California earlier this month, and he would set a statewide precedent in Georgia for those who follow. "He's determined to continue to push forward and keep fighting for trans rights in this facility," said Shear.

One could argue that Peterson's case highlights just how much incarcerated trans people's access to gender-affirming medical care has improved over the past few years. At the same time, it underscores how limited that access remains.

Trans people are subject to disproportionate levels of violence and discrimination while they are incarcerated, just as they are in the outside world. The experience of Chelsea Manning provides a notable (if not wholly representative) example-the military whistleblower, whose 35-year prison sentence was commuted by President Obama on Tuesday, has frequently been held in solitary confinement throughout her sentence. While she was allowed to wear gender-affirming clothing and cosmetics and seek speech and hormone therapy, prison officials forced her to adhere to keep her hair short as a security measure. Despite being diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2010 and coming out as a transgender woman in 2013, Manning has had to take extreme measures- lawsuits, hunger strikes -in order to have her medical needs recognized.

More than a third of incarcerated trans adults report being sexually victimized by staff and other inmates, according to the US Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, and 85 percent of queer and trans inmates surveyed in 2015 by the LGBTQ prisoner support network Black and Pink said they have been held in solitary confinement. Trans women-particularly Black, Latinx, multiracial, and Indigenous trans women-were one of the most at-risk groups for "protective" solitary confinement, a measure that has been linked to increases in suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among prisoners.

Attempts to access gender-affirming medical care while incarcerated often leads to difficulties for trans people. And trans inmates are far from the only incarcerated people who are systematically denied access to adequate medical care. Health care access is "abysmal" for all American prisoners, said Jason Lydon, the National Director of Black and Pink. That said, "transgender and gender-nonconforming folks experience greater inequities in all aspects of incarceration," he noted, "and that is true with respect to health care."

The 2015 NCTE survey found that nearly one in four trans people undergoing HRT prior to incarceration were denied access to hormones while in prison. While the survey did not ask respondents to specify whether hormones were withheld as punishment, Lydon said that such measures are not unheard of.

Gender-affirming care is often denied as a result of inexperience with caring for trans patients on the part of prison medical staff; for example, an incarcerated trans person who wishes to receive gender-affirming health care might first need to obtain a psychological evaluation in order to get diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The request process is often "really long" and "unnecessarily bureaucratic," according to Pooja Gehi, the Executive Director of progressive legal advocacy group the National Lawyers Guild, and it inherently privileges the will of the prison staff over the needs of the incarcerated.

Even with an evaluation, it can be hard for trans-identified patients to receive proper medical care. Sometimes, they fail to meet the exact criteria for a gender dysphoria diagnosis as laid out by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which excludes many gender-nonconforming and nonbinary people from its parameters, and some prisons will deny care on this basis. Even with an evaluation, trans patients are routinely denied HRT if they weren't on hormones before they were incarcerated.Requests for evaluation don't always lead to one, and they certainly do not always lead to a diagnosis necessary for inmates to receive gender-affirming care.

Such care is often cost-prohibitive, as well. Prisons are required to provide medical care to those they house, but, as Black and Pink's 2015 survey noted, that care "does not need to be free." Respondents reported doctor fees as high as $100 per year, a daunting amount for the incarcerated; forty-three percent of those surveyed said that those costs prevented them from receiving the care they needed.

Advocates for incarcerated trans people say that medical staff and those who field psychological evaluations in prisons need to be competent enough in trans issues to handle all patients in their care. And Lydon and Gehi agreed that moving away from a strictly diagnostic model of medical care would better serve incarcerated trans people.

The ability to access gender-affirming clothing and other goods at commissary can go a long way toward improving the mental health of incarcerated trans people. Trans men are often housed in facilities for women, and trans women are often housed in facilities for men. When they're living in an environment that triggers gender dysphoria by its very design, having access to masculine-scented deodorant or bras and women's underwear-as found in Pennsylvania prisons, for example-can "have a huge impact on people's mental health," said Lydon.

Ky Peterson is one of countless incarcerated trans people housed in a facility that does not correspond with their gender identity."He has a really great sense of humor [about being a man housed in a women's prison]," according to Shear. "He tries to make the most of it the best he can." His upbeat attitude is no doubt helped by the gender-affirming medical care, including hormones, he has successfully petitioned for, not to mention the binders (chest-flattening undergarments) and boxer-style underwear (as opposed to more feminine panties) that he is now permitted to wear. But not every incarcerated person, trans or otherwise, is as optimistic as Peterson, nor do they all have such an extensive network of support fighting for them on the outside. Their medical well-being, much less their survival, shouldn't hinge on either.

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For Trans Prisoners, Access to Healthcare Remains Abysmal

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Photo via Flickr user torbakhopper Ky Peterson has been waiting to hear back about his parole request for nearly three months. Peterson-a black transgender man who is serving a 20-year sentence in a women's prison for involuntary manslaughter after killing his rapist, which he alleges he did in self-defense-submitted his request in October, along with a post-incarceration plan.

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Most mornings at 4:30, half an hour before the "first call" awakens inmates at the Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas, an alarm rings within an 80-square-foot cell. Inmate 89289, slightly built with short hair, rises to apply makeup and don female undergarments and a brown uniform before the still-slumbering men in the adjacent cells stir.

That is the routine for Chelsea Manning, America's most famous convicted leaker and the prison's most unusual inmate. She is serving the longest sentence ever imposed for disclosing government secrets - 35 years - and her status as a celebrity of sorts and an incarcerated transgender woman presents continuing difficulties for the military.

During the day, Ms. Manning, who was an Army intelligence analyst known as Bradley Manning when she disclosed archives of secret military and diplomatic files to WikiLeaks in 2010, builds picture frames and furniture in the prison wood shop. In the evenings, before the 10:05 p.m. lockdown, she reads through streams of letters, including from antisecrecy enthusiasts who view her as a whistle-blower.

"I am always busy. I have a backlog of things to do: legal, administrative, press inquiries, and writing - lots of writing," Ms. Manning wrote in response to questions submitted by The Times because the Army does not permit her to speak directly to journalists. "Being me is a full-time job."

But Ms. Manning, who is struggling to transition to life as a woman while enduring a bleak existence at a male military prison, has asked President Obama to commute the remainder of her sentence before he leaves office next week. She poses particular challenges as a prisoner, with a volunteer support network that helps bring global attention to her treatment, fragile mental state - she twice tried to commit suicide in 2016 - and need for treatment that the military has no experience providing.

Her request comes as the world is again focused on WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, whom her leaks made famous. The organization last year published Clinton campaign emails, obtained in a hacking, as part of what American intelligence officials claim was a covert Russian operation aimed at tilting the election to President-elect Donald J. Trump. (Ms. Manning declined to discuss WikiLeaks, saying only that her decision to send documents to it "was neither an endorsement nor an affiliation.")

It also comes at a time of flux in the military's policies on gender identity. Last June, the Obama administration rescinded a ban on transgender people serving in the military and began overhauling its practices, which eventually would include providing gender reassignment surgery. But Mr. Trump has derided the lifting of the ban as "politically correct," raising the possibility that his administration may roll back the changes.

The White House declined to comment on Ms. Manning's commutation request. The Army declined to comment about her situation at Fort Leavenworth, citing privacy laws.

A military prosecutor had called Ms. Manning a "traitor" at her 2013 court-martial, and officials have said the disclosures disrupted government operations and put people at risk, although prosecutors did not claim anyone was killed because of them.

In a statement accompanying her petition asking Mr. Obama to reduce her sentence to the nearly seven years she already has served, Ms. Manning, now 29, said she never intended to hurt anyone and pleaded for a chance to start her life over.

"I need help," she wrote. "I am living through a cycle of anxiety, anger, hopelessness, loss, and depression. I cannot focus. I cannot sleep. I attempted to take my own life."

Transformation in a Crucible

On Aug. 22, 2013, the day after her sentencing for sending documents to WikiLeaks, Ms. Manning's lawyer read a statement on the "Today" show announcing that she was female, wanted to be called "Chelsea" rather than "Bradley" and would seek cross-sex hormone therapy.

To observers of her court-martial, this was no surprise. Her motivation for leaking hundreds of thousands of files she had copied from a classified computer network while serving in Iraq, as she wrote at the time, was hope that they would spark "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms." But at her trial, she apologized and noted that she was "dealing with a lot of issues" when she had made that decision.

Testimony showed that she had been in a mental and emotional crisis as she came to grips, in the stress of a war zone, with the fact that she was not merely gay, as she had believed while growing up in Oklahoma, but had gender dysphoria - a disconnect between one's gender identity and sex assigned at birth. In the months before her leaks and May 2010 arrest, she had been behaving erratically and emailed a picture of herself wearing a woman's wig to her supervisor.

The military sent Ms. Manning to serve out her sentence as a medium-security inmate at the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks, its main prison for male inmates.

Court documents show that Ms. Manning has had counseling sessions with a prison psychologist, Dr. Ellen Galloway, at least once a week, and military authorities have over time allowed her access to some treatments doctors prescribed for her gender dysphoria, in part because of pressure from a lawsuit filed by Chase Strangio, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, in September 2014.

She can now wear female prison undergarments, including a sports bra, and "subdued cosmetics." In early 2015, she was permitted to get speech therapy to feminize the tone and pitch of her voice and began cross-sex hormone therapy prescribed, Mr. Strangio said, by an endocrinologist brought in from the military's Walter Reed hospital.

Since then, Ms. Manning wrote, she has developed breasts and curvier hips. "There have been significant changes since I've been taking the hormones, and I am happy with them," she said.

But, citing security risks, the military rejected the recommendation of an outside psychologist who said she should be permitted to further feminize her appearance by growing her hair longer than male military standards. Mr. Strangio is helping her challenge that restriction.

"Plaintiff feels like a freak and a weirdo - not because having short hair makes a person less of a woman - but because for her, it undermines specifically recommended treatment and sends the message to everyone that she is not a 'real' woman," he wrote in a court filing.

"She is getting hormones, but it sounds like the inability to socially transition, or to have surgery, could be contributing to suicidality - especially when she is looking at decades in prison and thus a certain hopelessness about whether that might ever be available for her," said Dan Karasic, a University of California, San Francisco psychiatrist and the chairman of the American Psychiatric Association's work group on gender dysphoria; he cautioned that he had not examined her.

The military turned down a request by The New York Times to visit the facility. But an Army spokesman, Wayne Hall, provided written answers from the Army Corrections Command to questions posed by The Times, from which a sketch of her environment emerged.

Ms. Manning's cell, like others at Fort Leavenworth, contains a bed, toilet, sink, locker, storage bin, chair and desk, according to the Army. She showers in a nearby communal bathroom with individual stalls. She has no access to the internet, but says she receives "at least a couple hundred pieces of mail every week."

The Army does not permit her to see people who did not know her before her incarceration, so she is not allowed to meet with a handful of volunteers who have formed an informal network of supporters, but she calls one of them daily. A volunteer who relayed questions from The Times to her asked not to be named, citing security concerns.

Ms. Manning said she recently finished reading "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies," a book about artificial intelligence by the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, and "1Q84," a dystopian novel by Haruki Murakami. She is interested in efforts to develop stronger encryption and has been "going through" the "Princeton Companion to Mathematics." She also said she reads women's athletic, fashion and lifestyle magazines like Shape, Vogue, Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan.

Her cell door has a window looking onto a central "day room" with tables, chairs, pay phones and televisions. For a time, Ms. Manning played Dungeons & Dragons with a few fellow inmates, but she said she had had no time in recent months. She eats meals with other inmates in a dining facility and works on a team at the wood shop.

The roughly 424 inmates held at Fort Leavenworth with Ms. Manning include men accused of routine crimes as well as some who drew public attention, including Nidal Hasan, convicted in a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood and held on the prison's death row wing, and Robert Bales, who murdered 16 Afghans in Kandahar and was sentenced to life without parole in August 2013.

Ms. Manning declined to say much about the guards or fellow inmates, other than to say that they have never bullied or attacked her.

"It's best to keep to yourself and try not to get involved in any drama," she wrote. "It's a little harder for me to keep to myself, since the staff is constantly watching me and those that interact with me. But I'm used to it by now. I don't feel threatened by the other prisoners. I have friends."

Doing Hard Time

Her special status at Fort Leavenworth is evident. Nancy Hollander, one of the lawyers working on the appeal of her conviction and sentence, said the Army built a special secure information facility in a windowless basement room so she could meet with them and discuss still-classified documents she leaked.

While Ms. Manning said she could not say on her monitored phone calls "anything critical of the prison or the current administration or I can get charged for violation of a lawful general order," her supporters pay close attention to her treatment.

Scrutiny of the military's struggles to deal with Ms. Manning go back to her confinement at the Quantico, Va., brig after her arrest, when she was held for months in isolation, shackled during exercise and sometimes stripped of clothing and glasses to prevent her from harming herself - even after a prison psychologist said such steps were unnecessary. A military judge ruled that the treatment had been illegal.

At Leavenworth, after a minor disagreement with a guard in 2015, officials punished her, among other things, for "medical misuse" because they found a tube of toothpaste in her cell that was past its expiration date. Her supporters publicized the incident.

In September, her supporters issued a news release saying she was on a hunger strike because of an "overzealous administrative scrutiny" and lack of progress in getting more treatment.

She resumed eating after five days. Mr. Strangio said an official told her she would be eligible for the same medical treatment as non-incarcerated transgender soldiers, suggesting she would eventually be permitted to proceed with surgery. But months have passed, and Ms. Manning wrote that she has not seen a surgeon.

Later in September, a prison board disciplined Ms. Manning for the disruption a July suicide attempt had caused. The punishment: solitary confinement. While in isolation in October, she tried again to kill herself - by choking herself on a piece of clothing, according to a support network member - before guards intervened.

About a week further into that stint in solitary, she experienced a bizarre episode in which four people impersonating guards simulated breaking into the prison one night and pretended to kill her regular guards, filling her with fear, according to an account she filed with the army inspector general.

A military official denied her account. Dr. Stuart Grassian, a specialist in the psychological effects of solitary confinement, said her description is consistent with hallucinations often experienced by unstable people placed in isolation.

Now, with 28 years of her sentence to go and uncertainty over whether the Trump administration will deny her sex-reassignment surgery, Ms. Manning is hoping Mr. Obama will take mercy on her and free her from military prison, which goes by the acronym U.S.D.B.

"I am not asking for a pardon of my conviction. I understand that the various collateral consequences of the court-martial conviction will stay on my record forever," she wrote in her commutation application. "I am merely asking for a first chance to live my life outside the U.S.D.B. as the person I was born to be."

Correction:

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Chelsea Manning Describes Bleak Life in a Men's Prison

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Most mornings at 4:30, half an hour before the "first call" awakens inmates at the Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas, an alarm rings within an 80-square-foot cell. Inmate 89289, slightly built with short hair, rises to apply makeup and don female undergarments and a brown uniform before the still-slumbering men in the adjacent cells stir.

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For over 3 years, Transgender Law Center, along with a coalition of advocates, has been in negotiations with the San Francisco Sheriff's Department to adopt and implement a policy that allows transgender people in custody to be housed and treated in accordance with their gender identity.

In May 2016, Transgender Law Center began representing Athena Cadence, a transsexual woman in the custody of the San Francisco Sheriff's Department. Ms. Cadence had filed multiple grievances while in custody requesting that her name and gender identity be acknowledged and respected. Her grievances included requests to be housed with women, searched by women, given equal access to appropriate educational, mental health and other programming and to have her name and gender acknowledged and respected by staff. She also made formal reports of physical and sexual assaults and harassment by staff and other people in custody. As a result, she was subjected to retaliation by staff, as well as attempts to discourage Ms. Cadence from filing reports of violence by threatening her with administrative segregation terms in isolation.

On June 1, 2016, Ms. Cadence took matters into her own hands by engaging in a hunger strike demanding that, when preferred by a transgender woman in custody, transgender women be housed with women and searched by women. Transgender Law Center wrote two letters urging Sheriff Hennessy to comply with Ms. Cadence's demands and implement a policy that will allow Ms. Cadence and other transgender people to be housed and treated in accordance with their gender identity.

The Sheriff subsequently released two memos indicating that she is working on a policy related to housing and searches of transgender people in custody, and directing staff to use preferred names and pronouns in interacting with transgender people.

Ms. Cadence was released from custody on August 3, 2016, day 64 of her hunger strike. Despite her unwavering commitment and great risk to health and safety, Ms. Cadence was never housed with women and she received very little access to the programming offered to others in custody. Transgender Law Center continues to correspond and meet with the Sheriff regarding the new policy proposal and its implementation. Unfortunately, there are still a number of transgender people in custody in San Francisco who are currently enduring the dangerous conditions to which Ms. Cadence was subjected. The need for the implementation of appropriate policies that protect the dignity and safety of transgender people in custody remains urgent.

For more information, click here.

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For over 3 years, Transgender Law Center, along with a coalition of advocates, has been in negotiations with the San Francisco Sheriff's Department to adopt and implement a policy that allows transgender people in custody to be housed and treated in accordance with their gender identity.

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The rules governing how transgender prisoners are treated - and whether they are sent to male or female prisons - are to be reviewed, the Ministry of Justice has announced.

The decision follows the deaths of two women in the past two months who had been sent to all-male jails.

Vicky Thompson, 21, was found dead in her cell in November at Armley, a category B men's prison in Leeds. She had told friends she would kill herself if sent to a male prison.

Joanne Latham, 38, from Nottingham, died in Woodhill prison in Milton Keynes earlier this month after apparently taking her own life. She had been held in the close supervision centre (CSC) unit, reserved for the most dangerous and vulnerable prisoners.

Related: Prison is a desperate place if you're trans - I was lucky, others are in hell | Charlie Kiss

In October, Tara Hudson, 26, succeeded in persuading the authorities to transfer her from the all-male HMP Bristol to Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire, a female prison.

The MoJ says it does not know how many transgender prisoners are being held in its jails. Announcing an expanded review of procedures, the justice minister Caroline Dinenage said: "Transgender adult prisoners are normally placed according to their legally recognised gender. However, we recognise that these situations are often complex and sensitive.

"That is why prisons exercise local discretion on the placement of those who live, or propose to live, in the gender other than the one assigned at birth. In such cases, senior prison management will review the individual circumstances, in consultation with medical and other experts.

"However, we have received a number of representations expressing concern that the present system doesn't sufficiently address the needs of transgender prisoners."

Dinenage said the regulations should find an "appropriate balance between the needs of the individual and the responsibility to manage risk and safeguard the wellbeing of all prisoners".

The review will be coordinated by a senior MoJ official working with two independent advisers: Peter Dawson, the deputy director of the Prison Reform Trust and a former deputy governor of HMP Brixton, and Dr Jay Stewart, the director of Gendered Intelligence, an organisation promoting understanding of gender diversity. It is expected to complete its work early next year.

It will also look at the care and management of transgender offenders by the probation service.

"The usual practice is for [transgender prisoners] to be held in a supportive environment away from the main regime of the prison and protected from risk of harm from other prisoners," the MoJ announcement said.

"The risk-assessed daily regime will be structured to enable the prisoner to have exercise and recreation and some measure of planned, supervised contact with other, trusted prisoners. Where relevant, clothing and toiletries are provided to enable the prisoner to present in their acquired gender, consistent with the arrangements set out in the instruction.

"Prisoners who are transitioning are entitled to live in the gender they seek to acquire. Prisons must produce a management care plan outlining how the individual will be managed safely and decently within the prison environment, with oversight from psychologists, healthcare professionals and prison staff."

Legal gender is normally determined by an individual's birth certificate although those seeking to change theirs may obtain a gender recognition certificate (GRC) to create an alternative legal gender.

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Rules on whether transgender prisoners go to male or female jails to be reviewed

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The rules governing how transgender prisoners are treated - and whether they are sent to male or female prisons - are to be reviewed, the Ministry of Justice has announced. The decision follows the deaths of two women in the past two months who had been sent to all-male jails.

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Transgender Prisoners Face Sexual Assault and Discrimination at Pittsburgh Jail

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Prison is a traumatic experience. For transgender women, it's magnitudes worse.Jules Williams, a transgender woman, suffered sexual and physical assault and harassment multiple times while detained at the Allegheny County Jail between 2015 and 2017 in Pittsburgh. Even though she is a woman, which the state recognizes on her identification card, Ms. Williams was processed and incarcerated with men.

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Texas County authorities have charged Andrew Vrba, Isis Schauer and Briana Calderas with the first-degree murder of 17-year-old Ally Lee Steinfeld, whose family had reported her missing earlier this month.

According to police reports, Vrba, 18, admitted to killing Steinfeld and burning her body.

Schauer and Calderas allegedly helped Vrba hide Steinfeld's body. Schauer and Calderas told police Vrba claimed he stabbed the victim's genitals multiple times and gouged her eyes out.

All three are being held in jail without bond and have yet to be arraigned. Their lawyers did not immediately respond to CNN's requests for comment.

The grisly details of Steinfeld's death have prompted some to call for the suspects to face hate crime charges.

"There couldn't be a more vivid example of someone being targeted because of their gender identity than being stabbed in their genitals," said Dru Levasseur, director of the Transgender Rights Project for Lambda Legal, a nonprofit working organization for the civil rights of the LGBTQ community.

"I've heard complete outrage from trans people about how they (authorities) could not prosecute this" as a hate crime, Levasseur told CNN.

According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which tracks violence against transgender people, Steinfeld is the 21st transgender person who has been killed in the United States in 2017.

"HRC is also deeply concerned about the investigation into her death," said HRC legal director Sarah Warbelow in a statement to CNN.

"As details of her brutal murder are confirmed, it seems likely that anti-transgender animus played a role," Warbelow said. "This broader epidemic of violence against the transgender community, often motivated by hatred, must come to an end."

Police have not released a motive for Steinfeld's murder, and the prosecution is not pursuing hate crime charges.

Murder followed 'physical altercation'

Steinfeld's family filed a missing person's report on September 14, though they hadn't heard from the teen since "approximately September 1," according to police reports obtained by CNN.

Police went to the Cabool, Missouri, trailer home of 24 -year-old Calderas after Steinfeld's family said Calderas, Vrba and Schauer, both 18, were the last people to be with the teen. The family had contacted the trio, the report says, but believed they were being lied to about Steinfeld's whereabouts.

Steinfeld's family, police and the suspects still refer to her by her name given at birth and use male pronouns, but her family says she referred to herself using female pronouns.

In an interview with detectives, Schauer denied knowing where Steinfeld was located, but said Steinfeld "had been in a physical altercation with Vrba on September 3, 2017." After the altercation, Schauer said, Steinfeld left and no one had seen her since.

But when police interviewed Vrba, he confessed to murdering the victim. "Vrba stated that he had to kill Steinfeld," the police report says, "and he planned to do so by poisoning him, but Steinfeld would not drink the poison so he used a knife instead."

While the details were left out of the police report, a Texas County deputy said Vrba described for police how he stabbed Steinfeld in the living room of Calderas' trailer, and told them that he, Schauer and Calderas took the body outside to burn it.

When investigators searched the property, the report says, they found human remains in a burn pile and a garbage bag by the chicken coop that contained "numerous human bones and burnt trash."

Calderas confessed to police she tried to help hide the body and told them where the murder weapon could be found.

Calderas and Schauer both told police Vrba had told them about gouging out Steinfeld's eyes and stabbing her in the genitals "multiple times, and that he had bragged about the murder and went into detail on how the murder took place."

All three are facing first degree murder charges, armed criminal action, and abandonment of a corpse. A fourth suspect, 25-year-old James Grigsby, is facing lesser charges for helping the others hide Steinfeld's body. His attorney also did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment.

Hate crime charge can't apply to first-degree murder

In a statement, Texas County prosecutor Parke Stevens Jr, defended the decision to not pursue hate crime charges by pointing out a first-degree murder charge carries the "highest and most severe form of punishment available in the State of Missouri."

In Missouri, hate crime charges cannot be added to a first-degree murder charge, only lesser charges like assault, harassment or property damage.

"First-degree murder is punishable by death," said CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson. "The hate crime law operates to 'enhance' punishments regarding certain crimes -- upon a showing of hateful motivation."

Since a first-degree murder charge is punishable by either death or life imprisonment, Jackson said, a hate crime charge cannot apply to a murder.

Additionally, it could complicate the job of prosecutors trying to convict defendants.

"A prosecutor generally does not have to prove motive," he said. "In hate crimes, you must. Therefore, they make the job harder of a prosecutor."

Jackson said of the prosecutor's decision, "It's the right call -- and only call, under the law."

But it shouldn't matter whether the hate crime charge wouldn't enhance the sentencing, Levasseur said. "Regardless of whether the choices are life in jail or execution, having a hate crime prosecution matters."

To him, it's about addressing the bigger question of why transgender people are so often targeted and the victims of violence.

"There's not enough attention being paid to this issue," Levasseur said.

"Its an opportunity for the state of Missouri to take a stand and say, 'Even though it wouldn't make a difference in terms of sentencing, we are going to implement this (hate crime) law because we recognize this is horrific and that transgender people exist,'" he said. "We need to be working on looking at the larger picture."

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suspects in murder of trans teen won't face hate crime charges - cnn

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Suspects in murder of transgender teen won't face hate crime charges

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Texas County authorities have charged Andrew Vrba, Isis Schauer and Briana Calderas with the first-degree murder of 17-year-old Ally Lee Steinfeld, whose family had reported her missing earlier this month. According to police reports, Vrba, 18, admitted to killing Steinfeld and burning her body. Schauer and Calderas allegedly helped Vrba hide Steinfeld's body.

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- disproportionate amounts of hate crimes
-specific issues not being recognised or addressed (prison wardens deadnaming/birthnaming them)
- vulnerable in prison