Transgender People Involved with Carceral Systems International Perspectives

Chapter one – introduction Often Cruel, Sometimes Unusual, and Sadly Predictable:  A Look at the Transgender Carceral Nexus around the Globe

Matthew Maycock, Saoirse O’Shea, Valerie Jenness

Part one

Chapter two “I know the degradation, the humiliation around being incarcerated and ostracized, and marginalized, and sexualized: Pathways to incarceration and the incarceration experiences of Black American and First Nations Australian trans women.”

Tania M. Phillips,  Kirsty A. Clark, Annette Brömdal, Amy B. Mullens, Tait Sanders, Sherree Halliwell, Jessica Gildersleeve, Kirstie Daken, Joseph Debattista, Carol du Plessis, Paul Simpson, Jaclyn M.W. Hughto

Chapter three, Transgender in deprivation of liberty in Brazil by the lenses of coloniality of power

Fernando Fernandes, Heloisa Melino

Chapter four, Trans women and travestis in prisons: experiences, selectivity and criminal treatment.

Eric Seger de Camargo, Guilherme Gomes Ferreira

Chapter five, “I’m in prison. I’m prisoning myself” – The experiences of transgender men in a women’s prison who are perceived as cisgender.

Mia Harris

Chapter six “The Only Man in the Village”: The Lived Experiences of Transgender Men Serving Sentences in Women’s Prisons in England & Wales

Bill Rossi

Chapter seven, “They didn’t want me to be myself, they wanted me to be a man”: The Lived Experience of a Transgender Individual Incarcerated in a Canadian Men’s Correctional Institution.

Lee Vandenbroeck

Chapter eight The current situation and issues of transgender prisoners in Turkey

Ezgi Ildirim, Can Calici

Chapter nine, Transgender Peoples’ experiences of the Criminal Justice System in Pakistan

Mashal Aamir

Chapter ten, Invisible Identities: Transgender Persons, Prisons and Preliminary Perspectives from India.

Arijeet Ghosh

Part two

Chapter eleven, Transgender and non-binary prisoners in the USA and English and Wales Prison Estates.

Olga Suhomlinova, Saoirse O’Shea

Chapter twelve, Rights Went Wrong: Situating Trans Reforms in Canada’s History of Women-Centered Correctional Transformations.

William Hébert

Chapter thirteen, media Narratives Regarding the Accommodation of Trans Prisoners in Canadian Prisons.

Carla Cesaroni, Victoria Ginsley

Chapter fourteen, Transgender Perspectives on the Scottish Justice System: On the Subject of the Legal Subject.

Beth Cairns

Chapter fifteen, transgender Rights in African Confinement: an analysis of recent jurisprudence in Southern Africa.

Rui Garrido, Xaman Minillo

Chapter sixteen, Is dignity an option? The situation of transgender persons in Swiss prisons

Jean-Sébastien Blanc

Chapter seventeen, transgender people in prison in England and Wales: policy and practice in a culture of penal populism.

Caroline Gorden, Caroline Hughes

Chapter eighteen, Prioritising the rights of incarcerated trans and gender diverse people: a case study of a community-led revision of an Australian prison policy.

Paul L. Simpson, Zahra Stardust, Lucky Dodd, Teddy Cook, Mindy Sotiri, Kaz Zinnetti, Tait Sanders, Annette Brömdal, Danika Hardiman

Chapter nineteen bodies, desires and pleasures: resistance of trans women imprisoned in a male prison in Mexico City

Chloé Constant

Biography

Matthew Maycock, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Monash University. He was previously a Baxter Fellow in Community Education at the University of Dundee. Matthew previously worked within the criminal justice system in Scotland as a Learning and Development Researcher at the Scottish Prison Service. Matthew is an anthropologist by training, undertook his PhD at the University of East Anglia (UK), and leads on an ongoing longitudinal study analysing modern slavery and freedom in Nepal through the theoretical lens of masculinity. Throughout various studies, Matthew has consistently worked on gender issues, with critical studies on men and masculinity being a particular focus. Matthew is the co-editor of four edited collections, all focusing on aspects of life in prison, and he sits on the editorial board of three journals as well as being an editor of the International Journal of Prison Health.

Saoirse O’Shea is a non-binary person who underwent “gender affirming surgery” in December 2020. I’ve worked as an academic in UK-based universities since 2000 and am currently employed as a senior lecturer (associate professor). I sometimes write about my lived experiences as a non-binary person and on gender, queer theory and queer(y)ing gender, and academic theory. I have published with Olga Suhomlinova and others various articles concerned with the lived experiences of transgender people in contact with the criminal justice system in England and Wales in the British Journal of Criminology and the International Journal of Mental Health as well as a chapter in Advances in Trans Studies: Moving Toward Gender Expansion and Trans Hope. Vol. 32 (Johnson, A.H., Baker A., Rogers, T. and Taylor, T. eds.). Olga and I are also currently writing a book for publication in 2024, Transgender and Non-binary Prisoners’ Experiences in England and Wales: Coming Out, based on our longitudinal research. I like cats, chocolate, fashion, and tattoos.

Valerie Jenness is Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of four books and many articles published in sociology, law, criminology, and gender journals. Her work on prostitution, hate crime, prison violence, transgender prisoners, and prison grievance systems has been honoured with awards from half a dozen professional organisations and informed public policy, and she has received national recognition for teaching and mentoring. She has served as President of the American Society of Criminology, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the Pacific Sociological Association.

Transgender People Involved in Criminal Justice System: International Perspectives,  is a timely edition.   The 18 chapters bring voices from the Global South to the Global North to address how transgender people come to be subject to state control.  It is a thought-provoking volume highlighting the systemic and epistemic levels of violence and discrimination that transgender persons experience as they are processed by the prison industrial complex. By queering the production and systems of gender normativity that are amplified in the criminal justice system,  the volume serves to advance transgender justice. This is an exciting book that educators, students,  policymakers and those working in criminal justice must read.

-Professor Azrini Wahidin, Head of School for the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney.

This remarkably varied and valuable volume examines the experiences of incarcerated trans people within the violent institutional enforcement of the gender binary. Contributions come from around the globe to examine the subjugation of trans people internationally and to illustrate the workings of the “transgender criminal legal nexus” in multiple locales. Taken together, the authors address the scope of the oppression of trans people, as well as the growing pursuit of trans rights through everyday resistance, innovative polices, and demands for change.

- Sarah Fenstermaker, Research Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Barbara