When California’s “Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act”—Senate Bill 132—was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2021, it set the stage for male prisoners to be housed with female prisoners. The male prisoners do not have to be in the process of “gender-affirming” treatment.
Amie Ichikawa, 42, now free after serving nearly five years at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, said that some male prisoners claim non-male identities because female prisons are, as a general rule, less violent than men’s prisons. “There was a male prisoner who had single-cell status in his all-male prison because he assaulted his bunkmates,” Ichikawa said. “He had been isolated in the male prison but they put him directly into the general population here in a room with seven ladies right off the bus.
When former California inmate Amie Ichikawa returned to the free world, she began sounding the alarms about women being harmed as a result of males gaining access to female prison. Her desperate pleas for help, however, were met with the cold-shoulder by organizations that traditionally serve as advocates for female inmates.
These advocates dismissed her concerns and instead told her to “be careful” and “learn the language.” But Ichikawa doesn’t view what’s happening to female inmates under new prison “transgender” policies as political; to her, it’s a human rights issue, and she’s refusing to be silent.
Source: Amie’s Story | Cruel & Unusual Punishment | Independent Women’s Forum