Gender rules in the community corrections context: Examining how case managers navigate trans client supervision in a binary setting
| Published date | 01 March 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02645505231174028 |
| Author | Taylor Ellis,Tara Opsal |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Gender rules in the
community corrections
context: Examining
how case managers
navigate trans client
supervision in a binary
setting
Taylor Ellis
The West Ed Justice and Prevention Research Center, USA
Tara Opsal
Colorado State University –Sociology, USA
Abstract
This article explores one US residential community corrections facility and the ways
that case managers navigate working with transgender women under supervision
in a facility that relies on the sex binary for housing placement. Similar to other
research on this population in prisons that has been conducted both within and out-
side of the US context, we find that case managers contend with significant uncer-
tainty in their work with these clients because of a lack of specific and formal
training. To contend with that uncertainty, case managers reported relying on
Gender Responsive Training and the Prison Rape Elimination Act to guide their under-
standing of and work with trans clients. However, we also found a great deal of dis-
cretion in the ways case managers managed programming for their trans clients that
disrupted the gendered organization of the facility. We conclude with specific pro-
grammatic recommendations based on these findings.
Keywords
Corresponding Author:
Tara Opsal, Colorado State University –Sociology, Clark Building, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
Email: tara.opsal@colostate.edu
Article The Journal of Communit
y
and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
2024, Vol. 71(1) 47–66
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/02645505231174028
journals.sagepub.com/home/prb
probation, gender, effective practice, training, corrections
Introduction
1
In the 1990s, Dee Farmer, a trans woman
2
who was incarcerated in a federal
prison in the Midwest region of the United States, reported to correctional officers
that she did not feel safe around a group of men she was housed with. These men
verbally and physically harassed her, and she had reason to suspect that these
interactions would escalate. Correctional officers ignored her concerns. As she
feared, those men physically and sexually assaulted her shortly after she
warned correctional officers. As a result, Farmer filed a lawsuit against the
prison for deliberate indifference (Smith, 2015). Farmer’scase—Farmer
v. Brennan 1994—made it to the US Supreme Court where the Court decided
with Farmer. This ruling was pivotal to establishing the relevancy of the 8
th
Amendment in prisons; the Court wrote, “prison officials have a duty to protect
prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners”and not doing so violates
the Eight Amendment of the Constitution that prevents cruel and unusual punish-
ment (Smith, 2015).
Although this court case did not rule on anything specific to trans identity, in the
United States, it sparked a new legal discourse about incarcerated people who iden-
tify as trans. It also highlighted the importance of the relationship between correc-
tions staff and people who are incarcerated, as staff are responsible for ensuring
their safety and well-being. Initially, these shifts helped spark additional advocacy
for issues confronting trans women in the correctional context including increased
research attention. Researchers—often focused on the US context—have explored,
for example, people who identify as trans and: the demographic make-up of those
who are incarcerated (Sevelius and Jenness, 2017; Sexton et al., 2010), variables
that enhance the likelihood of criminal justice involvement (Buist and Stone, 2014;
James et al., 2016; Sexton et al., 2010; The National Center for Trangender
Equality (NCTE) 2019a, 2019b) and police interactions (Dwyer, 2014; Graham,
2014; Nichols, 2014).
Additional research examines ways that the criminal legal system institutionalizes
practices and policies that constitute gender in ways that marginalize or exclude
trans women. For instance, in their ethnographic work at a halfway house,
Kerrison (2018) describes the ways that correctional staff produced heteronorma-
tive surveillance that disadvantaged women and, especially, queer-identified
women via gendered penal logics. Greene (2019) shows how biologically based
understandings of gender organized the work of agencies that provide reentry ser-
vices in ways that categorically exclude trans women. Finally, Yarbrough (2023)
provides evidence that normative binary conceptions of gender increase the vulner-
ability of economically and racially marginalized trans women through criminaliza-
tion of common survival strategies. In part, each of these studies illuminates ways
that organizational policies enacted through criminal legal services create
48 Probation Journal 71(1)
To continue reading
Request your trial