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Whatsapp Transgender people are often subject to assault and abuse within the prison system.

Does Australia's criminal justice system know how to deal with transgender people? With assaults and abuse common on the inside, The Law Report investigates how prison can be a terrifying place for transgender people.

Warning: Some readers may find the content of this article distressing.

Ashley Diamond was serving a 12-year-sentence for a nonviolent theft offence when she was raped, beaten and abused in an all-male prison in the US state of Georgia.

Diamond was sent there despite spending most her life identifying as female, says her lawyer, Chinyere Ezie from the Southern Poverty Law Centre.

The prison officer had actually come and opened my cell up during the night and wanted me to take off my clothes and expose myself to him.

'In spite of the fact that Ashley Diamond had been living in the community as a woman and had begun her gender transition 17 years earlier and was living and identifying for most of her life as a woman, she was placed into a male prison,' Ezie says.

'She was subjected to brutal repeated sexual assaults. She attempted suicide on multiple occasions.

'She had a very diminished self-worth because once she reported sexual assaults, prison officials told her things like, "Well, what do you expect? You're a transgender, you're asking for it."'

In 2015, Diamond spoke out about her experiences, which included being denied access to ongoing hormone treatments she had begun prior to entering prison.

Last month, the state of Georgia agreed to a confidential financial settlement. It also agreed to reform its policies towards transgender inmates.

Transgender prisoners in Australia report similar experiences.

In Perth, transgender woman Sienna Fox has been sitting in remand in a male prison since February. Fox, a sex worker, was detained on allegations she transmitted HIV to a person.

Rebecca Leighton, who works with People for Sex Worker Rights in WA, has spoken to Fox since she has been imprisoned.

'She is terrified. She's holding up as well as she can but she is in a situation that is uniquely horrendous,' says Leighton.

'In no other circumstances would a woman be placed in a maximum security male prison.'

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Whatsapp Transgender sex worker Sienna Fox being escorted by police through Perth airport in February.

Leighton says there are a number of transgender women currently in male prisons throughout Western Australia, but their numbers are not being monitored by the state government.

It raises the broader question of whether Australia's criminal justice system knows what to do with transgender people.

At present, laws deviate substantially state to state. The widely held view in the transgender community is that New South Wales currently has the best system.

'[NSW] provides strict direction at every step of the detention process around the appropriate manner in which trans-prisoners should be housed, and it does so wherever possible on the basis of their lived experience rather than the whims of prison authorities,' Leighton says.

'It is not perfect but it is clearly the most thought-out model currently existing in Australia.'

If a transgender individual has already commenced hormone therapy prior to incarceration, they are able to continue their program within the NSW prison system, as it is seen as essential medical treatment.

Women's prisons 'much safer'

Lisa, an transgender Indigenous woman, or sistergirl, has spent time in both the NSW and Queensland prison systems for a string of low-level drug and prostitution charges.

As an 18 year-old already undergoing hormone replacement therapy, she was placed in male prison on petty crime charges.

'It was absolutely terrifying,' says Lisa. 'I had people attempting to rape me, and other times I was raped in prison.'

She reported to prison officers that she had been raped, but was too frightened to name the perpetrator.

After a traumatic experience in a Queensland male prison involving a prison officer, she was eventually moved to a women's prison.

'The prison officer had actually come and opened my cell up during the night and wanted me to take off my clothes and expose myself to him,' she says.

'I was moved from that prison because of that incident to a female prison, and I was there for four weeks.

'I didn't have the hassles of worrying about being sexually harassed or sexually assaulted. I definitely felt much safer.'

Lisa now works as an advocate for transgender Indigenous sistergirls and brotherboys.

Although her preference was to be placed into a prison of the gender she had transitioned into, she says that is not always the case across the transgender community.

'It's fairly mixed; it's 50-50. Some people I've spoken to have they want to be in a men's prison, but other people I've spoken to want that option of going to a female prison,' she says.

'My belief is that a transgender person is much safer in a women's prison.'

Balancing the risks of harm

The difficulty faced by prison authorities is trying to balance the risk presented to a prisoner with the risk they pose to other inmates.

In 1987, Maddison Hall, born Noel Crompton Hall, murdered a hitchhiker in far western NSW. Having begun hormone treatment while in prison, she was moved to a women's prison.

While in prison, she was charged with raping female inmates, and later returned to a male facility.

Liz Ceissman, a senior case manager and NSW prison outreach worker with the Gender Centre, acknowledges the range of complex considerations faced by state criminal justice systems.

'The things that are given consideration are: "If I put them in a female jail or a male jail, what risk is it to them? What risk are they to other inmates?"

'I think that is given more serious consideration now off the back of things like Maddison Hall's experiences.'

Ceissman rejects the argument that given they have broken the law, the consideration given to transgender prisoners should be limited.

'The aim of jail in its theory is rehabilitation,' she says.

'Someone didn't commit a crime because they were transgender, but if you are anticipating releasing someone back into society you would like to release them as healthy and as connected and as stable as they can be.

'Supporting someone to resolve gender issues lessens the opportunity for recidivism post-release.'

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Whatsapp Ashley Diamond after her release from a US prison.

In America, the case of Ashley Diamond remains painfully common. Almost half of US black or Latina transgender individuals will enter the prison system at some point in their life.

'That's just an indication of how pervasive the social exclusion is that they face, and the policing that they face when they are in the community and the presumption that if you are transgender and you are walking down the street you must be a sex worker,' says Diamond's lawyer, Chinyere Ezie. 'Very negative, retrograde attitudes still pervade.'

Dr Wendell Rosevear, who works at Gay and Lesbian Health Services in Brisbane, says it's a similar situation in Australia.

'When people aren't able to integrate or resolve their gender dysphoria, they can turn to alcohol and drugs seeking relief,' he says.

'[Transgender people] have twice the incidence of alcohol and drug use of the general population. They have higher incidence of depression and anxiety and discrimination against them, so they are quite marginalised and alienated.

'If you don't accept yourself, you are vulnerable to turning to power or denial or alcohol and drugs, and those things together predispose to vulnerability to crime.'

He says until the Australian community becomes more accepting and open to transgender people, that is likely to continue.

'While we don't allow people to address their dysphoria and their lack of self-acceptance, we are actually not allowing them to resolve their issues to prevent future crime,' he says.

'I seek to help people regain a sense of personal value because valuable people value themselves and others, so prevention of crime is really about valuing ourselves and valuing others.'

Listen to the full episode How do transgender people fare in jail? A former prisoner and a range of advocates explain how some jurisdictions are better than others to The Law Report.

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