Posted Tuesday, April 11, 2017 8:00 pm

How does a small jail with a limited staff house a transgender inmate?

That’s not an academic question for the Jefferson County Jail, which has housed a transgender inmate for a past few weeks.

Jail Superintendent Steve Richmond said that he could recall housing two transgender inmates previously, but both had “completed the process,” whereas the current inmate is still transitioning.

“We currently have about half a dozen female inmates, housed in a 12-person block,” Richmond said. There are two people housed in each cell.

“Some of them said they were uncomfortable having a transgender inmate with them, so we talked through it. If there is an attack, or if something else has happened, we can absolutely separate inmates, but their concerns weren’t based on anything specific,” Richmond said.

Richmond said that the transgender inmate, whom he declined to identify, had made contact with a female inmate, and that the exchange was without incident as far as he and his staff could determine.

“They seem to have talked and just had general conversations,” Richmond said. “We haven’t had any complaints since the inmates started eating meals together. It’d be ideal to offer single cells to all our inmates, but that’s not an option for this jail. King, Pierce, even Snohomish County have more housing options at their jails than we do.”

Richmond emphasized that the Jefferson County Jail routinely reassigns inmates’ housing within its seven 12-person-capacity blocks, not just in response to incidents, but also to prevent them. However, their options remain finite, he said.

PLACEMENTS REVIEWED

“We can’t always house friends or family members together, and in some cases, we specifically need not to,” Richmond said. “We review the placements periodically, to make sure certain inmates haven’t taken over. I’m always fearful of predators finding ways around the system. I’m also fearful of transgender inmates getting assaulted, regardless of whether they’ve transitioned or not.”

Richmond pledged that he and his staff have paid extra attention to the current transgender inmate, with an eye toward preventing incidents.

“We house our male and female inmates separately,” said Richmond, who added that incoming inmates are evaluated through questionnaires and assessments of their criminal and mental health records.

“We want to separate the wolves from the sheep,” Richmond said. “First-timers are kept apart from repeat offenders, and we try to avoid moving our inmates with mental health issues too much, so they don’t get confused. Taking in a transgender inmate adds another complication.”

Richmond pointed out that the Jefferson County Jail has neither the space nor the staffing to segregate transgender inmates from other inmates. Instead, the jail’s screening process takes the inmates at their word.

“At booking, we ask them what gender they identify with,” Richmond said. “We don’t strip-search them to verify their genitalia. When we do pat-down searches, we try to have male officers patting down male inmates, and females patting down females. With transgender inmates, we ask them which gender they prefer. We’re conscious of the fact that they may have been victimized, so we don’t want to re-victimize them.”