Cowardice at ASPC-Eyman: TSU officers awarded for courage after beating up deaf prisoner.

Beginning 12am on June 27, the 25-minute documentary "Deaf in Prison" will beshowing for two days at bit.ly/DeafPrisoners. I've only heard from one deaf prisoner in Arizona, at ASPC-Eyman/Meadows Complex. According to three other witnesses, he was assaulted by Tactical Support Unit (TSU) officers during  a retaliatory  yard shakedown on April 23, 2013. His offense: not hearing and following their orders promptly. The officers told the nurse when asked what happened to him that Christopher just "fell down", and laughed, according to a witness. 

So, I'm urging as many people as possible - especially those of you who work for DOC - to tune into the documentary "Deaf in Prison" from June 27-June 29 HERE: bit.ly/DeafPrisoners. 

The facebook page for the event is HERE.

Unfortunately, that and several other complaints about how violent and abusive the TSU officers were that day that were made to the Warden, Ron Credio, were dismissed as "unsubstantiated", because the officers denied the allegations - if they were even investigated. Word has it that the TSU Officers were actually told to give the guys a bad time because someone had written "Suck it!" in rocks while Credio was giving a legislator a tour, and even though the guy took responsibility for his "crime", everyone was to be punished for it.

--------------from a letter sent to the US Attorney's Office by a prisoner, who cc'ed it to me-----------

"On Tuesday, April 23, 2013 about thirty correctional officer entered the east side yard of the Meadows unit, in the Eyman complex at Florence, Arizona. These correctional officers are part of an elite squad known as the “Tactical Security Unit” (“TSU”): which are usually called in on special projects like riots, strikes, unrest, hostage-takings, etc..

Those S.W.A.T-like group wore all-black uniforms, wore no name tags, and was adorned in black vests, black ball-like caps pulled down with big black sunglasses. They purposely disguised themselves so no one could identify and name them. They directed men to put their chins down on their chest and not look up. Men were forced to strip in front of other prisoners and guards. They were compelled outside, in 85 - 90 degrees, in only a t-shirt, boxer, and shower shoes. Once outside prisoners were forced to sit on the hot sidewalk with their chin on their chest and their hands behind their back...

....they shouted they were in charge, this was their prison and we will learn it. They would get up in Men’s faces (2 to 3 inch) and would shout at them. As they talked and yelled, spit would come out their mouths. They told one man (Abdullah) “Do you think this is funny?”

They grabbed Abdullah and tried to throw him on a metal bed. When he didn’t fall, they (4) grabbed him and dragged him back to the exit door and slammed him to the cement floor. While he was face-down on the floor, one officer stepped on Abdullah’s foot with all his weight.

Next to him was a prisoner named Chrisopher. two men were holding him down by putting their knees and full weight on him. He was moaning and groaning and trying to “talk” to them. Christopher is deaf. They had slung him to the floor to start with because he had not responded to their command. But they were standing behind him and he could not “hear” or read their lips. THEY DIDN’T CARE!

...Once they had marched all the other men out, the officers pulled Abdullah, Christopher, and another prisoner...to their feet, push them into the bathroom area and forced them  to strip in front of them. As they were stripping they were punched, slapped, and called “Nigger”, “pinchy chomo”, “Deaf asshole”, “boy”, “wetback”, etc., etc. And they were loud with it! Eventually they were all compelled outside and thrown, face down into the rocks and ground. It was between 85 and 90 degrees that day and the rocks were hot. (The other men were lined up along the sidewalk. They sat there in their boxers, with their chin on their chest and hands behind their backs.)

During these altercations, there were females sitting at the tables logging in “contraband”. The men had been paraded out past these females. They said nothing to their comrades. They had also observed the men being stripped and searched..."
 

-----------------------

Both of those reports were sent to  Director Ryan in an email last year, too - he ignored them.

So this week I was kinda stunned to see that not only did Credio ignore the abuses of the TSU team during that incident (and god knows how many more that I didn't hear about), but somehow the EYMAN TSU folks got an award for being "courageous" - hahaha! Can you believe that?  They beat up deaf, elderly and mentally ill prisoners while hurling racist slurs at them, and they get called "courageous"! Meanwhile the prisoners being sent into the gang-controlled yards day in and day out to be beaten, extorted, and raped are the scum of the earth, as far as DOC is concerned.

In my book, anyone who gangs up with others to attack an unarmed mentally ill deaf person for not jumping to your orders fast enough is a coward - SHAME on the EYMAN TSU! Frankly, Christopher is the guy who should get the award for courage under fire. He has to deal with those cops and other prisoners messing with him all the time, and he doesn't wear body armor and wield guns that shoot pepper balls at people in order to walk that yard, either.

ASPC-Eyman, by the way is the Supermax - and while thye do house some of the sex offenders and gang leaders, they also house some of the most benign, harmless prisoners around. That's because the DOC has been pushing mentally ill and gay men/trans woman into MAX status who are afraid of housing in general population due to threats of violence. THOSE prisoners get more tickets than the perpetrators of violence in AZ DOC prisons, ironically- and refusing an order to house someplace unsafe is a  MAJOR ticket, equivalent to committing an assault! They get thrown in the hole, lose privileges, etc.

DOC also apparently has their more political prisoners enrolled in the maximum security in the mental health programs there (for some kind of reprogramming, i presume), while denying mental health services to psychotic prisoners who clearly need it. I just don't understand DOC Director Ryan's logic. No one is getting "better" in his custody at anything but victimizing the vulnerable, and we're spending a lot of money locking people up like they are werewolves when all they need is psychiatric care in a safe setting...

Anyway, here's the notice of what brave souls those TSU officers are: UGH!

Protected and Served? LGBT people and people living with HIV on criminalization, cops, and prisons.

QUEER PRISON WALLS
chalk art by Margie Diddams
Photography by Margaret Jean Plews
Phoenix City Hall (02/26/2103)

From Lambda Legal:

Protected and Served?

Are government institutions properly protecting and serving LGBT people and people living with HIV? Lambda Legal conducted a national study of the experiences individuals have with police, courts, prisons and school security. A total of 2,376 people completed the survey, the results of which are reported below...

PROTECTED AND SERVED: THE POLICE

Introduction

"I was 14 years old when my adoptive sisters and I were in a severe accident. The damages and injuries were extensive. My older sister was asked who our parents were, and she told them the names of our two moms. The officer gave my sister a puzzled look and asked, 'Who is your father?' My sister responded with, 'We have lesbian parents.' The officer without hesitation told her, 'We don't recognize that in this state.' This incident only added to the horror of the terrible accident we were in. Our moms reported the incident, but nothing was done about it." —Michael, Menomonie, WI

"I was arrested and charged with prostitution at a local casino. While the case was subsequently dismissed without going to court, during my arrest, I was physically and verbally assaulted by the arresting officers and others. I was put in handcuffs so tight that my wrists swelled up and turned purple. My face was shoved into a wall while I was handcuffed. The officers threatened, mocked and demeaned me for being transsexual." —Natalie, Las Vegas, NV

As part of the Protected and Served? survey, Lambda Legal asked respondents to share their personal stories of mistreatment by police, in courts, in prisons and by school security toward LGBT and HIV-positive people. See other stories or contribute your own here.

Police officers are charged with serving and protecting the public—all of the public. Yet lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and people living with HIV have often been given good reason to be wary of whether that responsibility includes them. Police have targeted LGBT people and the places they congregate and socialize, including certain bars and parks, for unwarranted searches, arrests and raids. Some police officers have also demonstrated prejudice and hostility based on actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV status.

In 2012, Lambda Legal—a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of LGBT people and people living with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work—conducted a national study exploring the issue of government misconduct by the police, courts, prisons and school security against LGBT people as well as people living with HIV in the United States. (Note that in our findings, one of the categories we use, based on self-definitions, is “transgender or gender-nonconforming [TGNC]”).

A total of 2,376 people completed the individual survey. Respondents were also given the opportunity to share their own accounts of their experiences with government misconduct and some of those stories are also incorporated into this report.

Among the survey respondents, 1682 (73% of those responding to this question) said they had face-to-face contact with the police within the past five years. Many LGBT people and people with HIV reported that they felt discriminated against when dealing with police department officers and personnel.

In recent years Lambda Legal has filed discrimination lawsuits against police on behalf of LGBT people who have experienced harassment and unfair treatment. Defendants in these cases have included:

• Westchester County Police in New York for releasing sealed information—including names, photos, towns of residence, and original arrest charges—about more than a dozen men whose charges had been dropped, as part of "Operation Overexposed," a police sting targeting gay men.
• the Atlanta Police Department for aggressively and illegally raiding a gay bar called the Atlanta Eagle. During the raid, police detained and searched the bar’s patrons, forced them to lie face-down on the floor, and subjected them to verbal abuse. Not a single patron was charged with any crime as a result of that raid.
• the Johnson City Police Department (JCPD) in Tennessee for issuing a press release that included photos of 40 men arrested in a public sex sting. Lambda Legal reviewed hundreds of news releases issued by the JCPD and found that no other release about arrests included photos. Lambda Legal client, Kenneth Giles said he lost his job because of the publicity about his arrest.

What the Study Found

"I was called a faggot and beaten up by police officers right here in the nation’s capital, then charged with assaulting them and forced to plead guilty to being under the influence of my HIV meds." —Andrew, Washington, DC

Our survey responses included many aspects of interactions with police, which broadly can be described by the following two categories: 1) Misconduct and 2) Unsatisfactory Response.
Sometimes police officers themselves harass and assault LGBT people and people living with HIV. These serious forms of police misconduct are damaging and illegal. Police harassment and assault are destructive to the lives of victims, obviously, and they are also destructive to the prospect for the police of building trust within LGBT communities and people living with HIV.

Hostile attitudes

Many respondents reported that police officers’ attitudes toward them had been hostile. Among the 1682 respondents who reported having face-to-face contact with police in the past five years, the percentages who reported hostile attitudes from officers included:

• 21% of all relevant survey respondents
• 31% of respondents age 30 and under
• 32% of respondents of color (including 26% of Native American, 27% of African American and 40% of Latina/o respondents)
• 32% of TGNC respondents (30% of transgender)
• 35% of low-income respondents
• 38% of respondents of color under 30

Harassment and assault

Harassment and assault by police are far too common occurrences in LGBT and HIV-affected communities. More than one in eight respondents (14%) who had police contact in the past five years reported verbal harassment by police, while 3% reported sexual harassment and 2% reported physical assault.

People of color, low-income people, and people living with HIV reported harassment and assault by police more frequently than survey respondents as a whole. The percentage of respondents with police contact in the past five years who reported harassment or assault by police included:
Physically assaulted by police:

• 2% of all respondents
• 4% of respondents of color
• 4% of TGNC respondents
• 5% of low-income respondents
• 6% of HIV-positive respondents

Sexually harassed by police:

• 3% of all respondents
• 5% of respondents of color
• 5% of HIV-positive respondents
• 7% of low-income respondents
• 7% of TGNC respondents

Verbally assaulted by police:

• 14% of all relevant respondents
• 21% of relevant HIV-positive respondents
• 22% of relevant TGNC respondents
• 24% of relevant respondents of color
• 25% of relevant low-income respondents

Immigration Checks and Physical Searches

Only 1% of survey respondents with police contact in the past five years who reported their race as white said that police asked them to prove their immigration status. In contrast, certain groups of respondents were more likely to be asked for proof of their immigration status, including:

• 2% of all respondents with police contact in the past five years
• 2% of TGNC respondents
• 5% of Native American respondents
• 6% of black respondents
• 8% of Latina/o respondents

(A statistically insignificant number of respondents identified as immigrants).
Black and Latina/o respondents were also much more likely than LGBT or HIV-positive people of other races to be physically searched during their police contact within the past five years, including:

• 10% of all respondents with police contact in the past five years
• 18% of TGNC respondents
• 21% of black respondents
• 21% of Latina/o respondents
• 22% of similar Native American respondents

False Accusation and False Arrest

It is important to note that our survey’s responses are self-reported incidents of false accusation and false arrest, and that those responses have not been verified by Lambda Legal. Still, these numbers indicate troubling disparities in police treatment of people who are LGBT and people with HIV according to race/ethnicity, income level and gender identity.
Those who say they were falsely accused during police contact within the past five years include:

• 20% of all respondents with police contact in the past five years
• 28% of respondents of color
• 30% of low-income respondents
• 34% of TGNC respondents

Those who say they were falsely arrested during police contact within the past five years include:

• 4% of all respondents with police contact in the past five years
• 8% of respondents of color
• 8% of low-income respondents
• 6% of TGNC respondents

Neglect of Police Misconduct Complaints

When LGBT and HIV-affected people experience police misconduct, many file complaints about their negative experiences, either with other police officers or police monitoring boards. However, among the 205 (out of 2,376 total) respondents who complained about police misconduct in the last five years, 71% said that their complaint was not fully addressed by those they reported it to.
Low-income and TGNC respondents reported higher levels of neglect of a police misconduct complaint: 84% of low-income complainants and 83% of TGNC complainants reported that at least one police misconduct complaint in the last five years was not fully addressed.

Unsatisfactory Police Response

Many respondents reported inadequate or indifferent responses by law enforcement officials to reports of property crimes and assaults. The rate of dissatisfaction was significantly higher when the person reporting the crime is low-income or a person of color. (Our survey respondents’ self-reported experiences with police are not the equivalent of an objective evaluation of the adequacy of police response to reported crimes).

Inadequate Response to Complaints of Physical Assault

Eleven percent of all survey respondents reported that they were a victim of physical assault (of all types, not just those related to their orientation, identity, or expression) in the last five years. TGNC people (35% of all TGNC respondents) and low-income people (44% of all low-income respondents) are much more likely to report having been the victim of physical assault.
Of the 238 respondents who experienced physical assault:

• nearly two-thirds (62%) reported experiencing at least one incident in which police failed to fully address their complaints about physical assault.
• HIV-positive respondents and transfeminine respondents reported having experienced police neglect of physical assault at higher rates: 73% of HIV-positive personal assault victims and 70% of transfeminine respondents say they experienced police neglect of their physical assault complaint, compared to 59% of HIV-negative physical assault victims and 60% percent of cisgender (non-TGNC) assault victims.

Inadequate Response to Reports of Property Crime

One-third of our survey respondents (33%) had been the victim of property crime in the previous five years. Of those 772 respondents, nearly half (49%) said they experienced at least one incident in which police failed to fully address their complaints about property crime.

Within this pool of 772 respondents, transgender and gender-nonconforming people (TGNC) and people of color were more likely than other respondents to report police indifference or lack of proper response to property crime. This included:

• 58% of TGNC respondents
• 59% of African-American respondents
• 62% of Latina/o respondents
• 70% of Native American respondents

Inadequate Response to Reports of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)

More than one out of ten respondents (11%, or 251 respondents) had been the victim of IPV (or domestic violence) in the previous five years.
The percentages of certain respondent groups who experienced IPV are higher than the survey sample as a whole, including:

• TGNC people (28%)
• people of color (32%)
• low-income people (42%)
• and people under 30 (43%)

Of the 251 respondents who experienced IPV, 41% reported experiencing at least one incident in which police failed to fully address their complaints about IPV. Some respondents were even more likely to report experiencing police neglect of IPV than others. Of those who reported IPV to the police, an inadequate response was reported by:

• 48% of African-American respondents
• 49% of TGNC respondents (56% of transfeminine and 46% of transmasculine respondents)
• 54% of HIV-positive respondents

Inadequate Response to Reports of Sexual Assault

More than one out of 20 respondents (6%, or 135) had been the victim of sexual assault in the previous five years. The percentages are higher for particular groups of respondents, including:

• African American respondents (8.2%)
• Latina/o respondents (8.9%)
• TGNC respondents (15.5%)
• Native Americans respondents (16%)

Of the 135 respondents who reported that they had been sexually assaulted, 39% experienced at least one incident in which police failed to fully address their complaint. Some groups were more likely to report police neglect of sexual assault complaints than others, including:

• 45% of low-income respondents
• 46% of disabled respondents
• 52% of TGNC respondents
• 53% of respondents of color
• 60% of Native American respondents
• 62% of Latina/o respondents
• 65% of TGNC respondents of color

Overall, respondents in this survey reported much higher levels of police neglect than did respondents in a 2011 national survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics on the general population (although the questions were not fully comparable), which found that 18% were not satisfied by the police response to a reported crime, disturbance, or suspicious activity.

Key Recommendations

Police departments should:

• include sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, as well as HIV status, sex, race and ethnicity, in nondiscrimination policies, guidelines and resolutions. While our constitution commands equal treatment of people without regard to these characteristics, including an express prohibition increases the likelihood of compliance, and makes it easier to enforce.
• ensure that Police Patrol Guides and similar guidelines explicitly include a commitment to equal and respectful treatment of people who are LGBT, people living with HIV, and people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, including explicit procedures for the respectful treatment of transgender people. These guidelines should specifically explain that police officers will be held accountable for failing to comply. For examples, see the patrol guides and policy manuals of New York City, New Orleans and Los Angeles, all of which were adopted after intense, long-term community pressure.
• adopt or amend policies prohibiting discriminatory practices, such as profiling based on race, ethnicity, HIV status, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression — practices that disproportionately affect people of color, low-income people, LGBT people, and gender non-conforming people.
• hire and promote qualified police officers and leaders across all levels of the department who demonstrate the interpersonal skills necessary to get along with peers, instructors, supervisors, and others, and demonstrate that they are able to interact professionally, regardless of the social standing, ethnic background, culture, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or religion of other people.
• institute “early warning systems” to flag officers who have engaged in insensitive or abusive behavior and follow up with training, discipline or reassignment as necessary. When hiring police chiefs and related leadership positions, states and municipalities should ensure that final candidates are supportive of the rights of LGBT people and people living with HIV.
• implement mandatory cultural competency training for employees at all levels of the department, with content specific to the duties of the personnel being trained. The training should address issues relevant to the LGBT community. These trainings should be led by non-police personnel and with participation and input of community members.
• implement mandatory training about HIV for employees at all levels of the department, with content specific to the duties of the personnel being trained. The training should address issues like the need for confidentiality and accurate information about how HIV is transmitted. These trainings should be led by non-police personnel and with participation and input of community members.
• incorporate nondiscrimination policies and disciplinary consequences for non-compliance into union contracts to ensure consistent implementation.
• adopt a community-based complaint mechanism where victims of police misconduct and discrimination can report incidents in a safe, welcoming environment, with options for anonymous reporting (For example, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent agency in charge of monitoring New York Police Department behavior). Adopt internal complaint mechanisms that ensure that those who report misconduct, including officers, are not retaliated against, and that any retaliation by officers or commanders against either community members or other officers is severely punished.
• designate personnel or an advisory board to be liaisons with the LGBT and HIV-affected communities, whose mission includes improving communications and relationships with those communities, and increasing departmental awareness, training and knowledge of LGBT and HIV-related issues.
• capture and track complaints alleging racial and other profiling based on bias with regard to sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. Data collected should include characteristics of the complainants (including but not limited to sexual orientation and gender identity or expression) as well as the outcome of investigations and any disciplinary actions taken. Regularly report on the number of complaints of misconduct based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
• work with LGBT community advocates and anti-violence groups to maintain up-to-date training and to ensure that policies and procedures are successfully implemented.

All government agencies included in the Protected and Served? survey, including police departments, courts, prisons and schools, should adopt comprehensive non-discrimination policies that:

• prohibit bias and discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and HIV status;
• ensure that culturally competent services and treatment are provided to LGBT and HIV-positive detainees. Police, court, jail/prison and school staff (including but not limited to police officers, police clerks, attorneys, judges, guards, schools security guards, school-based police and school safety officers) should undergo significant cultural competency trainings about sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and HIV status so they will be able to treat all members of the LGBT community in a respectful, nondiscriminatory manner. These trainings should have a particular focus on gender identity and expression cultural competency, to emphasize the importance of improving the treatment of TGNC people. Additionally, these trainings should address HIV confidentiality and transmission, to improve the treatment of HIV-positive people;
• provide a transparent and accessible oversight process for reporting and redressing discrimination complaints, combined with clear and enforced disciplinary procedures;
• include employment policies that can help improve the hiring and retention of LGBT employees as well as contribute to a more LGBT-friendly environment.

 -------------

PROTECTED AND SERVED?: Jails and Prisons

Introduction

As part of the Protected and Served? survey, Lambda Legal asked respondents to share their personal stories of mistreatment by police, in courts, in prisons and by school security toward LGBT and HIV-positive people. See other stories or contribute your own here.

Lambda Legal is a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of LGBT people and people living with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work.

In 2012, Lambda Legal conducted a national study, Protected and Served?, exploring the issue of government misconduct by the police, courts, jails/prisons and school security against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people as well as people living with HIV in the United States. A total of 2,376 people completed the individual survey. Respondents were also given the opportunity to share their own accounts of their experiences with government misconduct and some of those stories are also incorporated into this report. (Note that in our findings, one of the categories we use, based on self-definitions, is “transgender or gender-nonconforming [TGNC]”).

Among the areas of government misconduct which Lambda Legal’s Protected and Served? survey sought to explore is the discrimination and misconduct experienced by LGBT or HIV-positive people incarcerated in jails and prisons.

Among the respondents in the Protected and Served? survey, 5% (or 120) reported that they had been incarcerated in the past five years. Lambda Legal’s survey did not make a distinction among different types of institutions nor the reasons for imprisonment, so these results almost certainly include responses from individuals who were held before trial as well as those imprisoned after being convicted of a crime.

While 5% of our respondents reported having been imprisoned in the previous five years, the following subgroups of survey respondents were significantly more likely to report having been incarcerated:

• respondents with disabilities (9%) were nearly twice as likely to have been in jail or prison than respondents overall.
• transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) respondents (10%) and Latina/o (10%) respondents were also nearly twice more likely to have been in jail or prison than respondents overall.
• African Americans (12%), Native Americans (13%), respondents living with HIV (11%) and low-income respondents (11%) were more than twice as likely to have been incarcerated than respondents overall.
• TGNC respondents of color (20%) were four times more likely to have been incarcerated than survey respondents overall.

LGBT People and People With HIV Are Particularly Vulnerable to Mistreatment When Incarcerated

Prisons too often fail to meet general standards for fair and humane treatment, especially of prisoners who are LGBT and people living with HIV. According to the American Bar Association’s Standards on Treatment of Prisoners, correctional facilities “should protect prisoners from harm from other prisoners and staff,” “correctional authorities should respect the human rights and dignity of prisoners,” and “[n]o prisoner should be subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or conditions.” The standards include specific nondiscrimination provisions as to sexual orientation, gender identity and HIV-positive status.

But in many cases these standards are simply not upheld. LGBT people, particularly youths, who are detained and incarcerated are at high risk for physical abuse, psychological abuse, being denied medical care and other forms of discrimination from other prisoners as well as from guards and prison staff.

Transgender and gender-nonconforming people have faced particularly severe mistreatment by jails and prisons. As documented in joint testimony to Congress by several LGBT organizations: “Nearly all transgender inmates are placed in sex-segregated facilities based on their sex assigned at birth and not on their gender identity. Transgender women are frequently placed in men’s facilities, and transgender men are frequently placed in women’s facilities. When prison officials make these incongruous placements, inmates are singled-out for scrutiny, harassment, and abuse by other inmates and prison staff.” A 2011 study by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force concluded, “In jail and prison, abuse and violence continues in situations where transgender and gender-nonconforming inmates often have no protection or escape.

Correctional staff are frequently cited as participating in harassment, violence, and sexual assault — a serious abuse of authority.” Transgender prisoners may also be subjected to abusive physical searches to examine their genitalia and may be left unclothed to be demeaned and put on display for guards and other staff.

To address the crisis of sexual abuse in prison, Congress unanimously passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in 2003. In 2013, standards written by the U.S. Department of Justice to implement PREA finally took effect. These standards apply to federal, state and local prisons and jails; states risk forfeiting federal funds for noncompliance. However, several LGBT organizations have noted that the standards fall short of the measures needed to protect the safety of rape survivors.

What the Study Found

Assault and Harassment

Survey respondents reported harassment and abuse by jail or prison staff. Of all respondents who spent time in jail or prison in the five years before the survey:

• 7% reported sexual assault;
• 12% reported physical assault (beat up, hit, attacked with a weapon);
• 27% reported sexual harassment;
• 57% reported verbal assault or harassment (shouted at, taunted, called names) by prison or jail staff.

Of the survey respondents who had spent time in jail or prison in the five years prior to the survey, respondents who were TGNC, had physical or mental disabilities, or were living with HIV were much more likely than respondents overall to report harassment and/or assault by jail or prison staff. Among TGNC respondents, people of color reported harassment and assault more often than TGNC respondents overall.
Experienced physical assault:

• overall respondents: 12%
• respondents with HIV: 18%
• respondents with physical or mental disabilities (may include HIV): 21%
• TGNC respondents: 22%
• TGNC respondents of color: 28%
• TGNC feminine respondents: 33%

Experienced sexualharassment:

• overall respondents: 27%
• TGNC respondents: 34%
• TGNC respondents of color: 37%
• low-income respondents: 38%
• respondents with disabilities: 38%
• respondents with physical or mental disabilities (may include HIV): 39%
• transgender respondents: 44%

Experienced verbal assault:

• overall respondents: 57%
• respondents of color: 65%
• TGNC respondents: 66%
• respondents with physical or mental disabilities (may include HIV): 67%
• respondents with HIV: 71%

Nearly one-third (30%) of survey respondents who experienced harassment or assault by jail or prison staff reported their negative experiences to other jail or prison staff or to a prison monitoring board. Only 2% of the respondents who reported misconduct felt that the staff or monitoring board fully addressed their complaint.

Improper Placement

Transgender prisoners face unique dangers, in no small part because most jails and prisons incarcerate people according to the sex assigned at birth as opposed to their gender identity. Transgender prisoners may also be subjected to abusive physical searches to examine their genitalia and may be left unclothed to be demeaned and put on display for guards and other staff.

• one out of three (33%) Protected and Served? respondents who were in jail or prison in the last five years identified as transgender, genderqueer, gender-nonconforming, two-spirit, or “other” gender identity (abbreviated TGNC).
• the majority (60%) of TGNC respondents who had been in jail or prison reported being placed in a single-gender section of that jail or prison that did not match their gender identity.

TGNC respondents with feminine identities reported being wrongly placed far more often than TGNC respondents with masculine identities:

• 70% of TGNC-feminine respondents reported being wrongly placed.
• 47% of TGNC-masculine respondents reported being wrongly placed.

Key Recommendations

Correctional departments and prisons specifically should:

• respect the rights of TGNC people to identify their gender identity and be placed in facilities according to their self-identification. Jails and prisons should adopt policies in accordance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) (and similar to those of the United Kingdom) in which the preference is to place individuals according to their gender identity, with exceptions made on a case-by-case basis at the preference of the individuals being held. The PREA standards state:
  

  “Decisions about where a transgender person, or a person with an intersex condition, is housed must be made on a case-by-case basis; they cannot be made solely on the basis of a person’s anatomy or gender assigned at birth. This means that, for example, every transgender woman must be assessed individually to determine whether she would be best housed with other women instead of in a men’s facility. An individual’s views regarding their personal safety must be seriously considered.

  “These decisions must be reassessed at least twice per year to consider changed circumstances such as incidents of abuse or changes in an individual’s appearance or medical treatment.

  “All transgender people and people with intersex conditions must be given the opportunity to shower separately from other inmates if they wish, regardless of where they are housed.”

• prohibit the use of solitary confinement, which is harmful and meant as a severe punishment, as an option for routine placement of people who are LGBT or people with HIV.
  

  “Facilities too often respond to the problem of abuse by placing survivors and those most at risk in isolation. When prolonged, this isolation can amount to torture. The Standards restrict such uses of “protective custody” by requiring that all available alternatives be assessed before placing an inmate involuntarily in segregated housing. Alternatives might include relocating a perpetrator of abuse, providing heightened supervision, changing housing placement or cellmates, placement in a single-occupancy cell within the general population, or transfer from a men’s to a women’s facility or vice versa.

  “In cases where inmates must be placed in segregation or isolation, access to programs, education, and other opportunities must continue to the greatest extent possible. Moreover, segregation—when it must be used—should not last for longer than 30 days. Agencies must document the reasons for any restrictions on programs or other opportunities and any use of segregation beyond 30 days.”

• eliminate policies and procedures that provide for differential treatment or enhanced disciplinary measures based solely on an inmate’s HIV-positive status.  Inmates should not, for instance, be excluded from particular jobs or refused placement into certain programs based on their HIV status.  Furthermore, it is inappropriate to subject any individual to more severe disciplinary or corrective measures, such as placement in administrative segregation or reassignment to a higher level of security, simply because that person is living with HIV.  The policies and procedures that require such differential treatment are based on inaccurate, outdated information about HIV and its transmission and/or misguided conceptions regarding the scientifically-based approach to preventing HIV transmission that is supported by medical professionals and public health officials.
• follow PREA standards regarding searches, and train staff in conducting professional and respectful searches. PREA prohibits all cross-gender strip searches and cavity searches except in emergencies, or those conducted by a medical professional. Any cross-gender searches that occur must be documented. Transgender individuals should be allowed to make a choice at admission as to whether they will be searched by male or female officers for purposes of these requirements. No search or physical exam may be conducted when the only purpose is to determine the inmate’s genital status.
• put measures in place to ensure that transgender people and people with HIV have access to all medically necessary health care. Transgender people and people with HIV have serious medical needs that must not be denied during their incarceration. For transgender people, possible medically necessary treatments include hormone therapy and transition-related care. Jails and prisons should adopt affirmative policies and procedures to ensure that transgender prisoners have access to evaluation by a doctor and any medically necessary treatments related to gender transition, including hormone treatment and surgeries. Jails and prisons should ensure that prisoners with HIV have uninterrupted access to the medication and the range of care they need.
• implement transparent complaint review processes, so victims of misconduct have a form of recourse.
• require correctional staff to undergo cultural competency trainings about sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and HIV so they will treat all people who are LGBT or who have HIV in a manner that respects their rights and needs in a nondiscriminatory manner. Training should include a particular focus cultural competency concerning gender identity and expression to address unfounded and incorrect assumptions about the needs of TGNC people and people with HIV.

All government agencies included in the Protected and Served? survey, including police departments, courts, prisons and schools, should adopt comprehensive non-discrimination policies that:

• prohibit bias and discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and HIV status;
• ensure that culturally competent services and treatment are provided to LGBT and HIV-positive detainees. Police, court, jail/prison and school staff (including but not limited to police officers, police clerks, attorneys, judges, guards, schools security guards, school-based police and school safety officers) should undergo significant cultural competency trainings about sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and HIV status so they will be able to treat all members of the LGBT community in a respectful, nondiscriminatory manner. These trainings should have a particular focus on gender identity and expression cultural competency, to emphasize the importance of improving the treatment of TGNC people. Additionally, these trainings should address HIV confidentiality and transmission, to improve the treatment of HIV-positive people;
• provide a transparent and accessible oversight process for reporting and redressing discrimination complaints, combined with clear and enforced disciplinary procedures;
• include employment policies that can help improve the hiring and retention of LGBT employees as well as contribute to a more LGBT-friendly environment.

Further Discussion

Lambda Legal Fighting Discrimination in Jails and Prisons

Lambda Legal has been at the forefront of work to protect the rights of LGBT and HIV-positive people in prisons and jails. Recent cases include:

• a 2011 win in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, affirming a judgment for Lambda Legal’s clients in Fields v. Smith, a federal lawsuit on behalf of transgender women incarcerated in a men’s prison in Wisconsin. The suit challenged a law (with the hostile title “The Inmate Sex Change Prevention Act”) that barred medically necessary transition-related health care for transgender prisoners in state custody, in violation of the federal Constitution’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.
• In Melody Rose v. Steven M. Cahee, M.D., Fond du Lac Regional Clinic, S.C., and Agnesian Healthcare, Inc., a 2009 lawsuit, Lambda Legal sued the off-site healthcare providers for a Wisconsin correctional institution on behalf of inmate Melody Rose, who needed to have her gallbladder removed. When the defendant doctor to whom she was referred found out she was living with HIV, he refused to perform the procedure, stating in his notes that he was concerned about exposing the surgical team to HIV. The case was resolved to Ms. Rose’s satisfaction in 2010.
• a 2012 friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of inmate Kim Millbrook, who was sexually assaulted twice by prison staff members at two different prisons. After the second attack, prison guards threatened to kill him if he told anyone about the assault. Lambda Legal argued that Millbrook had a valid claim to sue the U.S. government. In March 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed, reversing the lower courts’ determination that the officials were immune from suit and remanding the case for further proceedings.

Isolating LGBT Prisoners and Prisoners With HIV

Because of the high risk for violence, many prisons have segregated LGBT prisoners by putting them in LGBT sections, “solitary confinement” or “protective custody,” which the PREA standards now disallow. Such segregation does not provide real protection and creates other forms of abuse by limiting access to privileges, stigmatizing prisoners, and causing psychological damage because of long-term isolation.

Until recently, some prisons had similarly sought to isolate prisoners with HIV into separate wings, or sometimes entirely separate facilities—often claiming that such action is needed to “protect” the rest of the prison population from alleged risk of infection. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has opposed segregation of HIV-positive prisoners as irrational and counterproductive. In 2013, after succesful litigation by the ACLU, South Carolina became the last of a series of states, mainly in the South, that abolished their policies of segregating HIV-positive prisoners from others.

Denial of Health Care

While Lambda Legal’s Protected and Served? survey did not ask about the denial of health care, transgender people and people with HIV are particularly vulnerable when it comes to accessing appropriate health care while in prison. A  2011 national survey by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force of transgender people found that 12% of people who had been in jails or prisons reported denial of routine health care and 17% (and 30% of Black respondents) reported denial of hormones.

Prison authorities’ failure to understand the medical necessity of transition-related health care such as hormone therapy and surgeries has led to unnecessary suffering. As the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force have noted, “denial of hormone treatment to transgender inmates … has serious health consequences. Interruptions in hormone therapy can be physically painful and damaging to a person’s physical and mental health, and the initiation of hormone therapy for those who need it is highly important.”

 --------------

Founded in 1973, Lambda Legal is the oldest and largest national legal organization whose mission is to achieve full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work.

As a nonprofit organization, we do not charge our clients for legal representation or advocacy, and we receive no government funding. We depend on contributions from supporters around the country.

Beth Richie on anti-violence, feminism, and prison abolition.

Excellent essay by Dr. Beth Richie, lifted from the Feminist Wire. Pay special attention to this passage below, thinking in terms of Project Rose, the collaboration between the ASU School of Social Work and the Phoenix Police to round up large numbers of sex workers twice a year and force them into a social service program, prosecuting them if they refuse, dont qualify, or fail (which accounts for 70% of those picked up during the Project Rose sweeps). They're trying to save trafficking victims, supposedly, but they just seem to be busting consenting adults trying to hook up on Backpage. Since Phoenix has minimum mandatory jail sentences for prostitution - and the 4th offense can land you in prison - arresting one's potential clients seems like a pretty severe social work intervention, especially  for people they intend to "rescue". This is part of what's happened to those folks at Project Rose-affiliated agencies, all of which refuse to take responsibility for helping the state perpetrate violence on the people they are supposed to be serving:

"The anti-violence movement buys into the carceral state by advancing “anti-violence” campaigns that rely on arrest, prosecution, and punishment as ways to solve the problem of gender violence. The focus of the problem is individual incidents of abuse rather than public policies that result in state violence against women and queer communities, which are ignored by feminist groups who invest in or accept resources that are tied to the growing punishment industry...

In particular, an analysis of gender oppression that did not include state violence excluded a large part of the abuses that Black and other women of color experienced because of their position as racialized bodies in a heteropatrichal society." 

Dr. Richie mentions INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence below - they're a great resource for organizing against state, community, and interpersonal violence. This is one of their posters:

------------------

 How Anti-violence Activism Taught Me to Become a Prison Abolitionist
Feminist WIre
Janaury 21, 2014
By Beth E. Richie


Sometimes we learn our most profound political lessons in the contours of our everyday activism.  This is certainly the case for me as I recount my journey as a Black feminist activist working to end gender violence for the past 20 years, during which the United States was engaged in building itself up as the world’s leading prison nation. My journey began in Harlem, the renowned community in New York City that was at the center of struggles for racial and economic justice.  The on-the-ground work at the time included organizing for material changes (safe and affordable housing, better schools, accessible health care, jobs that offered a future, political representation, neighborhood businesses that support the local economy, and the end to growing expansion of the prison industrial complex). The organizing work was sustained by rhetoric about the “liberation of our people” and the vision of what our community would look like if we could sustain grassroots activism in the service of broad-based social change.

As many Black and other feminists of color will remember, the promise of liberation within racial justice formations was critically hampered by the lack of an analysis of how gender oppression figured into the work.  Indeed, despite our demands that the analysis include: 1) how women experience injustice (like poverty or incarceration) in particular ways 2) that the particular oppression that women suffer (like sexual assault by individuals or state agencies) be included into the activist agenda and 3) that women’s leadership be recognized and supported as critical to political advancement, we were disappointed.

This disappointment was part of what propelled me to immerse myself in the anti-violence movement against rape, battering, sexual harassment, emotional abuse, and economic exploitation of women and the non-gender conforming. These activist organizations provided a temporary relief, and my commitment to feminist ideas was rejuvenated. But the respite provided by local and national anti-violence organizations was brief; very quickly I became aware of the political limitations that a gender-essentialized notion of violence held for a truly transformative agenda related to women of color. Indeed, substituting a gender analysis that did not include a very well articulated position regarding racial or class hierarchy was as much a roadblock as a racial justice project that does not include gender.  In particular, an analysis of gender oppression that did not include state violence excluded a large part of the abuses that Black and other women of color experienced because of their position as racialized bodies in a heteropatrichal society. A second major disappointment.

The ongoing work of trying to find the political crossroads that link racial and economic justice with an analysis of gender oppression became more difficult in the 1980s and 1990’s when the United States deepened its commitment to building itself up as a prison nation. The complications looked something like this.  First, both the public and private sector committed more and more resources to the prison industrial complex while at the same time elite leaders advanced an ideological campaign to frame public “risk” in racialized terms.  Second, neoliberal policy decisions lead to the divestment of economic resources from already disadvantaged communities who suffer deepening degrees of material and political liabilities that turned social problems into “crimes”. Third, political organizing strategies used by both anti-violence organizations and racial justice groups got coopted by a “not-for-profit/social service” mentality that served as a distraction from the root causes of structural inequality and the violence that results from it.  Groups organized to resist racialized oppression or class exploitation or gender violence or other monolithic formulations, treating them as separate issues. And they lost focus on how the state colludes to construct a hierarchy of oppression that cannot be agreed upon or changed.

On the ground today, it looks something like this. The anti-violence movement buys into the carceral state by advancing “anti-violence” campaigns that rely on arrest, prosecution, and punishment as ways to solve the problem of gender violence. The focus of the problem is individual incidents of abuse rather than public policies that result in state violence against women and queer communities, which are ignored by feminist groups who invest in or accept resources that are tied to the growing punishment industry. Those racial justice organizations that do resist state violence and the concomitant crises that result from mass incarceration see their work in mansculinist terms. Some even point to anti-violence activism as one of the culprits in the mass incarceration of poor men of color. Many fail to understand that the criminal legal system is not only racist, it relies on heteropatriarcal assumptions that narrate a kind of social order that is based on domination.

So how do anti-violence activism and prison abolition politics get politically reconciled when the movements have been so set apart from one another?  Angela Davis, Ruthie Gilmore, Alicia Beira, Andrea Smith and other members of the INCITE national organizing committee articulate this more fully. We are learning collectively that the way out is not to simply keep pushing back against each of those policies, strategies, and movement organizations that have disappointed us, but rather to adopt a feminist political strategy that embraces the possibility of Prison Abolition. This is where we would bring together attention to state violence as an essential aspect of ending violence against women of color and non-gender conforming communities.  All people would be safer. It means investing in a new kind of community, especially within communities of color, where those who are most disadvantaged are in leadership of sustained, base-building activities for justice. Concerns about gender justice and sexuality liberation would necessarily be included. Strategies to address the harm caused by violence would be grounded in these stronger, more equitable communities. Safety would come from communities, and, therefore, prisons could eventually become obsolete. Here, in a feminist prison abolition project is where I find the best possibility of the kind of liberation that I have been working towards for so long.

 

Beth E. Richie is Director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and Professor of African American Studies and Criminology, Law and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  The emphasis of her scholarly and activist work has been on the ways that race/ethnicity and social position affect women’s experience of violence and incarceration, focusing on the experiences of African American battered women and sexual assault survivors.  Dr. Richie is the author ofArrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation(NYU Press, 2012), which chronicles the evolution of the contemporary anti-violence movement during the time of mass incarceration in the United States,  and numerous articles concerning Black feminism and gender violence, race and criminal justice policy, and the social dynamics around issues of sexuality, prison abolition, and grassroots organizations in African American Communities. Her earlier book, Compelled to Crime: the Gender Entrapment of Black Battered Women, is taught in many college courses and cited in the popular press for its original arguments concerning race, gender, and crime.  Dr. Richie is a qualitative researcher who is also working on an ethnographic project documenting the conditions of confinement in women’s prisons.  Her work has been supported by grants from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The National Institute for Justice, and The National Institute of Corrections.  Among others, she has been awarded the Audre Lorde Legacy Award from the Union Institute, The Advocacy Award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and The Visionary Award from the Violence Intervention Project. Dr. Richie is a board member of The Woods Fund of Chicago, The Institute on Domestic Violence in the African Community, The Center for Fathers’ Families and Public Policy, and a founding member of INCITE!: Women of Color Against Violence.  In 2013 she was awarded an Honorary Degree from the City University of New York Law School.

STAND WITH MONICA JONES: Project Rose is Violence!

(Edited November 10, 2013) 

When I first put up this blog post, I didn't realize how toxic the environment was in which the debate between sex worker rights activists and anti-traffickers has been taking place these past several years. It was not my intent to polarize local parties even further by focusing so much on the person who developed and implemented Project Rose, as opposed to simply critiquing the methods the program employs to rescue people. The edits made in this post account for that concern.

I also didn't intend to diminish the reality that there are many lives torn apart by human trafficking, whether or not the labor exploited and stolen is sexual in nature. There are enough in the business who would choose a diferent line of work, given the option, that I don't want to minimize that reality, either. In a truly healthy economy, people would have more choice and mobility.

Sex work really isn't for everyone - but those who do work in the field deserve respect, safety and protection from exploitation and violence. I don't see how Project Rose does anything for them but expose them to even more state violence than they otherwise would be...and it seems as if Social Work should be very much concerned with the principle of "first do no harm" when professional interventions are designed for public policy and private lives. I was a social work student for many years myself, and Project Rose runs counter to so much I learned about social work ethics.

I still adamantly object to a program design which casts a large net to round everyone up in handcuffs and sorts through who gets to be free and who goes to jail later. It "liberates" some at the expense of others, and does immeasurable harm to those arrested in the end.  That said, I hope readers who take issue with Project Rose - particularly those of you who are ASU students, will still raise your concerns with Professor Roe, but please do so in a respectful  way which allows the dialogue to continue. I don't think her ultimate objective is to hurt anyone, by any means, and I hope there is at least some common ground we can agree on...like the principle that consensual sex workers and their allies also deserve to be free of violence, and thus Project Rose should offer everyone assistance, regardless of priors or other factors, and arrest no one (especially not those of us protesting it). If the people behind Project Rose could at least agree to that much, we will have made progress.


Peggy Plews

 SWOP-Phoenix Activist Monica Jones

 

SUPPORT MONICA HERE!!!!

  

Last May I joined the  Phoenix Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP-Phoenix) in a protest of Project Rose, a Phoenix Police prostitution sting operation that purports to rescue victims of sex trafficking, and claimed not to arrest those voluntary sex workers swept up in its net (See: Cracking down on sex trafficking by not arresting prostitutes). My friends and I were not terribly well-received, and the day after our protest - which was the second day Project Rose was operating - one of our transgender friends who was out there with us, Monica Jones, was even arrested for "manifestation" of the intent to commit prostitution for accepting a ride to the bar in her own neighborhood.


Specifically, the Phoenix Police say that under the Phoenix Municipal Code, she is guilty of this:

23-52 Prostitution, soliciting an act of prostitution and related offenses.

A.    A person is guilty of a misdemeanor who: 


3. Is in a public place, a place open to public view or in a motor vehicle on a public roadway and manifests an intent to commit or solicit an act of prostitution. Among the circumstances that may be considered in determining whether such an intent is manifested are: that the person repeatedly beckons to, stops or attempts to stop or engage passersby in conversation or repeatedly, stops or attempts to stop, motor vehicle operators by hailing, waiving of arms or any other bodily gesture; that the person inquires whether a potential patron, procurer or prostitute is a police officer or searches for articles that would identify a police officer; or that the person requests the touching or exposure of genitals or female breast;  


The first time I put this post up, I did some speculating about the mindset of the Phoenix Police when they decided to arrest Monica. My comments were kind of inflammatory and probably unfair to the arresting officer, so I've taken them down. The truth is, I don't know what the PPD was thinking - maybe they weren't thinking at all. I can't believe they thought we would all quietly go away after this. 

It's possible the cop who did the dirty work is the one who made the call to target her while he was driving through her neighborhood, and thought she was really out hooking. I'm skeptical of the arresting officer's veracity and his bias about transgender people, though, having read the report. For one thing, even though Monica's driver's license identifies her as female, the cop identified her using male pronouns throughout the entire police report - he really felt she should be clearly identified as a man, not a woman. And there are a few variations between his version (or interpretation of events) and hers.


I'm more inclined to think that the commander made the decision the day before after they identified her at the protest and saw that she had a prior - which is what makes her so vulnerable to that "manifestation" charge: they apparently use a prior offense as evidence that you intended to commit that crime again. I guess it's possible that her neighborhood was on their map of areas to target, but it seems awfully coincidental that the Project Rose officers were lurking around there.


  In any case, here's pretty much what went down: The day after our protest, Monica got dressed up and decided to go to the bar.  She's on her way, by foot (through her own neighborhood, mind you), when this guy pulls up in front of her, literally blocking her path, and offers her a ride. She has a mile yet to walk to the bar and was bothered by another dude in the area, so she figures "either this guy is a cop and I've got a safe ride, or he's someone who might buy me a drink when we get there", and she gets in.


Almost immediately the guy starts propositioning her, asking how much she wants for a sex act. Monica wasn't working, though - besides, she knew full well what was going down with Project Rose; he must have been disappointed that she wouldn't take his bait. This guy kept being really pushy, too, so she asked him "look are you a cop? Because there's this sting going down and you really need to be more careful about asking those kinds of things..." He was obviously a cop.

The guy insists several times that he's not a cop, though, as he passes by Monica's bar, and keeps going when she says "turn here!" "stop!" "I want to get out!". So what was she supposed to think? If he wasn't a cop, then he was in the process of abducting her, so she grabs his..umm..male organ,  having every reason to be concerned for her safety now (what would you do if you thought you were being kidnapped? That's better than going for the jugular...). Of course, in his report Officer John made that moment sound like a sex act. At that point he gave his buddies the signal to pull him over, and they arrested her for trying to solicit him.

The cops took Monica (in cuffs) to Project Rose's HQ at the Bethany Home Bible Church, where she asked for an attorney, and was introduced to the prosecutor, who threatened to send her to jail that night if she didn't agree to participate in their program. She was not entitled to consult an attorney before deciding whether or not to sign away her rights and enter the diversion program (which is an implied admission of guilt). 



Monica had already been through a diversion program, though, which they soon discovered - that disqualifies you from ever being diverted from the criminal system again (that's how they sort out the "victims" from the "repeat offenders"  - the  "real prostitutes" who they apparently do feel belong in jail). She also would have been disqualified from the program if she had so much as a baggie they thought once held pot in it. After detaining and processing Monica that night, though, they released her without charges...that is, until this fall, when they sent her a summons to answer the charge of "manifestation".

This is no small thing. Monica is facing up to 6 months in jail and a $2,500 fine - with a minimum mandatory of 30 days in jail.  Even if the judge doesn't think imprisonment is appropriate, with a conviction she would lose not only her freedom, but also her student loans and class standing, as well as her safe, affordable housing. Now, I ask the perpetrators of Project Rose: just how are you "saving" trafficking victims with this program again? Are you sure it isn't inadvertently hurting anyone?

As a transgender woman who would be locked up in a male facility, Monica faces infinitely higher levels of violence, abuse and exploitation from both prisoners and officers than cisgender people are when incarcerated. She would be forced to remain in solitary confinement for her own safety through the course of her imprisonment - which still doesn't protect prisoners from lecherous guards and the jail trustees. She would have to endure the special "care" of Joe Arpaio's gracious deputies, who are known for beating up some of thier mentally ill prisoners in restraints, and killing others through overt violence or deliberate indifference, among other things.

The law that Monica is being prosecuted under assumes that certain things she did that day: walking in a "high-vice area", accepting a ride from a stranger, asking the man who was propositioning her repeatedly for sex if he was a cop, and making physical contact with his, um, sex organ - were motivated by the intent to trade sex for money. Now, how do they prove criminal intent? They'll point to her prior conviction for a prostitution charge as evidence of that intent: after all, "Once a whore always a whore". They may even use her statement from the protest the day before - she, like myself - believes sex work should be legalized. Does that mean she was out hooking the next day herself? C'mon, guys - you know she wasn't.

If anything, the fact that this arrest went down during Project Rose - the day after she publicly criticized the sting - should have been evidence enough to the cops that Monica WASN'T attempting to solicit anyone  - she knew full well what they were up to. They should have been wary that SHE might be stinging them when they went after her - none of us would be so stupid, though, as to deliberately bait a Vice operation.

Even if the cops who picked Monica up were totally oblivious to her role in the protest the day before, Daniel Garcia, the Chief of Police and Aarón J. Carreón-Aínsa, the Phoenix City Prosecutor, are well aware of the back-story to this arrest now - and yet these charges still stand. What does that tell you about the overall "intent" and integrity of  Project Rose?

 Can't miss Monica standing tall, even in this one...

(May 2013: Protesting Project Rose)

Interestingly, given that some of these Project Rose arrests are being based on assumptions about the target's "intent" behind non-criminal behaviors and their response to having someone aggressively proposition them for a sex act, the Phoenix Police department apparently decided not to record any of their cops in the act of setting these people up - or any of these people actually committing their crime. I guess they know that in court their testimony alone always wins against some streetwalker's version of events - and a recording might contradict the good officer's word, so they made sure not to have any way for these women to defend themselves if they alleged the officers version ws inaccurate. That alone brings the validity and credibility of Project Rose arrests into question.

I recently wrote to the professor at the Arizona State University School of Social Work who is supervising the academic/research side of Project Rose about my concerns for Monica and the charges she's facing. She never responded to it, though. ASU insists that Project Rose first does no harm...of course, we can see from Monica's prosecution that this assertion isn't true at all - they appear to be going out of their way at the Phx PD to do my friend as much harm as possible for challenging them.

Project Rose is also embraced by a host of non-profit organizations in the valley, most of which serve populations at high risk of victimization by state violence. They're all collaborating with the cops in the worst kind of way, encouraging violence against sex workers by lining up to have the police deliver their prospective clients to them in a church basement in handcuffs and tears, so they're more receptive to the great services those kind people have to offer them. I think those agencies are being paid from anti-trafficking funds for the time they give to Project Rose, by the way, but don't quote me on that.


Shame on all of those organizations (including ASU, Catholic Charities, EMPACT, Community Bridges, and HealthCare for the Homeless , StreetlightUSA, and ALERT) - beginning with the biggest provider of services to homeless youth in the valley, Tumbleweed. Most of these agencies appear to have a bunch of cops, prosecutors, and big business CEOs on their boards of directors - no wonder they don't know what they're doing. And they all seem to be quite happy to be in bed with the Phoenix Police - how can they really be serving the vulnerable populations that are most violated by the police, then? Word must be out on the street that these places can't be trusted by now.


Anyway, if you're hungry and homeless and you call Tumbleweed for a crisis outreach team to take you to a homeless shelter, you better make sure you don't have a warrant out for your arrest: before they come to your aid those nice people at Tumbleweed are going to call the cops to see where you stand with them - and to tell them where to grab you if you're wanted. I was floored. I had to drag it out of them, but they really told me that when I called them about a homeless 18 year old kid getting out of prison the other day.  They said "well, we can't have people up in here who have warrants out for them." That doesn't mean you have to call the cops on them yourself, though! What a violation of trust.


Now, why should homeless and runaway youth ever ask these people for help?  They seem far more interested in their corporate image than the safety and survival of their clientele, and clearly lack a meaningful, critical analysis of how state violence plays out against the youth they serve.  They certainly don't seem to understand the basics of street outreach and harm-reduction, with these kinds of policies and their cozy "partnerships" with the police. Far too often the people who are there to help those kids only do them harm by involving the police. Good intentions can even kill.

Project Rose has already been roundly criticized in a well-respected professional journal, AFFILIA - and I expect more to hit the presses soon. Please read that article if you still believe programs like this "help" more people than they hurt, or that the harm they do to some is worth the good they do for others. There are far more effective outreach programs to help people who are really being trafficked against their will, and the best jail "diversion" program for sex workers would be to simply legalize prostitution altogether. It would certainly undermine those who are trafficking others by bringing the entire sex work industry out of the shadows, making it safer for victims to ask for help.


The City of Phoenix needs to drop these charges against Monica now, before it takes any more of a toll on her. The intent of prosecuting her seems not only to punish her, but to silence anyone who would publicly call this project what it is - a conspiracy between cops and social workers to lock up people they think are "willing whores". They had to charge Monica for "manifesting" her "intent" because she wasn't actually doing anything criminal - they know full well she wasn't out there prostituting during their sting, and that she had every reason to think their buddy was indeed a cop.  This prosecution is malicious - and when she beats it, she's going to have one hell of a good wrongful arrest suit on her hands.

Monica's next court date (we thought it would be her trial, but it's a pre-trial) is November 27, 2013 at the Phoenix Municipal Court. Tune into SWOP-PHX to keep up on what's happening, and visit our INDIEGOGO page to support Monica's defense - though I'm going to be really pissed off if the city makes us spend all that money on a lawyer just to motion to dismiss this garbage...


(note: I made prior reference to Monica being Dr. Roe-Sepowitz' student - she never was. She's an ASU student planning to major in social work, and had simply spoken to Professor Roe before about Project Rose).