DVD Review

Reviewed by Tracie O'Keefe

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Cruel & Unusual

Transgender Women in U.S. Prisons

Alluvial Filmworks DVD By Janet Baus / Dan Hunt / Reid Williams

This 60-minute American documentary which screened at various film festivals in 2006 has now become available on DVD in Australia. It is an award-winning series of interviews with transgender women in American prisons where they were incarcerated as men without any consideration of their trans status or what risks that put them at in the general male prison population. Alongside that are comments from professionals working in the field of trans health and equal rights.

Although none of the interviewees had had genital realignment surgery before incarceration, some had been taking hormones for a considerable time. The rightness or wrongness of their incarceration is not the issue of the documentary but rather the way in which they were treated as female-identified transpeople born male.

By all accounts they all had a nightmare of a time in prison as their hormones were denied and the prison authorities refused to recognise their transsexualism or provide any kind of treatment.

Furthermore these individuals suffered horrific treatment by the prison authorities who mocked, ignored, beat and isolated them in a prison cell for twenty-three hours per day. There are also disturbing stories of rape and forced sexual encounters by and from other prisoners that always seemed to be ignored by prison officers. Such circumstances at times led to self-mutilation, attempted suicide, self-castration and one prisoner cutting off her penis with a razor blade.

It is plain that many of the incarcerated transgender people in this video probably had personality disorders apart from their trans status but that does not distract from the need for governments to provide sufficient care for trans people in the penal system. Eventually some of those trans people took out legal cases against their prison authorities and won the right to treatment within prisons in those states.

A very clear parallel can be drawn between the inmates in this documentary and the situation in prisons in Australia. Here too we often have blatantly belligerent prison authorities who too often see a prisoner's trans status as being difficult and anti-authoritarian rather than a need for medial intervention. Like America we suffer from the problems of the states having different policies, preventing a national uniform policy for the way in which our trans prison population is treated, or not, as the case maybe.

There are shortfalls in this documentary in that it does not sufficiently explore why so many of the trans community find themselves isolated in society and end up on the wrong side of the law in order to eat or find shelter. Taking that into account, however, as a piece of work it is realistic about its contents and I think this documentary should be seen, particularly by trans people who have never been in prison, by social workers and clinicians, but most of all it ought to be on the viewing list of all prison officers, governors and ministers of correction.

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.