Prop 34 – Death Penalty “Replacement” and the Money Argument

This month, my posts here will be cross-posted at PrawfsBlawg. 
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As a first post, I want to introduce a voter initiative on the November ballot – Prop 34, also known as the SAFE California Act – and talk a little bit about incremental change and “marketing techniques” for soft-on-crime propositions.
Jonathan Simon, Katherine Beckett and more recently Vanessa Barker told it like it is: Regardless of a politician’s party affiliation, presenting oneself as soft on crime is akin to political death (interestingly, Kamala Harris, who as San Francisco DA was opposed to the death penalty, called her book Smart on Crime). Bringing up propositions for leniency using human rights discourse is an unacceptable thing to do in American politics. But, as I discuss in the book, the last few lean years have had a silver lining: Scaling back punitive policies becomes more acceptable if done in the guise of financial prudence. So, in recent years we see some developments that are swinging back the punitive pendulum that has been moving in one direction for forty years. We’re seeing more talk of drug legalization and decriminalization; we’re hearing more talk of priorities in prosecutorial offices; and we’re discussing categories of offenders based on their cost, such geriatric parole of the old and the infirm.
One manifestation of these developments is a recent trend of death penalty abolition or, in the least, moratoria. Over the last year alone, five states have abolished the death penalty, citing its costs as a main factor, and bringing the number of no-death-penalty states to 17. After a legislative effort to do the same in CA failed, a public movement consisting of a coalition between activists, new non-punitive victim groupsand law enforcement supporters managed to obtain the necessary 750,000 signatures to place the proposal on the ballot as a voter initiative.
I can’t engage in prophecies as to the outcome in November, but Prop 34 has been fairly successful so far in winning endorsements from newspapers, public organizations, former supporters of the death penalty, and important public figures in law enforcement. And I think the reason they have managed to appeal to so many different constituents has a lot to do with their remarketing of the death penalty as costly and unaffordable. Their printed and online materials refrain from using the word “abolition” but rather use the term “replacement” (funny enough, many friends of mine have not jumped on the wagon because they are uncomfortable with the movement’s extolment of life without parole anddo not believe in incremental reform.) Their activists and volunteers are advised to stay away from denouncing the death penalty as barbaric and inhumane, but rather to argue for its expense and inefficiency. Watch how this video, ofr example,  emphasizes the issue of cost. The cost factor may also partially explain the recent decline in public support for the death penalty in CA.
This sort of newspeak isn’t really new. Nonpunitive propositions are often marketed as “smart” (which they often are!). What’s new here is the emphasis on money.
Elsewhere, I talked about the changing discourses in anti-death-penalty activism. The intellectual, Enlightenment-era conversation about its merits and pitfalls, which was so powerful and influential in Europe despite being a top-down intellectual experience rather than a public conversation, didn’t really happen seriously in the United States. Our first serious conversation about this happened in the 1970s, with the period of moratorium between Fuhrman and Gregg. And then, much of the conversation revolved around deterrence. Then, with the emergence of DNA testing and innocence projects, the conversation turned to wrongful convictions and the irreversibility of mistakes (see more about the exoneration process in Brandon Garrett‘s new book.) And now, the discourse focuses on cost and savings.
And there’s one more thing to consider: In most countries, as Frank Zimring and David Johnson eloquently showed, once the death penalty goes away, it doesn’t come back. But American exceptionalism, as David Garland points out, cannot be discounted. And, in the United States, the death penalty did return after four years of constitutional moratorium. Assuming Prop 34 passes (and, being a huge believer in incremental reform, I very much hope it does), would we bring back the death penalty when the economy improves?

Decriminalizing Overdose Patients Seeking Emergency Care

As it turns out, drug overdose is the second leading cause of injury and death in the United States. But to seek medical treatment for overdose is to risk criminalization for drug possession.

A new bill, AB 472, is on its way to be signed by the Governor. Under this bill, the Health and Safety Code will disallow prosecution for possession of folks seeking emergency treatment for overdose for themselves, or others. It will not affect prosecution of other drug-related issues, such as violations of the vehicle code or other dangerous behaviors.

From CJCJ on SB 210 on pretrial release

Legislation to provide more opportunities for unsentenced detainees

submitted on Tue, 08/21/2012 – 14:06 by Catherine McCracken

In California, local county jail bed space is not always for the guilty.  Approximately 50,000 un-sentenced individuals are confined to the state’s county jails, awaiting their time before a judge.  A majority of these individuals are confined to local jails because they are not able to post bail .  This contributes to the 71% state average of un-sentenced individuals in county jails.  These individuals haven not necessarily been deemed a flight-risk or a danger to society; they just lack the fiscal resources to secure release back into the community.  This structure is both inefficient and expensive.  Further, the collateral consequences of unnecessary incarceration are expansive as time spent confined to local jail is often idle time away from employment, education, and families.
Under Realignment, California’s counties have seen an increased responsibility for managing non-violent, non-serious, and non-sex offenders.  This has caused some difficulty for some local jurisdictions that have historically relied on incarceration at both the state and local level.  So, how do local criminal justice decision-makers manage available bed space without constructing expensive new jails?    
Some counties such as Santa Cruz and San Francisco have been exploring local alternatives to incarceration that have alleviated capacity problems with bed space in their jail system.  These two counties in particular have invested in non-custodial options, which have resulted in the counties’ ability to manage the new responsibilities under Realignment.  For example, Santa Cruz County implemented a wide array of community-based alternatives for the pre-trial population that resulted in a local un-sentenced population that is 20% below the state average.  
Additionally, several counties like Santa Cruz utilize nationally-recognized risk assessment tools to determine if an arrested individual poses no flight risk or risk to public safety; therefore, can be released before their trial on their “own recognizance” (OR), or lightly supervised by the county.  Such individuals also receive pretrial services like drug counseling.  Pretrial interventions such as these have aided in the reduction of Santa Cruz’s pre-trial population.
Yet not all counties have implemented such measures to reduce their jail populations, nor do they believe they have the legal authority to do so.  Therefore, organizations such the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have taken steps, through Senate Bill 210 , to propose new laws that would require the Courts to consider “own recognizance” pretrial release for certain populations of defendants.  By adding this additional step in the court process, current jail detainees who may not be financially able to post their own bail may be able to be released if they meet the conditions of OR.  Additionally, the legislation would clarify the legal authority of the Courts, county sheriffs, and probation departments to conduct risk assessments on the un-sentenced population.
 

This legislation supports the creation of an efficient and fiscally responsible criminal justice system.  By recognizing not all detainees must remain in jail before trial, justice stakeholders are better able to serve those offenders that require confinement.  Maintaining strong community ties for those individuals able to be released on their own recognizance has long-term positive impacts in reducing recidivism rates and improving public safety.     
http://www.cjcj.org/post/adult/corrections/legislation/provide/more/opportunities/unsentenced/detainees

Pretrial Release: From CJCJ on SB 210

Legislation to provide more opportunities for unsentenced detainees

submitted on Tue, 08/21/2012 – 14:06 by Catherine McCracken

In California, local county jail bed space is not always for the guilty.  Approximately 50,000 un-sentenced individuals are confined to the state’s county jails, awaiting their time before a judge.  A majority of these individuals are confined to local jails because they are not able to post bail .  This contributes to the 71% state average of un-sentenced individuals in county jails.  These individuals haven not necessarily been deemed a flight-risk or a danger to society; they just lack the fiscal resources to secure release back into the community.  This structure is both inefficient and expensive.  Further, the collateral consequences of unnecessary incarceration are expansive as time spent confined to local jail is often idle time away from employment, education, and families.
Under Realignment, California’s counties have seen an increased responsibility for managing non-violent, non-serious, and non-sex offenders.  This has caused some difficulty for some local jurisdictions that have historically relied on incarceration at both the state and local level.  So, how do local criminal justice decision-makers manage available bed space without constructing expensive new jails?    
Some counties such as Santa Cruz and San Francisco have been exploring local alternatives to incarceration that have alleviated capacity problems with bed space in their jail system.  These two counties in particular have invested in non-custodial options, which have resulted in the counties’ ability to manage the new responsibilities under Realignment.  For example, Santa Cruz County implemented a wide array of community-based alternatives for the pre-trial population that resulted in a local un-sentenced population that is 20% below the state average.  
Additionally, several counties like Santa Cruz utilize nationally-recognized risk assessment tools to determine if an arrested individual poses no flight risk or risk to public safety; therefore, can be released before their trial on their “own recognizance” (OR), or lightly supervised by the county.  Such individuals also receive pretrial services like drug counseling.  Pretrial interventions such as these have aided in the reduction of Santa Cruz’s pre-trial population.
Yet not all counties have implemented such measures to reduce their jail populations, nor do they believe they have the legal authority to do so.  Therefore, organizations such the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have taken steps, through Senate Bill 210 , to propose new laws that would require the Courts to consider “own recognizance” pretrial release for certain populations of defendants.  By adding this additional step in the court process, current jail detainees who may not be financially able to post their own bail may be able to be released if they meet the conditions of OR.  Additionally, the legislation would clarify the legal authority of the Courts, county sheriffs, and probation departments to conduct risk assessments on the un-sentenced population.
 

This legislation supports the creation of an efficient and fiscally responsible criminal justice system.  By recognizing not all detainees must remain in jail before trial, justice stakeholders are better able to serve those offenders that require confinement.  Maintaining strong community ties for those individuals able to be released on their own recognizance has long-term positive impacts in reducing recidivism rates and improving public safety.     
http://www.cjcj.org/post/adult/corrections/legislation/provide/more/opportunities/unsentenced/detainees

Realignment Report by the ACLU of California

A new report by the ACLU of California examines realignment so far, including the allocation of funds to counties. Their executive summary finds four troubling themes:

  • A troubling lack of state monitoring, data collection, outcome measurements and funding incentives to help counties successfully implement realignment.
  • A dramatic increase in spending on county jails—facilitated by billions of dollars in state funding—particularly in those counties that have historically sent more people to state prison for low-level, non-violent offenses.
  • A shockingly high number of people who present no real threat to public safety being held in county jails before having their day in court, incarcerated without trial simply because they cannot afford bail.
  • A promising commitment—though not yet realized—by many counties to adopt alternatives to incarceration and evidence-based practices to reduce recidivism. A few counties are adopting innovative programs and approaches that can serve as models for the rest of the state, but all too often our analysis revealed few, if any, resources allocated for such programs.

The report makes the following recommendations:

  • Data Collection. Mandate standardized data collection and analysis across the 58 counties in order to monitor which policies and programs are working to reduce recidivism and reliance upon incarceration, and base policy and budget decisions on those findings.
  • Funding Formula. Revise the state funding allocation formula to incentivize counties to reduce recidivism and incarceration.
  • Sentencing Reforms. Enact statewide front-end sentencing reforms to help counties implement realignment.
  • Pretrial Detention Reform. Amend statewide pretrial detention laws and implement new local pretrial release policies to keep behind bars only those who truly pose a risk to public safety.
  • Alternatives to Incarceration. Create and fund concrete plans to develop community- based alternatives to detention for both the pretrial and sentenced population.
  • Utilize New Sentencing Options. Encourage local courts to utilize realignment’s new sentencing options that authorize judges to replace all or part of a jail sentence with community sanctions or treatment programs.
  • Stop Jail Expansion. Halt or significantly reduce jail expansion and construction plans, including AB 900 funding and projects.
  • Limit Use of Immigration Detainers. Review the impact of immigration status and immigration detainers on inmates’ detention to prioritize public safety needs.

Gated Community Mentality

So much has been written in the last few days about Trayvon Martin’s death, that everything I might add seems superfluous. But this New York Times piece by Rich Benjamin is really worth a read.

I remember interviewing for an academic position at an excellent academic institution located in an area where gated communities proliferated. As part of my interview, I had a chance to talk to the local grad students for an hour. One of them asked me, “what don’t you like about the campus so far?” I replied that I’d strolled around campus in the morning and didn’t see a single living person in the streets. “Oh, there are no streets,” the students said. “Everyone lives behind gates.”

Here’s Benjamin’s experience:

From 2007 to 2009, I traveled 27,000 miles, living in predominantly white gated communities across this country to research a book. I threw myself into these communities with gusto — no Howard Johnson or Motel 6 for me. I borrowed or rented residents’ homes. From the red-rock canyons of southern Utah to the Waffle-House-pocked exurbs of north Georgia, I lived in gated communities as a black man, with a youthful style and face, to interview and observe residents.


The perverse, pervasive real-estate speak I heard in these communities champions a bunker mentality. Residents often expressed a fear of crime that was exaggerated beyond the actual criminal threat, as documented by their police department’s statistics. Since you can say “gated community” only so many times, developers hatched an array of Orwellian euphemisms to appease residents’ anxieties: “master-planned community,” “landscaped resort community,” “secluded intimate neighborhood.”


No matter the label, the product is the same: self-contained, conservative and overzealous in its demands for “safety.” Gated communities churn a vicious cycle by attracting like-minded residents who seek shelter from outsiders and whose physical seclusion then worsens paranoid groupthink against outsiders. These bunker communities remind me of those Matryoshka wooden dolls. A similar-object-within-a-similar-object serves as shelter; from community to subdivision to house, each unit relies on staggered forms of security and comfort, including town authorities, zoning practices, private security systems and personal firearms.


Residents’ palpable satisfaction with their communities’ virtue and their evident readiness to trumpet alarm at any given “threat” create a peculiar atmosphere — an unholy alliance of smugness and insecurity. In this us-versus-them mental landscape, them refers to new immigrants, blacks, young people, renters, non-property-owners and people perceived to be poor.

Benjamin goes on to discuss how this real-estate mentality translates itself to criminal justice concepts, where the increased privatized justice system touches public criminal doctrine:

“Stand Your Ground” or “Shoot First” laws like Florida’s expand the so-called castle doctrine, which permits the use of deadly force for self-defense in one’s home, as long as the homeowner can prove deadly force was reasonable. Thirty-two states now permit expanded rights to self-defense.


In essence, laws nationwide sanction reckless vigilantism in the form of self-defense claims. A bunker mentality is codified by law.


Those reducing this tragedy to racism miss a more accurate and painful picture. Why is a child dead? The rise of “secure,” gated communities, private cops, private roads, private parks, private schools, private playgrounds — private, private, private —exacerbates biased treatment against the young, the colored and the presumably poor.

This is true, but there’s more to it. I think the gated regime of locking oneself in, and the “my home is my castle” mentality, harms the white and affluent as well as the poor, minority “outsiders,” albeit not to the same extent. This atomistic, non-organic way of interacting with one’s surroundings is bound to suffocate and limit one’s human experiences in ways whose intangible price we pay not only with Trayvon Martin’s life, but in public discourse, partisanism, intellectual property and social boredom.

Finally, the perception that gated communities are safer, or have less crime, than cities is problematic when one considers the proper definition of crime. Think about sexual assault, domestic violence, drug abuse in the privacy of one’s home, and the countless ways in which people who know each other, and often live with each other, can abuse each other behind closed doors, guaranteeing not only a lower rate of detection but also underreporting by victims. A quote from Arthur Conan Doyle comes to mind:

[“]It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”


“You horrify me!”


“But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.”

Thinking of this in the context of Benjamin’s piece is sobering and disturbing.

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Props to Amir Paz-Fuchs for the link.

Private Prison Management Offers to Buy Prisons in Exchange for Occupancy Rates

Our four-year foray into the changes in correctional policies since the fiscal crisis has taught us that various states are scaling back their correctional apparatus to respond to money difficulties. California is no different. But as is the case with every regime, there are always folks who would benefit and make a quick buck from a broad social and economic problem.

This astonishing recent story in USA Today is a case in point. Many states are working on closing down their prisons for fiscal considerations. So, Corrections Corporation of America, of which we’ve written here before, is angling to purchase said prisons and operate them. But therein lies the rub:

The $250 million proposal, circulated by the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America to prison officials in 48 states, has been blasted by some state officials who suggest such a program could pressure criminal justice officials to seek harsher sentences to maintain the contractually required occupancy rates.


“You don’t want a prison system operating with the goal of maximizing profits,” says Texas state Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat and advocate for reducing prison populations through less costly diversion programs. “The only thing worse is that this seeks to take advantage of some states’ troubled financial position.”


Corrections Corporation spokesman Steve Owen defended the company’s “investment initiative,” describing it as “an additional option” for cash-strapped states to consider.


The proposal seeks to build upon a deal reached last fall in which the company purchased the 1,798-bed Lake Erie Correctional Institution from the state of Ohio for $72.7 million. Ohio officials lauded the September transaction, saying that private management of the facility would save a projected $3 million annually.


Linda Janes, chief of staff for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said the purchase came at time when the state was facing a $8 billion shortfall. The $72.7 million prison purchase was aimed at helping to fill a $188 million deficit within the corrections agency.
Ohio’s deal requires the state to maintain a 90% occupancy rate, but Janes said that provision remains in effect for 18 months — not 20 years — before it can be renegotiated. As part of the deal, Ohio pays the company a monthly fee, totaling $3.8 million per year.

This is not new. CCA had AB 1070 passed in Arizona to guarantee prison occupancy, and built a prison on speculation in California. But it’s astonishing to see the machinations presented so matter-of-factly out in the open.

In these days of dire straits and realignment from state prisons to county jails, is it conceivable that California could cut a similar deal? I very much doubt it. CCPOA, the prison guards’ union, would object it with all their might, and might win the battle again, as they have before. But it’s a somber reminder that prisons are, above all, an industry, and subject to cynical manipulation by profiteers.

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Props to David Greenberg for bringing this to my attention.

Toward a Jurisprudence of Plea Bargaining Defense

The above scene from David Simon’s masterpiece The Wire shows Levy, an attorney for a drug cartel, at the top of his game, negotiating a structured plea for drug kingpins. It’s only one of several examples of media representations of plea bargains, which tend to highlight the ingenuity of defense attorneys who use their experience and savvy to get their client off as cheaply as possible. But is this representation true to the quality of defense provided to clients thinking on whether to take a plea bargain?

Last week, the Supreme Court decided Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, which bring up issues pertaining to the quality of defense counsel in the context of plea bargaining. In Lafler, the defense attorney advised the client not to take the plea, supposedly by convincing him that the prosecution would not be able to prove intent to kill given that the defendant shot the victim below the waist. Both parties agreed that this advice was deficient; the client took his attorney’s advice and ended up convicted of murder and sentenced to a lengthy mandatory minimum. In Frye, defendant was charged with driving with a revoked license and had one prior. The prosecutor conveyed two possible plea bargains, one of them including a misdemeanor charge in lieu of a felony charge; the lawyer failed to communicate the offers to Frye, and a week before the preliminary hearing, Frye was caught driving with a revoked license again. He pled guilty to a felony with no underlying agreement and was sentenced to three years in prison; on appeal, he argued that, had he known of the offer, he would have pled guilty to the misdemeanor and would therefore not be convicted of the felony.

To understand the decisions in Lafler and Frye, it’s a good idea to provide a bit of background on quality of defense, an issue we’ve tackled here before. Arguments about ineffective assistance of counsel often come up on appeal and in habeas corpus proceedings, where they serve as gatekeepers for other arguments; for example, since Fourth Amendment arguments are not allowed in habeas proceedings, petitioners will often argue ineffective assistance of counsel instead, thus bringing the Fourth Amendment argument in through the back door (e.g., rather than “the cops had no warrant to search my home”, the argument would be, “my lawyer was so deficient that he didn’t try to suppress the evidence the cops found in my home with no warrant.”) But arguing ineffective assistance is tricky. Under Strickland v. Washington (1984), the appellant or petitioner has to prove two things: That the attorney did such a poor job that it falls below a minimum of competence (“the performance prong”), and that had the attorney provided competent services, the outcome of the trial would be different (“the prejudice prong”).

Both of these arguments are very difficult to make. The Court has repeatedly ruled that defense work is art, not science, and excused many examples of abysmal lawyerly performance as “strategy”. The Court has also often assumed that even an improved performance by the attorney would not change the result of the trial, thus making the argument more difficult.

Recently, the Supreme Court seems more concerned with the quality of defense, and with good reason. In Padilla v. Kentucky (2010), the court ruled that advising a Green-Card-holding client to take a plea whose collateral consequence could be deportation is inefficient assistance of counsel. Last week’s decisions are a continuation of this trend, and great news in two important ways. First, they raise the standard of performance for defense attorneys. And second, they bring plea-bargaining defense–a huge deal of what defense attorneys actually do–from the shadows into the light, and require accountability for professional dealings in the plea bargaining context.

The problem Lafler faced was convincing the court that his failure to accept the plea bargain was prejudicial. The government made an effort to argue that the trial Lafler received was fair, but the Court argued that defendants are guaranteed efficient assistance of counsel even in pretrial stages, including during plea bargaining. The government, and lower courts, also maintained that after having rejected the plea bargain Lafler received a fair trial, which eliminates any gripes he might have about the plea bargain process. But such an interpretation, said Justice Kennedy, ignores the reality of criminal practice, in which the vast majority of cases are settled via plea bargain. Fixing this problem is tricky; you can’t merely resentence the defendant, as he might have been charged with a less severe offense had he taken the plea. So, the correct solution is for the state to re-offer the plea, and for the defendant to consider anew whether to take it.

This understanding of the basic duties of defense attorneys in the plea bargaining process is repeated in Frye, where the Court yet again highlights that the duty to provide effective assistance pertains to all critical stages of the criminal process, not just criminal trials. How, then, is prejudice to be judged? An older case, Hill, requires that the defendant show “a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s errors, he would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial.” But that’s not the only path for prejudice; in Frye, the defendant shows that, but for counsel’s errors, he would have actually taken the earlier plea. Because of the subsequent offense, though, Frye might face some challenges showing that the prosecution would not have withdrawn the plea upon hearing of the new arrest.

The remarkable thing about the decisions is their willingness to talk about the plea bargaining process as one that requires competence and professionalism, and to provide defendants with relief when their plea bargaining was botched by faulty defense attorney performance. This is hugely important, as much socio-legal research shows that an important reason why people plead guilty is pressure by defense attorneys. While prosecutors have an immense amount of discretion in charging, and therefore many bargaining chips during the negotiation process, defense attorneys play a huge role in interpreting the bargain and bringing the clients to agree to the plea. This process, largely unregulated so far, will now attract more attention and scrutiny. And that is a very, very good thing.

Both decisions were given as an unsurprising 5-4 majority, with Justice Kennedy writing for the majority and supported by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor. Justice Scalia wrote resentful dissents about the creation of a new “jurisprudence of plea bargains.” Well, it’s about time. Since 94-97% of all trials end in plea bargains, where else should we focus our efforts when attempting to raise the bar for quality defense lawyering?

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Props to Rory Little and Amanda Leaf for motivating me to write this post, and to Dmitry Stadlin for our conversations about plea bargains in popular culture.

“Unnecessary” Medical Treatment Ban Passes Senate Committee

The Senate Committee passed today SB 1079, initiated by Democrat Senator Michael Rubio. The proposal, whose full text is here, would amend the Penal Code to prevent CDCR from providing medical services unless they are “based on medical necessity and supported by outcome data as effective medical care.” The proposition gives the treating physician the discretion whether to provide a certain medical treatment.

This, in itself, is interesting. In the lacuna created by the end of the Receivership health services, questions about the quality and quantity of medical services are bound to arise. And, one of the trends stemming from the financial crisis is saving on health care. But wait, there’s more; SB 1079 provides a list of treatments that it deems “medically unnecessary.” Some highlights follow:

  • The proposal proclaims that mononucleosis and mild sprains “improve on their own without treatment” and therefore will not be treated.
  • The proposal proclaims that some conditions are so severe that they don’t respond well to treatment, and will therefore not be treated, and includes in the list multiple organ transplants and grossly metastatic cancer.
  • Then, we are regaled with a list of conditions that are “cosmetic;” some of these include conventional plastic surgery, but some of them include surgery for the purpose of sex reassignment and removal of tattoos (which could save someone’s life in a prison environment for obvious reasons.)
  • And finally, we’re explicitly told that gender reassignment surgery is not “medically necessary.”
  • Interestingly, the proposal goes as far as to explicitly rule out acupuncture and other methods, expressing not only a preference for Western medicine, but also a rejection of techniques that may be preventative and might actually save the state money in terms of disease prevention.
I’m dismayed, particularly about the classification of gender reassignment as not “medically necessary.” Try and tell a trans woman who is serving her sentence at a men’s prison that reassignment is not essential not only to her health, but to her immediate safety and well being. People do not pursue these operations on a whim; they do so because their gender expression does not match who they really are, and in a prison environment, it can save them from rape and torture. This is proposal, of which Michael Rubio brags on his website, is deplorable and should be protested and fought.

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Props to Caitlin Henry for alerting me to this.