US juvenile detention centers struggle with transgender inmates

Associated Press

PORTLAND, MAINE

The nation’s juvenile detention centers are largely ill-equipped to handle transgender teens, leaving them vulnerable to bullying, sexual assault, depression and suicide, advocates say.

Young transgender people too often are sent to girls’ or boys’ lockups based on their anatomy, not their gender identity, and can end up suffering psychologically and getting picked on by other inmates or staff members, according to advocacy groups. Even when they are assigned to detention centers that correspond to their gender identity, they are often victimized.

“There are many systems that are basically clueless as to what the best practice should be, and they end up mistreating transgender girls particularly, just placing them in hallways or handcuffing them to desks,” because the institutions don’t know where to house them, said Flor Bermudez, detention project director at the Transgender Law Center.

Maine plans to review its practices after a 16-year-old transgender boy charged with setting fire to his house killed himself while on a suicide watch in a girls’ unit in the Portland area. The current policy is to house transgender juveniles on a case-by-case basis and not by anatomy alone, in accordance with federal standards.

Anne Nelsen, president of the Juvenile Corrections Council, a national organization for juvenile-justice professionals, said in the industry’s defense that some juvenile systems are overcrowded and understaffed, lacking clinicians and others adequately trained in dealing with transgender teens.

Nelsen said the profession still is learning.