US prisons: 15% of women are transgender

[Ingenieur]

The NY Times ran an article last week on Trump's Executive Order to separate women from transwomen in the federal prison system.

Buried in the article is an astonishing stat that 15% of women prisoners are trans.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/us/trump-transgender-inmates-prison.html

"The number of people affected is relatively small. There are about 1,500 federal prisoners who are transgender women, <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/4P8yg/www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gender.jsp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">according to the Bureau of Prisons. But they represent an outsize portion of federal inmates, especially among female prisoners: 15 percent of women in prison are transgender."

So of circa 10,000 female prisoners, 1,500 are men!

It might just mean that the crime, whatever it was, took place over state lines, or on federal property, or a number of other things that mean it can be prosecuted in federal court.
(I know this from reading crime fiction.)

Creepy Joe Biden has a lot to answer for. Not that I'm a Trump fan, but I sincerely hope he sorts this out, its disgusting.

Federal prison for Federal level offenses. Most people serving prison time do so in state prisons.

Most violent crimes are prosecuted at the state level. Federal crimes involve laws that are legislated and enforced at the Federal level—tax evasion, money laundering, bank fraud, terrorism, etc.

I know this because I'm an American. 😀

I had assumed you were concerned about the level of danger posed by the male prisoners.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-trans-women-prisons

"Judge orders Trump administration to return two trans prisoners to women’s facilities"

This is not about the individual people, but about another strange Guardian reporting:

"The women [T prisoners, my addition] said in court papers that they were living in constant fear of sexual assault and other violence after being moved to male prisons. Male prisoners repeatedly propositioned them for sex and male officers subjected them to strip searches without female officers present, they said."

Somehow that sounds so familiar, as it is exactly what women have been worried about when TW were placed together with them in the same cell or ward.
Why are TW's concerns justified but women's concerns are not? Unreal.

Everyone locked up should be treated fairly and safely, because the state who puts people in prisons has a duty to care - the prison is a consequence of their conviction, but as society we have decided that being locked up is the penalty, not bad treatment or exposure to bad treatment. One should not be connected to the other.

The fairest and safest option is thus to house women, men, TW, TM separately.

However, I don't think there are enough TW/TM prison officers to go around, so the only option stays same-sex persons when people require searching. TW shouldn't put pressure on female officers to have to search them, either.

I imagine them slipping through the bars and trotting off to a life of freedom.

male officers subjected them to strip searches without female officers present

Er. Yes.

Amazing that only 1.2% of federal prisoners are trans^ but 15% of inmates in federal women’s prisons are male…

^ Stat via ACLU press release on 07/03/25

Women who have mastectomies for breast cancer experience exactly this.

Men on cross-sex hormones are, once again, not so fucking special.

And the other 85% of inmates fear rape, forced pregnancy, and assault every day because they are female.

Would that be because there are more male prisoners than female, and thus 1,2% is skewed towards TW compared to TM, resulting in a higher absolute number of TW. Then house them in women's prison population, which are fewer people, results in a different percentage.
Not really a question, only trying to follow the data transformation.

From the press release you quoted, I found this, too:
"The Trump administration has reportedly begun instructing BOP officials to ignore previous enforcement of the 2002 Prison Rape Elimination Act and unilaterally re-house transgender women into men’s prisons with the full knowledge of their risk for sexual violence and suicide [...]"

Again, they completely negate the risk for women, who are expected to be buffer zones between two groups of men. They need to find a different solution than that.

@RedToothBrush it’s usually the case that if a woman has committed a serious crime, it’s probably in response to domestic violence

If they wanted to eliminate prison rape, they'd start by moving all male prisoners out of women's jails and declare a moratorium on hiring male prison officers for women's jails. That would protect the prisoners who are most vulnerable to rape from the men who can easily overpower and forcibly impregnate them.

Then they could start looking at how to make men's prisoners safer.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate are you seriously comparing alcoholism to taking cross sex hormones?

In the sense that suddenly stopping taking something that is bad for you can cause short-term acute harm that can be avoided by tapering off, yes.

Thinking about it some more, the parallels don't stop at sudden cessation potentially being harmful.

Both the alcoholic and the person on cross-sex hormones think their problems can be solved by putting a foreign substance into their bodies and both are mistaken.