New York Gov. Kathy Hochul included a policy within her $216 billion budget plan to allow transgender inmates to choose which gendered-facility they are housed in according to their gender identity.
The policy allows for inmates with a gender identity different from their assigned sex at birth to elect to be housed “with persons of the gender that is consistent with such person’s gender identity.”
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Prison wardens would have the final say in the decision to let an inmate change facilities, which will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
Transgender inmates will also have the right to “gender affirming medical and mental health care.”
The policy asks the Department of Correctional Services and Supervision commissioner to create rules and training for officers to prevent discrimination against transgender inmates.
“No employee of the department shall misgender any individual in the care or custody of the department by intentionally referring to someone, including but not limited to, a transgender, gender nonconforming, nonbinary or intersex person, using a word, pronoun or form of address that does not correctly reflect the gender with which they identify,” the budget directive says.
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Transgender activists have praised Hochul, including the leader of the Jim Owles LGBT Liberal Democratic Club, Allen Roskoff, who said that the policy is “long overdue. Transgender persons are often the victims of violence and hate.”
