Affiliation:
1. Uniwersytet Warszawski
Abstract
The situation of transgender people in prison is very difficult, mainly because of their sense of security, but also because of their specific needs in terms of medical care and social support. Contemporary culture is more and more sensitive to the situation of specific social groups, such as seniors, LGBT people or people experiencing gender incompatibility. As for the last category, it is only from January 1, 2022 in the new WHO classification of diseases, the phenomenon of transgenderism is no longer treated as a health disorder. The article is an attempt to review international legal standards concerning the conduct towards such persons and the provisions regulating their functioning in conditions of deprivation of liberty. My goal is to follow the evolution of these standards and to demonstrate good and bad practices in different countries. One of the guiding principles of the modern penitentiary system is the separation of people of different sex, motivated by the need to protect women. From this point of view, the execution of punishment against a transgender person is a difficult challenge for a penitentiary institution, mainly logistical, leading to the dilemma in which facility should such a person be placed, or how to choose the best punishment regime. The second serious problem is the scope of the state's obligations in terms of caring for the health of such a person, their social needs and possible gender reassignment. International standards and national regulations are very diverse in this matter, but above all they are of the so-called soft law, i.e., guidelines and recommendations. The test for our civilization will be how quickly this soft law will become a law graven in stone. The starting point for writing this article were the negative experiences of Weronika W., a transgender woman serving a prison sentence in Poland, as well as a discussion about the location of an activist who introduced herself as Margot, detained during a street demonstration in the Summer of 2020.
Subject
Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
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