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On Apr. 21, transgender prison inmate Ashley Diamond was denied requests to transfer to an all-female prison facility. Diamond has been in prison since 2012 on charges of burglary. What sets her apart from the other medium security prisoners is that she was born a man, but identifies as a women and has been taking female hormones for 17 years. Even still, she is wrongly housed in a male prison and is not allowed to continue taking her hormones. As we all are aware, prison already isn’t a safe place. This is proven by the fact that Diamond has been sexually assaulted seven times since she began her sentence. Additionally, she has been left threatening notes and attempted suicide, all under the knowledge of the Georgia Department of Corrections.
The sickening outcome of her case was the verdict that Federal Judge Marc T. Treadwell, of the Middle District of Georgia, announced. He said that, there may indeed be some risk of rape at her current facility and that a transfer might be the optimum solution, but his ultimate decision was that he would not order the prison to do so.
Not only is knowingly keeping her in a men’s prison where her life has repeatedly been on the line extremely dangerous and unjust, but the denial of allowing her to take hormones goes against a basic human right. LGBT rights have come so far, and it’s time for the treatment of transgender people in jail to keep up with the outside world and allow women like Ashley Diamond to be who they are without being in constant danger.
