The U.S. Department of Justice recently published new guidelines allowing trans-identified inmates to be placed with female prisoners.
On Jan. 13, the DOJ's Federal Bureau of Prisons released a 14-page outline of changes to its "Transgender Offender Manual." The purpose of the update is to "ensure the Bureau of Prisons properly identifies, tracks, and provides services to the transgender population."
As The Christian Post reports, some of the wording from the Trump-era "Transgender Offender Manual" released in 2018 was removed in the revised version.
At the time, the Trump administration ordered the Transgender Executive Council to "use biological sex as the initial determination for [the] designation" of trans-identified inmates. On rare occasions, however, the former guidance allowed for "the designation to a facility of the inmate's identified gender." Such language stated above has since been removed from the manual.
The updated manual also removes a statement declaring that "training materials and current information on the management of transgender inmates" will "include information concerning best practices for maintaining the safety of transgender inmates, while also ensuring security and good order in Federal prisons and the safety of staff, inmates, and the public."
Language removal aside, the "Transgender Offender Manual" under the Biden administration requires prison staffers to address trans-identified inmates by their preferred pronouns or last names. The changes differ from the Trump administration, where addressing trans-identified prisoners by their desired pronouns was optional.
"Deliberately and repeatedly mis-gendering an inmate is not permitted," the manual states.
The Biden administration's guidance also includes an entirely new section outlining the steps transgender inmates must go through when it comes to seeking "trans-affirming surgeries." In other words, trans-identified inmates now can choose to put down requests for "surgical intervention" to their prison's warden.
Moreover, the revised document defines gender as "a construct used to classify a person as male, female, both, or neither," adding: "Gender encompasses aspects of social identity, psychological identity, and human behavior." The definition, however, omits how human biology determines gender. This is the same definition of gender used by the Trump administration.
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Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
