A decade ago, New York City set out to lead the nation in efforts to support incarcerated trans people. But under Mayor Adams, an initiative to protect trans women at Rikers has fallen apart. georgejoseph94 reports, in partnership with THECITYNY
to get rid of uniform regulations meant to curtail drug smuggling by guards, and pushed out several top department staffers, including those who had elevated Munsky and sided with the LGBTQ+ unit in debates over where to house trans women.
Robinson, who is Black and nonbinary, grew up in Corona, Queens, and survived a Christian upbringing that drove them to thoughts of suicide. When they joined the LGBTQ+ unit in June 2021, they found they had a lot in common with the incarcerated people they worked with. Moe Sheehan, the ex-deputy director of investigations, remembers getting a text from Townsend, her boss and longtime colleague, saying that HR had just escorted her out of office, as if she had done something wrong. That evening, Sheehan put in her two weeks’ notice.
“Dana had been honestly a person, who if I had a client in arraignments who was going to go to the wrong facility, I could email her or call her, and she would do her very best to try and intervene,” said Mik Kinkead, an attorney with The Legal Aid Society’s LGBTQ+ Law and Policy Unit. In a statement, Mayor Adams said he was “proud” to have “fought alongside LGBTQ+ New Yorkers on the frontlines of many of the community’s hardest battles,” referencing his work on programming for homeless and runaway queer youth.
“The program has now dissolved,” said one uniformed staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Those services and all of the support for staff and persons in custody no longer exist.” During one call in the first few months of 2022, the group was reviewing the transfer application of a trans woman, who wanted to move from a male jail facility to Rose M. Singer. Robinson remembers that she had reported being raped multiple times, and thought she had a strong case.
No one agreed with Robinson, who was the only person from the LGBTQ+ unit on the call. They kept the trans woman in the men’s jail.“I see myself in these folks. I could very well be them in this situation,” they recalled. “And I can’t imagine how scared I’d be that it’d be too unsafe for me to come out because of risk of sexual harm.”
client, a trans woman, who had twice reported being raped by male detainees and attempted suicide, to Rose M. Singer. “We’re a gangbanging tier. We don’t want no mooks on our tier,” he said. “Don’t even bother unpacking your things. Don’t even bother making your bed. Just go right back out the gate.” The visitor had introduced himself to Harrison a few hours earlier. He had a soft, low voice, and seemed like a friend. But now his tone was now aggressive.
Tamera Harrison cut herself multiple times while being held in all-male housing at Rikers, photographed January 17.From other parts of her dorm, some of the man’s friends started yelling slurs and threatening to shank her. “You mook, you’ll never be shit, you HIV-AIDS having bitch,” she remembers them jeering.
A day after the self-harm attempts, Munsky, now the sole staff member of the LGBTQ+ unit, emailed Harrison’s attorney and promised to “advocate for her to be placed in” West Facility. After the death of Layleen Polanco in 2019, Kinkead, who is trans, was one of several LGBTQ+ activists who joined an official task force,by New York City Council, to give transgender, gender-nonconforming, nonbinary, and intersex detainees and their advocates more say in jail policy.
But in the months after Commissioner Molina took office, it appears that that working relationship fell apart. Last October, after Kinkead made a detailed request for up-to-date department policies and numbers on TGNCNBI detainee housing placements, Chelsea Chard, a senior policy advisor for the agency, refused to share information. Chard complained that the task force’s report had disclosed information on agency policies which she characterized as “confidential.”
Another proposal, currently under consideration in Albany, would require corrections administrators across the state to presumptively house detainees in facilities that align with their self-attested gender identities unless they choose to opt out of such placements. “We will not tolerate transphobic, homophobic or any other form of derogatory behavior and anyone caught violating this policy will be subject to disciplinary action,” he said. “Although we remain a model for other correctional jurisdictions, we recognize that there will always be room for improvement given the unique and fluid needs of this population which is why I have created an internal committee to review and update our policies to meet those needs.
On November 9, with the LGBTQ+ unit unable to get Harrison into the medical facility she had applied for, the 25-year-old asked staff if she could go to Rose M. Singer, according to notes at the bottom of a mental health form that referred to her having “frequent displays of shouting, crying and/or screaming” and “hallucinations/delusions.”
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