By the end of the year, San Francisco’s county jails will be among the first in the nation to house transgender inmates by their gender preference, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi said Thursday.
Currently, San Francisco County puts transgender inmates in an isolated wing of its downtown jail facility. But under the policy announced Thursday, Mirkarimi said, he hopes to have transgender inmates living with their preferred population before 2016.
But transgender inmates who choose to remain in segregated housing or to continue living with other inmates who share the gender they were assigned at birth can do so, according to Kenya Briggs, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office.
“I carry the perspective forward that the transgender population is marginalized on the streets of America,” Mirkarimi said. “Consider how magnified that treatment is inside prisons and jails.”
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