Friday, April 10, 2015

Why Does It Take A Sledgehammer?

Or in this case a lawsuit to get them to do the right thing.
Georgia Prison Officials Change Transgender Inmate Policy
ABC News
By Kate Brumback Associated Press
Apr 10, 2015

Georgia prison officials are changing how they treat inmates with gender identity conditions, just days after the U.S. Justice Department weighed in on a lawsuit filed by a transgender prisoner.

The new policy took effect Tuesday after the Justice Department said in a court filing April 3 that prison officials must treat an inmate's gender identity condition just as they would treat any other medical or mental health condition.

The Justice Department brief was filed in the case of a lawsuit filed in February by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of Ashley Diamond, a transgender woman. The lawsuit says prison officials have failed to provide adequate treatment for Diamond's gender dysphoria, a condition that causes a person to experience extreme distress because of a disconnect between birth sex and gender identity.
[…]
The new policy makes clear that each inmate with a possible gender dysphoria diagnosis "will receive a current individualized assessment and evaluation." It also specifically says a patient won't be denied treatment if he or she wasn't receiving a comparable level of treatment or wasn't receiving any treatment previously.
Why did it take a lawsuit to change their policy, when there had been numerous court cases that ordered trans people to receive proper health care for trans prisoners.

And even this policy doesn’t go far enough, why is it limited to only trans people who previously have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, do they limit treatment for cancer patients who was diagnosed with cancer at their intake process and do they treat them when the cancer is diagnosed? If a trans person is diagnosed while they are in prison they should be able to begin the transition process.

No comments:

Post a Comment