Earlier this month, the Department of Justice (DOJ) instructed auditors to stop evaluating prisons and jails using specific standards designed to protect transgender, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people from sexual violence under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). This change, communicated in an internal memo, is intended to align PREA audits with Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology extremism,” which recognizes only two sexes. Consequently, while the revision process is underway, auditors will temporarily mark these protective standards as “not applicable” during inspections of federal, state, and juvenile detention facilities.
So, auditors will no longer review whether facilities house transgender people based on their gender identity, and they will stop considering whether sexual assaults were motivated by gender-identity bias. Advocates, including Just Detention International, warn that this rollback will immediately put vulnerable people in danger, noting that LGBTQ+ prisoners are already over SIX TIMES more likely to be sexually assaulted than the general population.
While the current PREA standards remain technically in effect until finalized revisions are made, the memo allows correctional facilities the choice to ignore them. The move is the latest in a series of administration policies removing legal protections for transgender people.
