By Hannah Nightingale – The Postmillennial
In a resurfaced clip from the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, then-Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris celebrated her work gaining policy changes in California that allowed trans-identified inmates under the Department of Corrections access to sex changes.
Harris said that as California Attorney General, she learned that the state Department of Corrections was “standing in the way of surgery for prisoners.”
“There was this specific case,” she continued, “and when I learned about the case, I worked behind the scenes to not only make sure that that transgender woman got the services she was deserving, so it wasn’t only about that case, I made sure that they changed the policy in the state of California so that every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care that they desired and need.” California allows males who claim to be females to be housed alongside women in women’s correctional facilities.
“And I believe it was not only — I know it was historic in California but I believe actually it may have been one of the first, if not the first in the country where I pushed for that policy in a department of corrections.”
The interview with National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund’s Mara Keisling was posted in October 2019, around 10 months after she announced her 2020 presidential run and around two months before she dropped out of the race. Keisling is trans and underwent sex change in Keisling’s 40s. Harris’s campaign did not last to the primaries or caucuses.
The inclusion of trans-identified males in women’s prisons has sparked backlash as cases of assault and rape come forward against these inmates. One prisoner at the Central California Women’s Facility, located in Chowchilla, was moved back to a men’s prison in June after being charged with raping a female inmate. One of Tremaine “Tremayne” Deon Carroll alleged victims, Jane Doe, said she was attacked and raped by Carroll in a shower at the jail.