After having sex behind bars with transgender convicts, two inmates at a women’s jail in New Jersey are pregnant.
The anonymous inmates at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility became pregnant after engaging in “consensual sexual interactions with another jailed person,” according to the California Department of Corrections.
It’s unknown if the women had intercourse with the same transgender inmate or with two distinct transgender detainees.
It’s also unclear how far along the two inmates are in their pregnancies and whether they intend to keep them going. An investigation has been initiated into the matter.
This comes a year after New Jersey passed legislation allowing inmates to be housed based on their desired gender identity.
The Jersey correctional facility houses over 800 inmates, including 27 transgender women, and does not require trans women to undergo gender reassignment surgery to be held there.
State jails must provide stronger protections for transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people under the policy.
According to the Daily Mail, the state must imprison convicts according to the gender they identify with rather than the sex they were born with, and the regulation states that a prisoner can announce a change in gender identity at any moment while incarcerated.
Individuals are also entitled to single-cell living until they are permanently placed, private shower time, and a ban on physical examinations to determine an inmate’s sex under the program.
Inmates who identify as transgender have the ability to participate in housing decisions and to appeal DOC decisions.
The guideline also prohibits male cops from performing pat-down searches on transsexual women.
The new policy, according to the union that represents the facility’s correctional officers, made things more dangerous.
The union representing Edna Mahan correctional officers published a statement condemning the facility’s policy of incarcerating transgender females.
It stated:
‘We opposed this policy change because we believed it would be harmful to the overall population of female detainees imprisoned at Edna Mahan, as well as add to the stress of our correctional police officers assigned to this facility.’