Two inmates who are serving sentences within New Jersey’s only all-women prison are reportedly pregnant after they had s3x with transgender inmates.
The New Jersey Department of Corrections told NJ.com that two inmates at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility became pregnant after having “consensual s3xual relationships with another incarcerated person.”
The identities of the two pregnant inmates were not disclosed. It also remains unclear if the two pregnant inmates had s3x with the same transgender inmate, or with different transgender inmates.
The prison houses over 800 women, according to DailyMail.com, and 27 inmates at the prison are transgender. The prison reportedly does not require transgender inmates to have undergone gender reassignment surgery to be housed there.
New Jersey enacted a policy in 2021 which allows prisoners to be placed in facilities in accordance with the gender identity of their own preference, according to the New York Post. Inmates can provide their gender identity preference at any time during their incarceration, according to the policy.
That policy reportedly came after a transgender woman, who was supported by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Jersey, successfully won a settlement in their civil rights lawsuit against the state after she was forced to reside in a men’s prison for 18 months.
When I was forced to live in men’s prisons, I was terrified I wouldn’t make it out alive. Those memories still haunt me.” the transgender woman, identified in court papers as Sonia Doe, said in a statement last year according to DailyMail.com.
“Though I still have nightmares about that time, it’s a relief to know that as a result of my experience the NJDOC has adopted substantial policy changes so no person should be subjected to the horrors I survived.”
On Tuesday, ACLU legal director Jeanne LoCicero defended the policy, according to NJ.com.
[It’s] in line with New Jersey’s strong anti-discrimination laws that prevent discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender identity,” LoCicero reportedly said.
However, according to DailyMail.com, two prisoners at Edna Mahan took it upon themselves in 2021 to file a lawsuit seeking the policy’s removal. Those women reportedly claimed at the time that transgender inmates were having s3xual relations with cisgender inmates.
A union that represents correctional officers at Edna Mahan reportedly decried the policy, calling it “detrimental.”
We opposed this policy change believing it would be detrimental to the general population of female inmates being housed at Edna Mahan and also bring added stress to our correctional police officers assigned to this institution,” NJ.com reports the union president saying.
The policy was to be maintained for at least one year, according to the ACLU. DailyMail.com reports Edna Mahan began implementing the policy in July 2021.
