When Bretilynne Twa was first taken into custody, she was housed in a male facility and segregated from the other inmates. After about a month, she was transferred to a women’s facility, but remained in segregation – allegedly for her own safety. For many months after that, Ms. Twa was detained in isolation – denied access to the yard, to work opportunities, and to programming.
Ms. Twa’s application resulted in a settlement negotiated by the Centre and helped to inform the province-wide implementation of a new policy, the Admission, Classification and Placement of Trans Inmates policy that includes:
- Integration (rather than segregation) as the default
- Placement according to inmate’s self-identified gender
- Intake/Plan of Care form to be completed on admission with input from the inmate;
- Maximizing privacy;
- Access to personal items related to lived gender identity;
- Training to build trans positive awareness in frontline staff most directly involved in the application of the policy and customized, job-specific, mandatory human rights training, which will include content specific to gender identity and gender expression.