A transgender man doing time for first degree murder in the Canadian province of British Columbia will get to spend the rest of his sentence with women.
As CBC News reports, Fallon Albee is moving to a women’s penitentiary thanks to policy changes at Correctional Services Canada and the recent passage of a bill in the House of Commons that makes discrimination on the basis of gender identity illegal.
Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau has expressed his desire that transgender Canadians experience “full equality” and actively promoted the bill to make any criticism of “gender indentity” illegal.
Jennifer Metcalfe, a spokeswoman for the West Coast Prison Justice Society, described the “expatriation” of Albee as “a really big deal.”
“I’ve had a number of transgender women prisoner clients who have been held in men’s prisons and who faced a lot of day-to-day discrimination, such as name calling and harassment from both correctional staff and other prisoners,” Matcalfe insisted to CBC News.
Metcalfe said the prisoner will be moved on Tuesday, adding that men transitioning to women are supposedly at risk for sexual assault.
“We’re just really happy to finally see it happening federally,” she said, noting that similar polices are spreading across Canada with special provisions for “transgender ” prisoners now being added in Ontario.
The West Coast Prison Justice Society believes that every transgender inmate of a Canadian prison be provided with private showers and bathrooms.
“We’re just really happy to finally see it happening federally,” she said, adding that similar policies are already in place for institutions in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and British Columbia.