Sen. Cotton bill requires prisons to house inmates based on biological sex, not gender identity

by sam

Samuel Case, FISM News

 

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) recently introduced a bill that would require prisons to house inmates based on a prisoner’s gender from birth, rather than by the individual’s self-identified gender. If passed, the bill would strip prisons that violate the law from certain federal funding. 

Cotton’s Preventing Violence Against Female Inmates Act of 2022 says that the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FOP) will “use the biological sex of person charged with or convicted of offenses against the United States in making determinations regarding housing such persons.”

The bill also instructs prisons to “not co-locate in detention facilities persons charged with or convicted of offenses against the United States if those persons are not of the same biological sex, unless the Bureau of Prisons co-locates such persons without regard to their purported gender identity.”

Cotton’s bill comes as a response to reports that President Biden is expected to sign an executive order requiring the FOP to house prisoners based on gender-identify, not biological sex.

“President Biden’s plan to house male and female prisoners together will put women in danger,” Cotton said in a statement. “Documented cases prove that placing men—including ones who ‘identify’ as female—in women’s prisons puts female inmates at increased risk of sexual assault. My bill will stop the president’s ill-conceived plan and keep men and women separated in federal prison.”

In November a group of female prisoners in California sued the state for allowing biological men to be placed in female facilities. The women argued that placing male in custody with female prisoners constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

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