Ex-Corrections NZ prison officer, Josie, shares her experience of dealing with trans-identifying-males (men) in women’s prisons.

Josie worked for the New Zealand Dept of Corrections  from 2008 to 2021. The first ten years of that time were spent working in the Auckland women’s jail, and the remainder in the men’s jail. Whilst working in the women’s jail, known officially as Auckland Region Women’s Correction Facility, she experienced the first transfer of a fully intact male who said he was a woman from the men’s jail to the women’s. In most cases, a man who says he’s a woman is a transvestite and/or autogynephile. In other parlance, he can also be referred to as a ‘trans-identifying-male’ – a TIM - and in this piece will be referred to as such, simply for brevity. This is Josie’s story of how it was for her to deal with those fully intact TIMs who came in during the time she worked at Auckland women’s jail.

In 2012, the first such TIM was first transferred from the men’s jail to the women’s in Auckland. He was in jail for the murder of an elderly woman. He was a habitual offender in other ways, too, and upon his eventual release he soon had a parole recall issued for him, although the news items reporting this referred to him as “she/her”. Josie’s not sure when he began identifying as a woman, but he was transferred to the women’s jail due to credible claims of being bullied in the men’s.

This was a classic case of women’s naturally less violent environment being used as the dumping ground for a problem, with no thought to the women who get the problem dumped on them. No one’s saying that women are angels – we can be nasty and aggressive, too, but less so in physically violent ways, generally speaking. Josie says that after spending time working in the men’s jail after 2018, she felt in some ways the men were simpler to deal with than the women, apart from when physical bullying or violence erupted amongst them. However, women’s environments can still be seen as an easy dumping ground for problems.

When that first above-mentioned TIM came into the Auckland women’s jail, no prior training on how to handle one had been given to the female staff in the Receiving Office, where all prisoners who go into jail pass through, whether new prisoners or on day release. They were just told he was coming in, that he identified as a woman, and strip searches would be carried out by female staff only. The response by prison management to the inevitable concerns and questions was to brush them off, and advise the staff to treat the TIM like anyone else they have to strip search. None of the female staff had ever strip searched a fully intact male before, nor had any training on how to do that.

Despite no change to the 2004 NZ legislation which stipulates that a strip search is to be carried out by a person of the same sex, prison management, who are for the most part removed from the on-the-ground running of the prison, mandated that the prisoner be strip searched by female staff. Any who raised concerns about it felt they were only given the options of either doing it, or leaving their job. They had to get some verbal instruction on how to do it from the male Corrections staff members who also worked in the women’s jail, and who’d received training on how to strip search men.

In contradiction to the unchanged legislation, the NZ Dept of Corrections now has a recently updated entry in the Prisons Operation Manual which states “If the prisoner identifies as trans, discuss what gender of officer they prefer to conduct rub down and strip searches and complete the I.10.Form.01 Confirmation of search choice for trans prisoners”. But, to date, Josie believes that women Corrections Officer trainees are probably still not trained on how to strip search a man who says he’s a woman.

During Josie’s training, the trainees were divided into female and male groups when it was time to learn how to do strip searches. The women learned how to strip search women, and the men learned how to strip search men. They are very different procedures according to the sex of the person being strip searched, and Josie isn’t aware of any changes having been made to this segregated part of training. The only reference to the possibility of women Corrections Officers having to strip search men who say they’re women appears to be in the below guidance paragraph. However, Josie has also had confirmation there’s no guarantee a female Principal Corrections Officer or Residential Manager, as cited in the paragraph, will have any idea how to do this, either.

Of the five or six fully intact TIMs Josie estimated to have spent time in the Auckland women’s jail between 2012 and 2018, the first was the only one she considered was truly vulnerable amongst the men in the men’s jail. Most men who identify as women prefer to stay in the men’s jail, and some who request a transfer to the women’s don’t stay long before requesting a transfer back to the men’s. There was no sex self-ID in 2012, so all men went to the men’s jail first, irrespective of how they identified, and had to apply to be transferred to the women’s. The only stipulation was that they couldn’t have committed a sexual offence against a woman in the last seven years, which remains a stipulation today. Murdering or attacking a woman doesn’t automatically bar a TIM, such as Pandora Electra, for example, from a women’s jail (although, I understand that he has since been transferred back to the men’s jail, for reasons I don’t know). With sex self-ID now in force in legislation, institutionally, and socially, TIMs can request to go to a women’s jail after being convicted for a crime, and will be incarcerated there if they meet Dept of Correction’s criteria.

Josie was working as a Corrections Officer in the ‘At Risk Unit’¹, as it was known then, when that first fully intact TIM came into the Auckland women’s jail. The At Risk Unit is for prisoners deemed to have poor enough mental health to be at risk of harming themselves, or others. He was initially kept isolated from other prisoners, kept under a continuous 15-minute observation cycle, and issued with a ‘stitch gown’ (a rip resistant anti-suicide gown) to wear, with nothing on underneath. Whenever he was returning to his cell after exercise time, he had to be searched for anything he may have been able to secrete with which he could harm himself or others with. This wasn’t a full strip search, but was conducted by manoeuvring the gown so that each area of the prisoner’s body could be inspected for concealed items. He also had to be supervised whilst shaving.

There was nothing about him which could have been described as ‘feminine’, says Josie, and the same went for most of the TIMs she saw come and go from the women’s jail. The Samoan fa’afafine were different, though, and exhibited more feminine behaviours and appearance. However, during the time Josie worked at the women’s jail, no fa’afafine ever requested a transfer from the men’s to the women’s. The cultural acceptance of fa’afafine amongst the Pasifika prison staff, of whom there was a large number, tended to make them very casual about the TIMs. To them, the TIMs were “just fa’fas”, and, at that time, weren’t perceived by the Pasifika staff as being quite different. Neither did the fa’afafine request women to strip search them, but that choice has recently been made available to them.

By the time the first TIM was ready to leave the At Risk Unit, he had a low security classification, so went to a low security unit. As his behaviour remained stable and offence free, he went into the minimum security self-care unit, which also houses mothers and babies. As a result of being in the self-care unit, he got a release to work. A church group sponsored him, and he went out daily to do work for them. Each day upon his return to jail he was strip searched to check for anything he might have been trying to bring into the jail, as was par for the course then. So, most days, Josie - who had advanced into a senior position in the Receiving Office – and one of her female staff, had to look at this naked man all over (but only half his body at a time, to maintain prisoner dignity).

A strip search is conducted by asking the prisoner to take off their clothes, and then instructing them to lift and reveal parts of their body so a Corrections Officer can visually check for any items which may be concealed. For men, this includes asking them to lift their scrotum and pull back their foreskin. Supposedly, Josie had to look at all the fully intact TIMs in this way who passed through the Receiving Office. But, because she and the other female staff found it repellent, they seldom gave the men’s genitals more than a brief glance when they were exposed. With the clarity of hindsight and distance from the situation, she attributes the strip searching of these men as the reason she developed an inexplicable aversion to sex after a while, which culminated in the subsequent breakdown of her relationship. She found she was unable to look at men in the same way she had after that sort of frequent exposure, and became uncomfortable in an intimate situation. Happily, those days are gone, and she is now married to a different man.

She’s still able to recall some incidents with amusement, though, one of which was how prior to the first TIM getting his release to work, he got a job cleaning the admin offices in the upstairs part of the jail. One day, she got a phone call from management to say that they didn’t think it was appropriate for the TIM to come into the offices wearing just a t-shirt and women’s tights, his habitual dress with no underwear beneath, which they found offensive. Presumably, this was because his genitals could be partially seen through the tights.

I can only imagine their distress if they’d had to see him actually naked day after day.

Josie believes that Dept of Corrections dumped a procedure on their female staff which they had not thought out well, and still haven’t, and feels she has been one of the victims of this. There wasn’t, and still isn’t, any avenue to express or discuss concerns about having to strip search men who say they’re women. It’s not only the female staff in the women’s jail who are subject to this indignity, but the female staff in the men’s jail will be, too. A career in Corrections is tough enough without it not being acknowledged that forcing female staff to strip search men may have quite a big additional negative impact on them.

Knowing that she won’t be the only one who feels like this, and because she no longer works for the Dept of Corrections, Josie invites those who have had a similar experience within the NZ Dept of Corrections to connect with her. Requests for an email address where she can be contacted can be made to me via the direct message function, and I will pass that into you.

¹ Now known as the Intervention Support Unit

Next week, I will have a story from an ex-inmate in the women’s jail, who will tell her story of what it was like to be incarcerated with a man who says he’s a woman.

NB: An Official Information Act request by Mana Wāhine Kōrero in September 2023 revealed the number of men who say they’re women, and vice versa, in NZ jails at that time.