Transgender CeCe McDonald Incarcerated In Male Prison – Do You Think It’s Fair?
There has been much buzz in the media again about Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald, a black transgender. If you’re not familiar with this case, McDonald set out with three friends to go to a grocery store in Minneapolis. According to The Daily Beast, On the way they passed by the Schooner Tavern, where they encountered Dean Schmitz and Molly Flaherty. Schmitz and Flaherty, who were white, shouted racist and transphobic slurs at McDonald and her friends. McDonald kept walking, but Flaherty attacked her with a broken glass, cutting her face. A fight ensued, Schmitz joined, and at some point McDonald stabbed Schmitz with a pair of scissors. Schmitz (who, incidentally, had a swastika tattooed on his chest) later died of his wounds.
At the beginning of the month, McDonald was charged with second-degree murder, and pleaded guilty to manslaughter in May. She was sentenced to 41 months in prison for manslaughter. Reports claim that due to time already served, she probably will spend the next two years in prison. Even though CeCe is a transgender, prisoners are organized by anatomy not gender.
According to the Star Tribune, McDonald will initially be housed as a man at the St. Cloud prison, corrections spokeswoman Sarah Russell said Monday. Then the state will make its own determination of McDonald’s gender, an assessment that will involve reviewing “any and all collateral documentation and a physical and psychological evaluation,” said Russell.
In the meantime, the state will house McDonald based on the inmate’s safety and the well-being of others, she said, adding that dealing with gender uncertainty among inmates “is not a unique situation” for the department.
McDonald will not be the only transgender serving time in the all male prison. There were 10 inmates in the state’s corrections system who have been clinically confirmed by the state as having “a gender identity disorder.”
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