I want to begin with a truth that most people prefer to keep out of sight: sexual assault inside American prisons and jails is not rare, accidental, or rooted in myths about “bad choices.” It is a predictable outcome of power, overcrowding, retaliation, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, and institutional neglect. It affects men. It affects women. It affects transgender and nonbinary people. It affects gay, bisexual, straight, and questioning people. It affects anyone who enters a system designed around dominance and silence rather than safety and accountability.
It happened to me. Twice.
I served time in both state and federal prisons as an openly gay man. One assault was interrupted by a guard who responded by locking both of us in administrative segregation for over ninety days. The second assault resulted in documented medical injuries and yet still ended with the prison declaring that “no assault occurred,” followed by another ninety days in segregation. That is the environment that existed with PREA protections in place.
Now the Department of Justice has issued a memo instructing PREA auditors to stop enforcing many of the regulations specifically designed to protect transgender, intersex, gender-nonconforming, and LGBTQ+ prisoners. This change is being made to “align” with President Trump’s executive order on what he calls “gender ideology extremism.”
To anyone who has survived sexual violence behind bars, the signal is unmistakable. These actions will increase harm. They will reduce accountability. They will silence victims. They will put people — including men and women who are not LGBTQ+ — at greater risk.
This article explores how PREA works, why it exists, what the Trump administration’s order attempts to erase, what the DOJ memo actually changes, and how the law — especially Farmer v. Brennan — reveals the danger these choices create.
Sexual Violence in Custody: A Documented, Nationwide Reality
PREA was not created in a vacuum. It was crafted in response to staggering data, survivor testimony, and a legal system that recognized the depth of risk but lacked national standards for addressing it.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has consistently shown high levels of sexual victimization across all forms of custody. The 2011–2012 National Inmate Survey found that approximately 4.0 percent of state and federal prisoners and 3.2 percent of jail inmates reported sexual victimization within a single year. These numbers include men and women and include assaults perpetrated by both other incarcerated individuals and staff members.
BJS administrative data from 2020 reported 36,264 allegations of sexual victimization in adult correctional facilities. Only a fraction were substantiated, a statistic that reflects not low assault rates but profound underreporting. People who report sexual assault in custody face retaliation, disbelief, and involuntary placement in “protective custody” that often mirrors punitive solitary confinement.
Women face especially high rates of staff sexual abuse. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has documented years of coercion, harassment, and exploitation, with staff frequently using their authority over housing, medication, and basic necessities to extract sex.
Men are assaulted at significant rates as well. This reality is often dismissed, minimized, or hidden behind harmful jokes, but it is well documented. Human Rights Watch’s “No Escape” report gathered accounts from men who were repeatedly raped, traded between stronger prisoners, or assaulted with full knowledge of staff who chose not to intervene.
These problems existed before the Trump administration’s policy shift. They existed before any debates about gender identity. They exist because the carceral system often views safety — especially sexual safety — as a secondary concern rather than a constitutional obligation.
Within this already violent landscape, one group faces risk far beyond the general population.
The Disproportionate Violence Faced by LGBTQ+ and Transgender People
Transgender, nonbinary, and LGBTQ+ prisoners experience some of the highest rates of sexual assault within the system. This is not speculation. It is documented in decades of federal data and independent research.
BJS research shows that transgender prisoners report sexual victimization at rates nearing 30 percent in a single year — an extraordinarily high number that dwarfs every other demographic group. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that transgender women housed in men’s facilities are 13 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than other incarcerated people.
Black and Pink’s National LGBTQ Prisoner Survey, drawing from more than 1,100 responses, found that LGBTQ+ prisoners are over six times more likely than the general prison population to experience sexual assault while incarcerated.
These statistics are not abstract. They reflect the lived experiences of people like me. They reflect the reality that predators target people who seem less physically powerful, less socially defended, or less likely to be believed. LGBTQ+ people, especially those who are visibly queer or trans, are targeted because the institution itself signals that they are easy prey.
PREA was created in part to respond to this reality.
What PREA Actually Requires — and Why These Protections Matter for Everyone
The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 passed unanimously. It called for national standards to prevent, detect, and respond to prison rape and sexual abuse. The DOJ’s PREA regulations at 28 C.F.R. part 115 are legally binding rules, not optional guidelines.
One of the most critical sections is §115.42, which governs how facilities use risk screening to make safe housing, celling, and programming decisions. This regulation requires facilities to:
• Screen each person for risk of victimization and abusiveness
• Use screening information to keep high-risk victims away from high-risk abusers
• Avoid automatic placement based solely on LGBTQ or intersex status
• Make case-by-case decisions on whether to house transgender or intersex people in male or female units
• Consider the prisoner’s own view of their safety
• Reassess placement decisions at least twice each year
• Provide transgender and intersex prisoners with separate shower access whenever possible
These standards save lives. They do not eliminate risk, but they dramatically reduce the odds that someone will be placed in proximity to people known to be predatory or violent. They give vulnerable people a voice. They require staff to acknowledge risk instead of pretending it is ideology.
Importantly, these protections do not benefit only LGBTQ+ people. They benefit everyone.
Any system that screens for vulnerability and takes reported safety concerns seriously becomes safer for:
• Women with trauma histories
• Young men placed in older populations
• People with cognitive disabilities
• People whose size or mental health makes them easy targets
• Anyone susceptible to sexual coercion
When facilities stop enforcing these standards, the entire population becomes less safe.
Trump’s Executive Order and the DOJ Memo: Ideology Replacing Evidence
President Trump’s executive order declares that the United States will no longer recognize gender identity, framing it as “extremism.” In practice, this order encourages agencies to roll back any policy or protection associated with transgender rights.
The DOJ memo is a direct response to that directive. It tells auditors to stop applying the PREA standards most strongly associated with transgender, intersex, and gender-nonconforming protection — even though the regulations still exist in federal law.
Specifically, the memo instructs auditors not to review whether facilities:
• Make individualized housing decisions for transgender people
• Reassess safety at least twice each year
• Provide separate showers for safety
• Consider a prisoner’s own report of their vulnerability
• Identify whether sexual assaults were motivated by gender identity
• Train staff on understanding the vulnerability of LGBTQ+ prisoners
In short, the memo does not rewrite the regulations. It simply trains auditors to act as though those regulations no longer apply.
This bypasses the Administrative Procedure Act. It bypasses the public comment process. It bypasses constitutional principles. It bypasses safety.
And it aligns perfectly with an ideology that insists gender identity is a political invention rather than a factor that shapes risk and vulnerability.
Farmer v. Brennan: The Constitutional Standard the DOJ Is Undermining
The Supreme Court addressed this issue explicitly in Farmer v. Brennan (1994). Dee Farmer, a Black transgender woman, was housed in a men’s high-security federal prison where she was beaten and raped. She sued, arguing that officials knew she was at extreme risk and failed to protect her.
The Court held that:
- Prison officials violate the Eighth Amendment when they are “deliberately indifferent” to a substantial risk of serious harm
- Officials cannot ignore obvious dangers
- Vulnerability — including gender-related vulnerability — must be taken seriously
PREA standards were designed to operationalize this ruling so that prisons cannot claim ignorance.
The DOJ memo undoes that structure. By instructing auditors to ignore evidence of risk, it invites facilities to do the same. That is not a neutral administrative decision. That is an invitation to deliberate indifference — the exact constitutional violation Farmer sought to prevent.
Why Weakening LGBTQ+ Protections Harms Everyone
This memo is not dangerous only for LGBTQ+ people.
It is dangerous for every man, woman, and child in custody.
When facilities no longer take vulnerability seriously:
• Women become more vulnerable to staff abuse
• Men become more vulnerable to sexual coercion from stronger prisoners
• People with disabilities become easier targets
• People in protective custody remain in long-term isolation
• Investigations become less credible
• Retaliation increases
• Underreporting becomes the norm
• Predators become emboldened
• Staff become indifferent
A culture that disregards the safety of LGBTQ+ prisoners inevitably disregards safety in general. When leaders decide that one group is unworthy of protection, it becomes easier to extend that logic to others.
I know. I lived under that logic. Twice. And the institution responded to my victimization with punishment and denial.
The DOJ memo makes that type of response more likely, more frequent, and more devastating.
Administrative Law and the Danger of “Not Applicable”
One of the memo’s most insidious elements is its reliance on the phrase “not applicable.” PREA regulations are still binding law. The DOJ cannot unilaterally suspend them without going through the APA rulemaking process.
Instead, the memo tells auditors to act as though the law does not exist.
This is a tactic — not a misunderstanding.
It is a way of avoiding public scrutiny while immediately weakening protections. And it carries real legal consequences. Future litigation may argue that instructing auditors to ignore regulations constitutes an unlawful suspension of rules.
In the meantime, prisoners suffer.
What This Means to Me, and Why It Must Matter to Everyone
I can recite statistics. I can dissect regulations. I can cite Supreme Court precedent. I can examine the administrative law implications.
But when I read the DOJ memo, I feel something deeper and more personal.
I feel the same fear I felt when I sat in segregation after my assaults.
I feel the same helplessness that comes from knowing staff view you as an inconvenience.
I feel the same shame that comes from being a gay man raped in prison and still punished for it.
I feel the same anger that comes from being told — implicitly and explicitly — that my safety did not matter.
By instructing auditors to treat LGBTQ+ protections as “not applicable,” the government is declaring that the suffering of people like me is a tolerable outcome.
That is unacceptable.
That is dangerous.
That is illegal in spirit.
That is immoral in practice.
And that is exactly why this article exists.
When a government decides whose safety is “not applicable,” it reveals something fundamental about its values. PREA was created to ensure that rape is not part of anyone’s sentence. The DOJ memo betrays that promise. And the people who will pay the price are those already most vulnerable: men, women, transgender people, gay people, and anyone whose body is easy for the system to ignore.
I survived.
Not everyone will.
And that is exactly why this memo cannot be allowed to disappear quietly into the background of bureaucratic violence.
