Criminal Justice

Today the White House hosted 150 formerly incarcerated LGBTQ people, policymakers & advocates to discuss unique challenges faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and people living with HIV (PLHIV) in the criminal legal system.

When I was 16, I was convicted of first-degree murder and criminal action and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, plus 100 years. In the 21 years since then, I have been incarcerated at Potosi Correctional Center (PCC), a maximum-security prison in Mineral Point, Missouri for male inmates.

Today, Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Jessica Hicklin, a 37-year-old transgender woman incarcerated at the Potosi Correctional Center, a facility for male inmates, in Mineral Point, Missouri. The case challenges a Missouri Department of Corrections (MDOC) “freeze-frame” policy that bars access to hormone therapy for inmates and others in custody if they were not receiving treatment prior to incarceration.

Following the state of Texas’s latest assurance to the U.S. Department of Justice that it will work towards fully complying with Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in future years, Lambda Legal today sent a letter to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) PREA Ombudsman, urging investigations into several reports of sexual assault and abuse against LGBT people in Texas’s prison system.

After the shooting deaths of Dallas Police Officers and DART officers at a peaceful protest last night, Lambda Legal issued a statement from Roger Poindexter, South Central Regional Office Director and National Board of Directors Co-chair Tracey Guyot-Wallace, both based in Dallas.

We are heartbroken and outraged that again – twice in two days – police have shot and killed Black men. We don’t know all the facts in either case, but driving with a broken tail light or selling CDs in front of a store are not punishable by death.