(LifeSiteNews) — California has spent more than $4 million in taxpayer dollars on “gender transition” procedures for convicted criminals in state prisons since 2017, according to a new review of state records.
The Washington Free Beacon reports that the money went to procedures such as implanting fake breasts and creating artificial female genitalia for men, breast removal for women, laser hair removal, and facial reconstruction for more feminine features for at least 157 inmates, four of whom were awaiting execution. 1,847 inmates currently in the system identify as “transgendered.”
“The state corrections department says it has not placed any limits on the type of procedures trans-identifying prisoners can request and, as of early this summer, had received nearly 1,000 petitions for ‘gender-affirming’ surgeries, agency records show,” the Beacon reports, despite stringent rules and limits for inmate requests of actual medical care. Requests for so-called “gender-affirming care” are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, according to officials.
While all this is going on, the State of California currently stands in debt to the tune of $149 billion. Yet corrections officials have requested almost $2.2 million in additional funds from the legislature specifically for “transgender care,” including the hiring of a doctor, two psychiatrists, two social workers, and a part-time surgeon.
“People who think they’re transgender have rights, and they should be treated with dignity and respect, but it does not include taxpayer dollars being used to do surgeries that are experimental at best and scientifically unjustified at worst,” says conservative attorney Harmeet Dhillon, who has represented Golden State inmates seeking actual medical care.
Societal indulgence of “transgender identity” poses a range of difficulties for the administration of criminal justice, given prisons are segregated by sex.
In recent years, there has been growing concern around the world over placing men who claim to be women in female prison populations, which has proven to be a means of both securing lighter treatment during incarceration and gaining easy access to women to prey upon. Transgender status also has the potential to be exploited to avoid incarceration entirely in some cases, as seen in Wales last month when a man who identified as a woman received a suspended sentence keeping him out of prison despite physically assaulting two women within days of each other, on the grounds that he would be “vulnerable” behind bars.
In May, conservative investigative journalist James O’Keefe released an interview with U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons psychologist Dr. Linda Noelle, who says that male and female prisoners “both play the victim card” to obtain gender “reassignment” surgeries at taxpayer expense. “And then they go through [the far-left American Civil Liberties Union], and then the ACLU sues the [U.S. Department of Justice]” when demands for subsidized “transition” procedures are initially rejected, Noelle told O’Keefe. “And the DOJ, unfortunately, under Merrick Garland, it rolls over. It doesn’t go through the courts, so they just pay people off.”
In California this summer, male triple murderer David “Dana Rivers” Wakefield began serving his life sentence in a women’s prison. The state has allowed males to be housed with female inmates since 2021, which critics note puts actual female inmates in serious danger.