Originally published on May 10, 2022 in the Washington Post. Read the full story here.
At least 40 percent of people incarcerated in American women’s prisons identify somewhere under the broad lesbian-bisexual-trans-queer umbrella — a shocking statistic that holds true when looking at detention centers for youths as well. This crisis of incarceration among queer women and trans men from a young age might be surprising, but it isn’t new. In fact, that 40 percent statistic could represent an all-time low, judging from evidence from the Women’s House of Detention, the infamous 12-story maximum security prison that dominated New York City’s Greenwich Village in the mid-20th century.
Estimates made by incarcerated women themselves, as well as from sociologists who studied inside the prison in the 1960s, suggest that about 75 percent of people in the House of D (as it was known) were queer. Understanding why queer and trans people have historically been disproportionately represented in the American carceral system requires digging deeply into the 150-year history of women’s detention.