Making Up Transgender Prisoners in Ontario: An Intersectionality-Based Policy Analysis

Abstract

In Ontario, Canada the number of transgender prisoners is unknown. However, advocates suggest that transgender individuals are a growing population within carceral spaces. This thesis provides an Intersectionality-Based Policy Analysis (IBPA) of the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services’ (MCSCS) transgender management policies. I explore the gendered and racialized ways in which the MCSCS constructs, manages, and makes up transgender prisoners in Ontario carceral spaces. By examining Ontario correctional policy, I conclude that transgender prisoners in Ontario are made up by various conflicting policy characterizations that position them as simultaneously at-risk and risky. These characterizations support the MCSCS’ broader effort to (re)frame incarceration as a caring, inclusive practice, making it easier and supposedly safer to incarcerate transgender individuals. By emphasising risk and vulnerability, these MCSCS policies fail to challenge broader cultural constructions of transgender prisoners as always-already deceptive, thereby entrenching the carceral system as a vital instrument of crime control without considering viable alternatives, including decarceration.