Op-ed: A Test for County Jails
Social worker Andrew Extein shares what he learned from spending countless hours talking to countless gay inmates in 2008 about their experiences in Los Angeles County jails.
BY Andrew Extein
August 15 2012 6:00 AM ET
http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2012/08/15/andrew-extein-explains-what-county-jails-face-welcoming-gay-inmatesIn 2008, I was lucky enough to gain near-unfettered access to all seven Los Angeles County jails through work with the ACLU of Southern California's Jails Project. In the 1970s, the ACLU won a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for violation of the eighth amendment of cruel and unusual punishment. As a result, the ACLU-SC has operated as the court-ordered monitor of the L.A. County jails ever since. For a year I worked as such a monitor, visiting the jails, talking to inmates, gathering complaints, advocating for their rights, and communicating with Sheriff's deputies and personnel.
Back to the size queen. It was 5 o'clock in the morning and I was sitting in a modest office on the fifth floor of Men's Central Jail, one of the largest and oldest jails in the country. The office belonged to a deputy in charge of the unique gay inmate classification at the jails, also known as the K6G unit. In order to be labeled a K6G, the two deputies in charge of the unit had to conclude that, yes, you are undoubtedly gay.
The mission of the "gay inmate classification" is an admirable one: to protect the safety of gay and transgender inmates from harassment, sexual assault, and violence. Queer and gender nonconforming people in the aggressive and militaristic jail environment are at extremely high risk of hostility from straight inmates, deputies, staff, and each other. Removal from the general population is elective and highly desirable. However, I was confused about how the deputies determined whether an inmate "earned" the classification. Curious, I asked to sit in on a morning of interviews.
