Katherine Johnston, trans health coverage, and the perils of misinformation
http://bluezigzag.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/katherine-johnston-trans-health-coverage-and-the-perils-of-misinformation/8/14/09
Today, as I was reading The Province, I came across the story of Katherine Johnston, a 61 year old transgender woman who is incarcerated in a men's prison for bludgeoning to death her East Vancouver roommate with a baseball bat. She claims that her request for a penectomy, paid for by taxpayers, is being held up by Corrections Canada. Because she still has a penis she has been disallowed a transfer to a woman's prison.
Needless to say, her experience in a men's prison has been pretty horrific so far: she's been punched in the head, held at knife point, forced to perform oral sex, and her chest has been sliced with the edge of an open can of salmon. This is prison after all. You kill someone, you pay for it.
The thing is, though, that some criminals pay more than others. A convicted murderer must do his or her time, no one argues this point. But a convicted murderer with a medical condition, whether it be a mental illness or physical disability, is at once vulnerable in a way that a "normal" murderer is not. How, then should these prisoners be treated?
