Va. transgendered inmate removed from lockdown
By: Freeman Klopott
Examiner Staff Writer
January 3, 2010

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/crime/Va_-transgendered-inmate-removed-from-lockdown-8705670-80436387.html

A transgendered woman who was locked down in solitary confinement for six months in a Virginia jail has been moved to a medical wing, her attorney told The Examiner.

Officials at Central Virginia Regional Jail said they had initially placed Maria Benita Santamaria in solitary confinement because they feared she would be raped by male inmates. Her attorney, Cathy Alterman, said they moved the 35-year-old to the medical wing late Wednesday night after U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis ordered them to do so.

10 pounds of methamphetamine

After watching the damage that stuff does to people, and knowing far too much about it, or at least knowing that 10 pounds is almost enough to tweek a small city, that's like 4,500 people picking lint out of their carpets for three days. I say let the punishment fit the crime, and as long as she was so caviler about how much damage she was doing to other people's lives, I'm not going to be all that upset about how much damage is done to hers.  We have more pressing problems to deal with, and other people much more deserving of my sympathy.

I don't believe in the philosophy that just because someone committed a crime, they should be subject to disrespectful slurs and treatment like that. I don't really care about the inmate so much as how that attitude by the guards and others filters into normal society and adds to the stigma we all continue to face, and have to deal with ourselves.

~Sarah

I taught in prisons, I can assure you that the guards showed that person no more disrespect then they show to any other prisoner.  They may have had - given the circumstances - a more unique angle then they had with other prisoners, but for sure they hate, despise and disrespect all the prisoners, which is pretty much how that system works.

And on the bright side, at least that person can find some small comfort that I was not the judge there, because I think that ten pounds of meth ought to get a death penalty because if that's what you're doing, the world is much better off without you in it.