Trump just told inspectors to stop tracking anti-LGBTQ+ prison rapeshttps://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/12/just-told-inspectors-to-stop-tracking-anti-lgbtq/ 🔗Daniel Villarreal (5 Dec 2025)
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has instructed inspectors to stop evaluating prison standards for stopping sexual violence against transgender, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people, NPR reported.
A newly unveiled DOJ memo revises the standards of the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in light of the president's January executive order denying any federal recognition of non-cisgender identities. During this revision, the memo says, PREA audits will no longer evaluate jail, prison, and detention center standards to protect LGBTQ+ and intersex people.
As a result, auditors will no longer review whether trans inmates get housed according to their gender identity nor will they consider whether instances of sexual violence were motivated by victims' LGBTQ+ identities.
Usually, revisions to federal legislation must go through a formal rule-making process to enact changes, and until that process is completed, federal agents must comply with current federal law. However, the DOJ memo instructs PREA auditors to mark trans-related standards as "not applicable" during the revision process (possibly violating federal law).
However, in a statement, the National Association of PREA Coordinators said that staff at detention centers can "continue following the [trans-inclusive] regulation(s) or, if they choose, to ignore [them]."
"Whether a system adopts a binary sex approach or one that recognizes a spectrum of gender, we cannot forsake our primary responsibility to keep the most vulnerable individuals in our care safe from those who present a threat of sexual abuse or sexual harassment," the association said in a statement.
