Amber Kim laughed weakly when a nurse at the Monroe Correctional Complex asked her if she wanted a nutritional shake.
“I say: You all know I’m on hunger strike,” she said. “Why are you offering Ensure?”
More than two weeks ago, the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) forcibly removed Kim from the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) in Gig Harbor, where she had lived for three and a half years, and placed her in Monroe, a men’s prison.
According to DOC, it is the first and only time Washington has ever removed an incarcerated transgender person from gender-inclusive housing. Monday is the 17th day of Kim’s hunger strike, and she said she will not eat anything until she returns.
After her transfer, which she resisted, the DOC held Kim in “administrative segregation,” or solitary confinement, for over a week before transferring her to the Inpatient Unit (IPU) on July 3.
In a telephone interview with the IPU, Kim said doctors and nurses were monitoring her and giving her rehydration salts. She had terrible hunger pangs, she added, joking that just talking on the phone made her feel like jumping jacks.
She was vocal about her concerns about what would happen if she were forced to stay in the men’s facility and what precedent her removal from gender-affirming housing might set for other transgender people in the system.
“This move is not just about me. … To take a trans woman out of a women’s prison for a single offense where no one is harmed or victimized? That sets a terrible precedent,” she said.
Unprecedented and possibly inappropriate
Kim’s transfer came shortly after the DOC found her guilty of her first offense at WCCW. The agency said a medium-security corrections officer caught Kim and her roommate having sex in their shared cell. The agency considers sex a “504 violation” and prohibits it, along with other intimate acts such as hugging, kissing and holding hands.
But sex is also a reality in prison. During the three and a half years that Kim lived at WCCW, the DOC recorded 33,504 violations. However, the state did not transfer any of the women who violated the rules, including Kim’s roommate.
“I want to be treated the same as any other woman. They wouldn’t send another woman out of this facility… that’s not a level of unrest that justifies that response,” she said.
In a statement, DOC spokesman Chris Wright said: The stranger that officials do not take their decisions regarding housing provision lightly.
“The goal in making accommodation decisions is to ensure the safety of all detainees and to provide them with the best possible support while in custody to enable returnees to successfully reintegrate into society,” Wright said.
DOC policy allows officers to remove inmates from gender-inclusive housing when there are documented, “objective” safety concerns. However, department policy also requires officers to consider the individual’s personal safety, consistent with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).
AD Lewis, an attorney who represents transgender clients in California prisons and detention centers as part of the Prison Law Office’s Trans Beyond Bars project and who previously worked with incarcerated transgender people in Washington, called the DOC’s decision inappropriate.
“We say that when cis women or non-trans women behave like that, it is not a safety risk. But when trans people do the exact same thing – consensual behavior, a rule violation – then they are put in this area of something that Was a major security risk,” he said.
He continued: “I think it’s really important for us to question what is really ‘gender affirming’ about this kind of policy when the state can decide at any time to put you back and treat you differently because of your gender.”
Various treatment options
The DOC passed its first trans housing policy in 2020, and only 11 of the 250 transgender people incarcerated in Washington have been moved to gender-affirming housing. DOC spokesperson Wright said the majority opted not to do so for safety reasons or a desire to remain in their community, but added that not everyone interested in gender-affirming housing is placed there.
“Each situation is reviewed on a case-by-case basis, with the safety of both the individual and those housed in the facility as the primary consideration,” he wrote.
The doctor declined to answer specific questions about Kim’s transfer and the events leading up to it, citing an October settlement with Disability Rights Washington that protects the confidentiality of transgender people detained in Washington. To access that information, Kim would have to sign a release of information to The stranger.
Although Kim was unable to sign a release of information prior to the publication of this story, she previously signed a confidentiality agreement with a HuffPost Reporter who documented her 15-year struggle for a name change, gender reassignment care, and eventual transition to WCCW. HuffPost Reporter has provided these emails with DOC to The stranger.
In emails with the HuffPostWright said Kim admitted to consensual sexual contact on multiple occasions. He later clarified that he should not have used the word “consensual” because there is “technically” no such thing in prison.
At first, Kim had no reason to believe the DOC would treat her and her roommate differently. After correctional officers removed them from their cell, Kim said the DOC placed them both in strict housing and later found them guilty of the 504 violation at a disciplinary hearing. The DOC then placed them both in closed custody, which involves additional monitoring and limits the amount of time they are allowed to spend outside their cells.
In March, someone at the DOC leaked the disciplinary report about the alleged sexual encounter to the far-right publication The National reviewThis month, the media published a sensational article that played on far-right stereotypes about transgender women forcing their way into women’s spaces to sexually exploit them, while calling Kim by her false name and gender.
The DOC considers the gender identity of inmates to be confidential medical information. In an email to HuffPost, The agency expressed concern about the leak and said it had hired an investigator to determine how the data breach occurred. The DOC told the post the investigations were still ongoing.
Kim said her sentence was announced shortly after the release of the National review Article. While she remained in restricted custody, officials moved her roommate to a lower security level, she said. While she was still in closed custody, a DOC counselor told Kim they would recommend her transfer to another facility.
The transfer
On the afternoon of June 21, correctional officers told Kim they were taking her to the Hole, the intensive care unit at WCCW, Kim said. She then grabbed her address book, glasses and shoes. She said correctional officers handcuffed her and escorted her to the intensive care unit. Once there, they stripped her and dressed her in an orange jumpsuit, which was odd, she said. Normally, guards would just put her in a cell. Even odder, in this case, guards locked her in waist shackles.
She said she demanded to see paperwork, but correctional officers told her not to worry about the paperwork. She said officers then led her to the intake corridor, but she refused to go through the door. After a brief back and forth, Kim said, a sergeant ordered two correctional officers to throw her to the ground. They handcuffed her and put her in the back of an SUV for the two-hour car ride to Monroe. She said she arrived exhausted and unable to stand.
The Ministry of Justice announced The stranger that the agency follows a set of guidelines to ensure the safe transfer of inmates from one prison to another, even when, “as in Kim’s case, they attempt to attack staff.” Kim said she did not attack anyone and merely refused to move.
“We use hand, waist or leg restraints during transport,” DOC spokesman Wright said in an email. “If a person is resistant, additional restraints will be placed on them to increase security. However, DOC does not allow the shackling of detained individuals.”
Wright said the DOC has paperwork for the transfer, but The stranger would have to submit a request for public disclosure.
“It’s a shame”
Since her transfer, activists from Black and Pink SeaTac and @support4amberkim have organized phone campaigns on Instagram to flood DOC Health Services Deputy Director Ronna Cole and Secretary Cheryl Strange with calls about Kim.
Hailey Ockinga, executive director of the nonprofit Beyond These Walls and a former transgender woman who advocates for queer people in Washington state, called what happened to Kim “horrific” and discriminatory. She and other activists said Secretary Strange, the agency’s first openly queer head, should know better than to put a transgender woman in a men’s prison where she doesn’t feel safe.
“(Strange) is an outspoken member of our community who has been highly praised and celebrated, and now she allows something like this to happen? It’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace for her,” Ockinga said.
In an email to the HuffPostDOC spokesman Tobby Hatley said Kim will have equal access to gender-affirming property, treatment and other programs in Monroe and would be safely housed at other DOC facilities.
Kim tells a different story. She said life as a trans woman in a men’s prison is unsafe and involves balancing dangerous male egos.
In male establishments, Kim says, she was subjected to random violence by men who wanted to “make a woman out of her.” The same men who called her a “faggot” in the cafeteria later secretly propositioned her in the courtyard and shouted at her even more when she refused. This harassment increased when she changed her name and took hormones. When she found a boyfriend, she semi-withdrew. When she didn’t find anyone she liked, she said, she traded sex for security.
If the DOC’s decision to transfer Kim stands, there will be no way out. She is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the 2006 murder of her parents. She said she believes if she ends her hunger strike, she could get back into survival mode.
“It’s not just any one man, is it?” she said. “Every single person. It’s the overwhelming majority of everyone.”
