Transsexuals can choose jails
05/03/2006 18:29 - (SA)
Madrid - Transsexual inmates in Spain soon will be able to serve
their sentences in facilities for men or women according to their
"psycho-social identity", and not according to their original
gender, reported the El Pais newspaper on Sunday.
According to the centre-left daily, a directive is about to be
published concerning the incarceration of individuals who have
undergone a sex change.
Transsexuals would be able to ask to serve their sentences in
prisons corresponding to their new gender, and prison authorities
also would address them by their preferred name, according to the
report.
Prison officials would conduct an inquiry to confirm the sexual
identity of the prisoner, notably by requiring the inmate to show
proof of having started the sex change at least one year before
being jailed.
Mercedes Gallizo, the director-general of Spain's prison
administration, had already expressed her desire to make these
changes in the prison system.
Spanish prisons house about 40 female transsexuals, who were
formerly men, but no cases of the opposite sex change, according to
the newspaper.
