The Justice Department has instructed inspectors to stop evaluating prisons, jails and other detention centers using standards specifically designed to protect transgender, intersex and gender-nonconforming people from sexual violence, according to an internal memo obtained by NPR.
The memo says DOJ is revising federal standards tied to the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) to align with President Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology extremism,” which asserts the United States recognizes only two sexes. While that revision process is underway, detention centers undergoing PREA audits will no longer be inspected against standards meant to keep LGBTQ and intersex inmates safe. Facilities covered include federal and state prisons, local jails, juvenile detention centers and immigration detention facilities.
PREA auditors, who are certified by the DOJ but hired by corrections agencies or individual facilities, will be told to mark those standards “not applicable” during audits, even though the rules technically remain in effect until formally changed through rulemaking. The DOJ can decertify auditors but is not their direct employer.
Advocates warn the change will increase danger for a population already uniquely vulnerable to assault in custody. Data and advocacy reports show elevated risk: a 2015 Black and Pink survey found LGBTQ prisoners were over six times as likely to be sexually assaulted as the general prison population, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported 36,264 allegations of sexual victimization in correctional facilities in 2020, 2,351 of which were substantiated.
The memo also instructs auditors not to review whether facilities house transgender people consistent with their gender identity on a case-by-case basis and says auditors should no longer consider whether sexual assaults were motivated by gender-identity bias. Just Detention International’s executive director, Linda McFarlane, said the rollback “will immediately put people in danger” and warned that making facilities less safe for the most vulnerable makes them less safe for everyone.
This memorandum is part of a broader set of policy moves by the Trump administration that roll back protections for transgender people. In recent weeks, the administration reversed policies that allowed incarcerated trans women to be housed according to gender identity, issued an order banning transgender troops from serving openly in the military, and restricted gender-affirming care for minors. Those actions have prompted legal challenges.
Earlier this year the DOJ cut funding to crime-victim advocacy programs, including the National PREA Resource Center, which trains auditors, tracks investigations and provides resources to victims. Some grants were later reinstated after media reports.
The National Association of PREA Coordinators said that until DOJ finalizes new PREA regulations, current standards remain unchanged. But the association’s statement noted the memo effectively allows state and local agencies “to continue following the regulation or, if they choose, to ignore it,” and urged systems to keep vulnerable individuals safe regardless of whether they adopt a binary or spectrum-based approach to sex and gender.
Auditors say the memo creates confusion. Kenneth L. James, a PREA auditor who works in multiple states, told NPR the instructions make auditing “both more confusing and more difficult,” could change auditor training and may lead to miscalculations of compliance. Still, he said, because PREA has been in place for more than 20 years and sexual abuse behind bars is well-documented, he hopes facilities will continue practices that protect incarcerated people.
