Gender Bound

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Transgender-responsive policies may seem like a radical idea for prisons, but California’s creation of tailored housing policies for gender-nonconforming prisoners began in 1941. In Gender Bound, Joss T. Greene investigates how and why California prisons have attempted to manage gender nonconformity over the past eighty years, and how incarcerated people have responded in turn. Drawing on archival research, ethnographic observation, and 136 interviews with formerly incarcerated trans people, advocates, policymakers, and former prison staff, Gender Bound offers new insight into the history of gender, the intersectional nature of punishment, and steadfast struggles for freedom.