type: timeline_event
On December 4, 2025, NPR obtained an internal Department of Justice memo dated December 2, 2025, instructing prison auditors nationwide to immediately stop evaluating facilities under Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) standards designed to protect transgender, intersex, and gender-nonconforming inmates from sexual violence. The directive, sent by Tammie M. Gregg, principal deputy director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, instructs all DOJ-certified PREA auditors to mark vulnerable population protections as "not applicable" during audits while the DOJ revises federal standards to align with President Trump's January 20, 2025 executive order establishing a two-sex legal definition that excludes recognition of transgender identity.
The memo effectively suspends critical safety protocols that PREA established in 2003 to address epidemic sexual abuse in detention facilities. Under the suspended standards, facilities were required to conduct individualized risk assessments for transgender and intersex inmates, make housing placement decisions on a case-by-case basis with serious consideration of inmates' views of their own safety, provide separate shower access, investigate whether sexual assaults were motivated by gender-identity bias, restrict cross-gender searches, and train staff on appropriate treatment of LGBTQ inmates. Auditors will no longer evaluate whether facilities comply with these protections, even though PREA technically remains federal law.
The directive creates an immediate crisis for one of the most vulnerable populations in America's carceral system. Research consistently demonstrates transgender inmates face catastrophic abuse rates: a 2015 Black and Pink survey found LGBTQ prisoners are over six times more likely to be sexually assaulted than the general prison population, while a California state prison study found transgender women housed in men's facilities are 13 times more likely to be sexually abused than non-transgender inmates. The Bureau of Justice Statistics' 2020 report documented 36,264 allegations of sexual victimization in adult correctional facilities, with previous surveys finding 40% of incarcerated transgender people reported sexual abuse in a single year. Studies demonstrate transgender women housed in women's facilities have substantially lower victimization rates than those forced into men's prisons.
Legal experts and civil rights advocates immediately condemned the policy as both unlawful and dangerous. Shana Knizhnik, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project, stated: "PREA is still the law. Standards that are in place are still the law, and so this is essentially a directive to disregard the law." Knizhnik emphasized that "these policies not only put the most vulnerable people at risk, including trans and gender-nonconforming and intersex people in custody, but it has nothing to do with protecting anyone, including women." Linda McFarlane, executive director of Just Detention International, a human rights organization dedicated to ending sexual abuse in detention, warned the changes "will lead to increased chaos and violence inside prisons and jails, placing staff and incarcerated people in greater danger" and represent "a green light for predators to sexually assault incarcerated adults and children who are already disproportionately at risk." Kenneth L. James, a PREA auditor for detention centers in multiple states, told NPR the memo makes auditors' jobs "both more confusing and more difficult" and will require auditors to "reevaluate how they are auditing."
The constitutional implications are profound. The Supreme Court held in Farmer v. Brennan that rape resulting from prison officials' "deliberate indifference" constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Federal courts have repeatedly found that failing to protect transgender people from sexual abuse and violence violates the Eighth Amendment. By instructing auditors to ignore evidence-based protections for a population facing documented extreme sexual assault risk, the DOJ directive raises serious questions about deliberate indifference to known substantial harm. The policy follows Trump's January 20 executive order mandating that the Bureau of Prisons and Department of Homeland Security "ensure that males are not detained in women's prisons" and directing that housing decisions be based solely on biological sex at birth, explicitly overriding PREA's individualized case-by-case assessment requirements.
The timing reveals the administration's systematic dismantling of LGBTQ protections across federal agencies. Just days later, on December 9, 2025, the federal government released reports on sexual abuse in detention that were stripped of all data on transgender people, with Just Detention International noting that findings on transgender inmates are "almost certain to never see the light of day, given the administration's refusal to acknowledge their existence." The directive affects federal, state, and local prisons, jails, and youth detention facilities nationwide, as PREA compliance is tied to federal funding and certification. While individual jurisdictions can independently maintain protections, the federal directive signals that such protections are no longer required for federal funding compliance, creating powerful incentives for facilities to eliminate safety measures that research shows prevent sexual violence against highly vulnerable populations.
The policy represents an ideological override of evidence-based safety standards, prioritizing political definitions over documented harm prevention. By instructing auditors to ignore statutory protections while formal rulemaking proceeds, the DOJ has effectively suspended federal law without congressional action or public comment, raising fundamental questions about administrative procedure, separation of powers, and the government's constitutional obligation to protect those in its custody from known serious risks of sexual violence.