A U.S. senator has introduced legislation banning judges from considering an inmate’s self-declared gender identity when determining prison sentences and prohibiting trans-identified men from being housed in women’s prisons amid outrage over a light sentence given to a man who now claims to identify as female, after he attempted to assassinate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., introduced the Preventing Violence Against Female Inmates Act on Wednesday. The legislation would prohibit the Bureau of Prisons from putting female inmates in danger by housing trans-identified male inmates in women’s correctional facilities and would withhold federal funds from states that fail to comply.
“Prisoners should be placed based on their biological sex, not on what they choose to ‘identify’ as,” Cotton said in a statement published Wednesday. “Documented cases prove that men — including men who ‘identify’ as women — in women’s prisons put female inmates at increased risk of sexual assault. My bill decreases the risk for women by ensuring men and women are separated in federal prison.”
In an X post on Wednesday, Cotton added, “‘Gender identity’ shouldn’t be a factor when determining sentencing. That’s why I’m introducing two bills to ensure all criminals are properly sentenced and placed in the correct prisons.”
Cotton’s introduction of the Fair Sentencing Act comes less than a week after Judge Deborah Boardman, appointed to the bench by former President Joe Biden, generated outrage for sentencing Nicholas Roske to eight years in prison for attempting to assassinate Kavanaugh in 2022.
Roske’s attorneys had submitted a sentencing memo to Boardman detailing how their client identifies as a woman named Sophie and insisting that his longstanding issues with gender identity and mental health justified a sentence far shorter than the 30 years recommended by the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ has vowed to appeal the ruling, which it condemned as “woefully insufficient.”
The light sentence given to Roske isn’t the only example of a trans-identified male criminal receiving preferential or sympathetic treatment from a judge due to his chosen gender identity.
At an event hosted by The Christian Post last year, titled “Unmasking Gender Ideology II,” Amie Ichikawa, founder of the ministry devoted to serving the needs of incarcerated women, called Woman II Woman, detailed how one of Biden’s nominees to serve on the federal judiciary wrote a recommendation that a trans-identified rapist be housed in a women’s prison.
Ichikawa lamented that the judge, Sarah Netburn, wrote “a 48-page recommendation to the higher courts explaining the plight of this individual” who “raped a baby” and “raped a 17-year-old girl” and was “full of sympathy” for the trans-identified prisoner and did not include “even a paragraph about how this was going to impact the incarcerated female population.”
Biden’s nomination of Netburn did not advance out of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which voted 11-10 against advancing her to the full Senate for a vote.
The failure of Netburn to receive the votes necessary to advance the full Senate was seen as significant because Democrats held a majority of seats in both the Senate and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., voted with Republicans to derail Netburn’s nomination.
Ichikawa also recounted the incidents of women being raped by trans-identified male inmates, leading some women to become pregnant with their abuser’s baby.
More than 44 trans-identified male prisoners have “been successful in transferring into women’s prisons.”
Ichikawa described the plight of women’s suffering and abuse in prisons as “one of the biggest female human rights crises that I’ve seen in my lifetime” and “the biggest step backwards in women’s rights this century.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
