NCLR has worked for years on issues related to the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), a federal law passed in 2003 to address sexual assault of prisoners. NCLR worked with the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC) to ensure that protections are in place for kids held in juvenile facilities.

NCLR and other groups filed a friend of the court brief in a groundbreaking case that finally put a stop to Louisiana’s longstanding practice of imposing harsh criminal penalties on people accused of soliciting certain types of sexual conduct with a person of the same sex.

Vanessa Adams is a transgender woman who was diagnosed by Federal Bureau of Prison (BOP) medical professionals with Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in 2005 while she was incarcerated in a BOP prison. Over the next few years, she made at least 19 written requests asking for medical treatment for GID. The BOP denied all of her requests outright based on its so-called “freeze frame” policy in which treatment for any person with GID is kept frozen at the level provided at the time he or she entered BOP custody. In Ms. Adams’ case, this meant that because she had not received treatment for GID before being incarcerated, BOP would not provide her with medically necessary care even though its own doctors diagnosed her with GID, told her about treatments available for GID, and knew about the seriousness of her medical condition. As a result of these denials of treatment, Ms. Adams attempted suicide multiple times and engaged in other avenues of self- treatment in an attempt to live more consistently with her gender identity.

While incarcerated in Idaho, Jenniffer Spencer, a transgender woman, made 75 requests for treatment for her gender identity disorder (GID), but the Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) failed to provide her with any appropriate care.