Transgender Prisoner Reunites With Her Aunts

Jessica Hicklin awoke on 14 January as an inmate; by 8.45am, however, she was driving away free and heading toward an aunts-packed van for a road trip that would lead her home for over 26 years of family reunions and celebrations.

Hicklin entered prison as a teenager feeling she deserved nothing of it, yet for several years was forced to defend herself against other prisoners who would raped and beat her. “I just remember going through trials,” she says. “I just remember fighting to stay alive.”

Hicklin faced significant barriers as a transgender individual in prison, including accessing gender-confirming medical care and legally finding employment opportunities. Her lawyers claimed this dearth of care contributed to her criminal activities and made her easy targets.

As part of her lawsuit, she won an important ruling allowing her access to body hair removal treatments as well as female-specific canteen items (like feminine underwear and curling irons). A year later, she now has both a stable job and her own apartment.

Young people who find themselves behind bars often come from extremely difficult home lives, where poverty, drug use, mental illness and domestic violence are at epidemic levels. Additionally, they are over-represented among adult prisoners where sexual assault rates are much higher as well as harsher sentencing policies – leading to further traumatisation during incarceration and more criminality through subsequent re-incarcerations. This cycle only perpetuates itself and keeps young people locked up.