LGBT and locked up

Montreal-based Prisoner Correspondence
Project gets incarcerated queers and trans
in touch with the outside

ART FOR THOSE INSIDE:
Images by Noam Lapid (above and below)

by HEATHER ROBB

The Prisoner Correspondence Project has come up against some tenacious barriers as they reach out to queer and trans people behind bars across North America. The Montreal-based collective, now a little over two years old, has managed to link up about 100 such prisoners with similarly identifying penpals on the outside, and is developing a resource library of information relevant to inmates in what must be one of the most queer- and trans-hostile environments imaginable. But they say establishing contact isn’t always easy.

“We make contact through informal connections, not official channels, because there is so much red tape when it comes to dealing with prisons,” says Ashley Fortier, a member of the Project collective. “We have relationships with people who do work in service organizations and already have access to the prisons. Beyond that, it’s all word of mouth.”

She adds that there are strict regulations pertaining to the mail that prisoners receive, and that they don’t necessarily have access to the Internet. The Project first made a name for itself after posting a call-out in the American queer and trans prisoners-oriented newsletter Locked Out. While the majority of the mail they receive comes from the U.S., the predominately anglophone group say they are also now beginning to translate their materials into French, and making connections with inmates across Canada.

In their own words

Collective members say the Project’s first priority is to let the prisoners speak for themselves about their experiences and their needs. “A lot of resources specific to queer folk aren’t specific to the prison context, and vice versa—stuff that talks about prison realities doesn’t always take into consideration queer and trans realities,” says Fortier. “If they do, they do it in a disempowering or desexualized or pathologized way as opposed to one that comes from a perspective of harm reduction and affirming and valuing queer and trans identities, gender identities, sexual identities.”

One of the group’s ongoing projects is to develop resources on the topic of safe sex in prison, and so in the collaborative spirit, they sent a call-out asking for prisoners’ reflections on the topic. This spring, they put together an anthology of such responses—and plan to eventually expand the collection into a larger resource series. The series will include information from health practitioners on the outside, as well as some history of queer prisoner justice activism, which will be sent back out to the prisoners.

Many of the contributors report that because sex is generally forbidden, the opportunity to practise safe sex is difficult to plan for; access to items like condoms and dental dams is minimal, and at the discretion of prison guards.

“Some American prisoners say you flat out can’t get condoms because providing condoms encourages sex between prisoners and that is criminalized,” says Fortier. “In other cases, they’re severely rationed, or you have to out yourself to get them, or your access is used as a punitive measure by the prison staff,” says Fortier. The group has heard similar stories from Canadian prisoners, even though all federal institutions are mandated to provide condoms (in the provincial system, the decision is left up to the individual institution).

The World Health Organization confirms on its Web site that rates of HIV are significantly higher among prison populations than in populations on the outside; however, the collective members insist they want to provide information specific to the prisoners’ reality as they describe it in their writing—including information on drug use, tattooing, and even safer bare-backing.

Sex Garage-inspired

According to collective member Noam Lapid, gaining access to STI testing, as well as comprehensible explanations of test results, and receiving consistent access to proper medical treatment also count among prisoners’ top concerns. Another problem is the issue of authorities determining a person’s sex by his or her genitals and housing them accordingly, rather than by how the individual self-identifies.

Collective members say that the Project draws inspiration from an earlier era when queer organizing was more political. They cite Montreal’s Sex Garage Riots—the series of protests that took place in the wake of the violent 1990 police raid on the notorious afterhours party. During this era, they suggest, prisoner justice was more central to queer organizing.

“There was immediacy to it at that time,” says Lapid. “The person you hooked up with last week was now in prison, say from a bathroom raid or something, so you could follow that line directly, and work to get them out,” says Lapid.

The group will give a workshop at the alternative Pride festival Pervers/Cité this summer, running from Aug. 7–16. They are also looking for more penpals. Visit prisonercorrespondenceproject.com for more info.