The Department of Justice has directed Prison Rape Elimination Act auditors to stop applying standards created to safeguard transgender, intersex and gender-nonconforming people from sexual assault during confinement. The instruction appears in an internal memo obtained by NPR, which says the department is rewriting federal PREA regulations to align with President Trump’s executive order on what he calls “gender ideology extremism.” That order declares that the United States recognizes only two sexes.
Under the memo, auditors who review prisons, jails, juvenile facilities and immigration detention centers will not evaluate compliance with LGBTQ-specific protections while the revision process is underway. These auditors are independent contractors hired by detention agencies and certified by the DOJ. The department did not respond to NPR’s questions about the directive.
Advocates warn that halting these reviews will put LGBTQ+ people in custody at even greater risk, in systems where they already face disproportionately high rates of sexual violence. Linda McFarlane, executive director of Just Detention International, told NPR the change “will immediately put people in danger,” adding that when facilities become less safe for the most marginalized people, they become less safe for everyone.
The memo instructs auditors to stop reviewing several PREA requirements tied to gender identity. Auditors are told not to evaluate whether facilities consider gender identity when housing transgender people and not to assess whether reported assaults may have been motivated by gender identity bias.
Existing data shows why these protections were created. A 2015 survey by the criminal justice group Black and Pink found that LGBTQ incarcerated people were more than six times more likely to experience sexual assault than the overall prison population, based on responses from more than 1,110 people. Brenda Smith of American University Washington College of Law, who served on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, told NPR the memo disregards the evidence that shaped PREA’s LGBTQ protections.
The policy change follows earlier cuts to programs supporting crime victims and PREA implementation. In the spring, the DOJ reduced funding for more than 360 grants nationwide, including support for the National PREA Resource Center, before restoring many of them.
The National Association of PREA Coordinators said in a statement that the current federal standards technically remain in place, but the memo instructs auditors to mark the LGBTQ protections as “not applicable” until new regulations are issued. The association noted that without separate state or local requirements, agencies can choose whether to keep following those rules. PREA auditor Kenneth L. James told NPR the directive makes the work “more confusing and more difficult” and will require auditors to reevaluate long-standing practices.
What the memo makes clear is that LGBTQ-specific safety checks will no longer be part of PREA audits, even as advocates and auditors say the need for those protections has never been more urgent.