How a California Bill Lets Sex Offenders Into Women’s Prisons | Amie Ichikawa
[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW]It’s been over five years since a California law came into effect that allows biological males to be sent to women’s prisons if they identify as transgender. The law has no requirement for diagnosis, hormones, or surgery.
Called the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, the law is being exploited by male predators and sex offenders, alleges Amie Ichikawa, an advocate for female inmates.
“The first busload of men got to the Central California Women’s Facility,” Amie Ichikawa recounts, “it was scary. It was terrifying. 33.8 percent are registered sex offenders. I can’t think of any worse demographic of people to send into the women’s prison.”
Amie Ichikawa, a former inmate herself who served five years for kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon, is now the founder and executive director of Woman II Woman. The nonprofit provides legal resources, education, and re-entry support to women in prison. Ichikawa is now also an ambassador at Independent Women and Independent Women’s Voice.
In this episode, Ichikawa unpacks the consequences of allowing males into women’s facilities.
How has it profoundly changed the dynamic at these prisons? Why was legislation to exclude registered sex offenders from transfers rejected? Why does she believe some men are exploiting this as a loophole to escape maximum-security male facilities? And why is there a rise in prison clinicians encouraging female inmates to take cross-sex hormones?
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:
Amie Ichikawa, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Amie Ichikawa:
Thank you. I’m really glad to be here.
Mr. Jekielek:
So, there was a tragic incident last week. Basically, a woman was stabbed by a male inmate in California. Can you kind of unpack what happened there for me?
Ms. Ichikawa:
Yes. There are, as you know, about 42 biological men in California women’s prisons, between the two. And there’s an individual that the police have taken very kindly to, and he’s developed a really interesting rapport with staff. From what I’m told, this person has been given access to tools. They’ve been fixing bikes. They’ve been given confiscated property to create speakers, just things that women don’t generally ever get permission to do. And another woman got into an altercation, I believe, possibly over the canteen. And in the altercation, the man did stab the woman several times.
Mr. Jekielek:
So, what happened after that? And how is she doing?
Ms. Ichikawa:
She’s in stable condition. The cuts were superficial. However, it doesn’t make it any less traumatizing for the rest of the population. The man was put in restrictive housing, which is effectively the hole. And who knows where it’s going to go from there because there’s not a lot of movement. There’s not a lot of forward motion. So this might not even be an offense that would send this person back to the men’s prison.
Mr. Jekielek:
How common are stabbings in women’s prisons?
Ms. Ichikawa:
Almost never. I was there for almost five years, and never once was there ever a stabbing, ever.
Mr. Jekielek:
How is it that he ended up in this prison?
Ms. Ichikawa:
He identified as female under California gender assault ID policy, which is the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, written by Senator Scott Weiner, which was implemented in 2021. So the only requirement is for an individual to simply state to any staff member that they believe they’re female.
Mr. Jekielek:
And, you know, just more recently as well, I just was looking at what’s been happening in the California correctional system. There are actually five officers who were removed from the premises because of raping inmates. And can you just explain to me, like, what happened? What does that mean?
Ms. Ichikawa:
Well, in custody, no one has the right to consent. That is gone as soon as you walk onto the premises. So you’re actually told when you get to the facility, no means no, and yes is not allowed. So, under no circumstances is any physical contact with staff considered consensual. So it’s all going to go down as rape. So, even with the DOJ’s recent report that they dropped on the substantiated claims of sexual misconduct and gross, deliberate indifference, there’s still activity to the point where they have to fire officers in the middle of a shift and walk them off grounds.
Mr. Jekielek:
What you’re saying is that these men are taking advantage of their positions, basically, taking advantage of these women.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Yes, it’s an abuse of power no matter what the situation is. It’s always an abuse of power. They’re fully aware of the fact that they can’t have any sexual contact with prisoners, and it’s still happening.
Mr. Jekielek:
Tell me a little bit about what female incarceration looks like. When we think of prison, at least when I do, and I think probably this goes for many people, we tend to imagine men being incarcerated. About women being incarcerated and so forth, but generally, we think of that. Just give me a kind of a picture of some of those realities. You’ve experienced them yourself.
Ms. Ichikawa:
It’s extremely different. It’s nothing like you see in the movies. There are no tears, there are no two-man cells. The Central California Women’s Facility [CCWF] has, you know, eight-person cells. So women generally create family units. There’s a really strong desire to go home.
So everybody is doing, well, not everybody, but most people are doing what they can to get the credits they need to go home to their families, to their grandkids, to their loved ones. It’s not violent on the same level as men’s prison. In comparison to the numbers in men’s prisons, I would say it’s less than a third. It’s very, even smaller than that. It’s nothing that you would associate with prison.
Mr. Jekielek:
What do you mean by less than a third?
Ms. Ichikawa:
It’s the actual incident counts. It’s extremely low. Violence happens, but not on the catastrophic level that it does in men’s prison. There was never a need for people to have weapons, but when the men started transferring in, that became an issue as well. Women started fashioning homemade weapons, sometimes at the direction of staff, but they were fearing for their safety.
Mr. Jekielek:
At the direction of staff.
Ms. Ichikawa:
There have been reports that staff told them to arm themselves.
Mr. Jekielek:
So these were well-meaning staff that were saying, someone’s coming in, they actually might be dangerous to you, and I can’t help you, you need to help yourself. Is that what you’re saying?
Ms. Ichikawa:
Something like that, yes. And, you know, ironically, some of the men have, you know, shown women new ways to make weapons. They’re being assaulted mentally and physically from every angle. This is just not culturally compatible. Men’s prison culture and women’s prison culture do not mesh well at all. It’s taking a cancer and putting it in a non-cancerous environment. It’s destructive to everybody involved.
Mr. Jekielek:
So, we’re going to dig deep into these 42 men that are in the prison system and what that looks like. Before we go there, I just want to explore how you ended up doing the work that you’re doing. And I want to go right back to the beginning with what happened that caused you to get incarcerated in the first place, just so people can understand.
Ms. Ichikawa:
So, in 2009, you know, I had my dream job. I was working with adults with developmental disabilities, and I had an apartment, I had a car, and I started selling drugs on the weekends. And I thought that was fine. I really didn’t think that was, you know, a horrible thing to do.
And it led to selling more drugs, and I got into a really toxic relationship, to kidnapping someone at gunpoint who owed $20 for drugs. And this young lady was kidnapped in broad daylight, and we drove around for hours until it was late at night. And she could have died. She almost died that night.
But by the grace of God, she did not. And I was arrested with my co-defendant, and I fought my case for about six months. My first offer was 25-to-life. You know, it took me years to understand how serious that is. That’s not something that most people experience.
Mr. Jekielek:
I’m just going to jump in here. You and this guy basically picked up a woman off the street and then refused to let her go because she owed money for drugs or something like that.
Ms. Ichikawa:
A $20 drug debt, yes. And, you know, fighting this case for six months and just continuing to get, you know, deals that included a life sentence. It is still not as stressful as dealing with men’s and women’s prison. It was stressful but not like what this has done to me. But anyway, that situation led me to understand that the world doesn’t revolve around me.
I was sent to prison for five years and that was the best thing that’s ever happened to me because if I hadn’t gone to prison for those five years, I’m pretty sure I would be dead or just a completely horrible, monstrous person. I learned lessons there that I could have never learned anywhere else. And I needed that kind of time out to really fully understand that there are consequences and I’m not the center of the universe.
Mr. Jekielek:
There’s a number of things I need to ask you, okay, if you don’t mind. The first one is five years seems like a fairly short period of time for abducting someone. If you could just speak to that just a little bit, but I also want to understand more of what you learned.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Okay. So this is, keep in mind, this was the first time I’d ever been arrested. I had no record, and my father was an active duty Los Angeles County sheriff at the time. And I think that played into me only getting five years for something that carries life.
I really didn’t understand how special that was and how much grace I was given until later. Most people who have committed the same crimes or have the same convictions are still in prison and will probably always be in prison. So that’s part of the reason why I am so driven to ensure these people at least have equal protection of the law.
Mr. Jekielek:
Okay. So the second thing is you seem to have found some kind of, you know, redemption or, you know, certainly you allowed yourself to grow through that experience. And that’s fascinating. I’d love to learn more about that. What happened in prison that clearly, obviously made you change your mind about the world and about yourself?
Ms. Ichikawa:
Well, I think being forced in an all-female environment with women who were in my face 24 hours a day telling me life lessons like, if a boy only calls you on payday, he doesn’t love you. If, you know, this guy’s asking you for a TV, he doesn’t love you. But I needed to hear that 100 times a day for five years in order for it to really sink in. I needed hands-on education, and I got it. These women taught me how to not hate myself, how to allow myself to be in a space where I’m not being abused.
I used to translate that violence is a form of love. I really had never been in a normal relationship. And they, through all the different groups and classes and just friendships, helped me understand that that’s completely abnormal and that there’s just a better way. It doesn’t have to be like that. It should never be like that. And it just wasn’t okay. And I needed several hundreds of women’s support to help me understand that.
Mr. Jekielek:
So the system worked for you?
Ms. Ichikawa:
It did. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
Mr. Jekielek:
So you got out, and what happens?
Ms. Ichikawa:
I got out, and I was living a normal life. I had a job. I maintained contact with some of the women inside. I helped with whatever I could, whether it was making copies of new laws or contacting lawyers on their behalf, I would do that. And I thought, you know, there really are no women-centered support services, so maybe I should start my own organization. And I rolled that idea around for a couple of years, and then in 2020, 2021, I said, let’s just do it. Let’s focus on services that are specifically for women, and let’s act as a resource hub. Let’s make sure women have access to the limited resources available, and they’re matched quickly even before they parole.
And at the exact same time, the first busload of men got to the Central California Women’s Facility, and I had to shift gears entirely because I was getting calls from women I’d never met, my friends’ roommates, their husbands, their kids. Everyone was in distress, and it got to the point where a good friend of mine asked if I could consider starting a hotline because there were so many women that were just hysterical and devastated that the state would allow this to happen. And I said, I don’t know who else would answer the phone, so just give them my number. So that’s when it really started.
Mr. Jekielek:
I just want to replay this a little bit because, so you know, at the right time, essentially at the right moment, you started the one support system for women in prison that exists in California. A busload of men entered the system, and even with nothing having happened yet, the women in the system understood what the implications of this would be. Is that the way, I just want to make sure I’m reading you right?
Ms. Ichikawa:
That’s exactly correct. Because these weren’t the people that they were told were coming. They were advertised as delicate flowers who needed a safe place to do their time, and they sent the exact people that they said they wouldn’t send. They said there would be no sex offenders, there would be no woman beaters, there would be no one with a long history of violence against women, and that’s exactly who they sent. They said there would be no intact males, that there would be, you know, at least some point in the transition process, and that was completely the opposite.
When they got off the bus, women said, these are like football players, these are men, this is not who we agreed to. So it was scary and terrifying. These are men that are tatted from head to toe, who have 33.8 per cent are registered sex offenders. So I can’t think of any worse demographic of people to send into the women’s prison, knowing that 92 per cent of that population are survivors of some kind of sexual abuse. So effectively the whole population is now in a state of, you know…
Mr. Jekielek:
So there’s just basically knowing that there’s a one in three chance of a sex offender being in your cell of eight, I guess, right? So there’s this whole retraumatization thing that’s going on, even just at the prospect of this. I mean, these are things we just don’t think about, I guess, on the outside, so to speak, right? That’s astonishing.
Ms. Ichikawa:
It’s not something that most people have to worry about. Unless your system is impacted, this isn’t something that you would think about in general at all. But I really need the public, especially people who are not system impacted, to know that this definitely affects them. This is their tax dollars at work. Their money is being used to fund cruel and unusual punishment.
This is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. These individuals can’t even ask for a single cell. So you can displace seven women because you want a single cell, because you feel safe, because that’s what your perception of safety and well-being could be.
Mr. Jekielek:
In that case, that would probably be good for the women, though, from what you’ve been talking about.
Ms. Ichikawa:
In a sense, yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
Tell me, what do you think about the idea of punishment in general for one’s crimes more broadly?
Ms. Ichikawa:
I think punishment is a necessary part of life. It has to happen. If there are no consequences, then there’s no incentive not to just be a maniac for some people. A lot of people that are in the social justice arena are not really into that. But I think it’s absolutely necessary for a functioning society to have consequences for negative actions. You can’t just go around stealing or killing or kidnapping at gunpoint for $20. You can’t do that. You really have to pay a price.
Mr. Jekielek:
But this kind of punishment, I guess that’s what I’m trying to get at, but this is something different?
Ms. Ichikawa:
This is super different. Nobody was sentenced to constant mental anguish or being forced to share a cell with someone who is just like your original abuser or having to be denied medical services while you watch men get facelifts and breast implants. These women might not recover from this mentally. This is definitely creating some kind of damage over the last five or six years.
They are living in a constant state of fear, hypervigilance, and they’re not okay. Either because you’re either in a state of hypervigilance or you’re in your active criminal thinking and behavior, and neither one of those are healthy or a good position to be in to reach rehabilitation. It has eradicated the possibility of getting better there.
Ms. Jekielek:
In your mind, what’s the number of men who are transitioning to become women or say that they’re women should there be in women’s prisons?
Ms. Ichikawa:
Case by case. It’s always been case by case. Even when I was there, there were at least two biological males. And I have to remember what the women want because I’m not there anymore, so I can’t base it on my politics or my beliefs. And they’re okay with vulnerable people who need a safe place to be; they’re okay with them being there.
Mr. Jekielek:
In other words, some of these men are actually sincere.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
Okay, that’s interesting. You don’t typically hear about that either.
Ms. Ichikawa:
And I want to be a hardliner sometimes. Most people, you know, that I associate with want to carry a hard line, but I can’t do that. There has to be—I have to operate with a certain standard of care that’s for everybody, even for a rapist. I don’t want them to be in a situation where they’re going to be worse off than they are now either. And I didn’t really expect myself to ever say something like that, but I can’t really consider myself an honest advocate if I don’t care about everybody.
Mr. Jekielek:
So there has to be some kind of—are you advocating for some sort of, you know, test to see if someone is, you know, in good faith in this situation?
Ms. Ichikawa:
Well, I think primarily the easiest and most obvious thing would be to require physical transition, surgical transition. Do I support or condone, you know, permanent mutilation for something that could potentially be fixed in the mind? No. But these people aren’t going away. This isn’t going to just be magically fixed.
So make a requirement that would at least remove the weaponized body part. Women can’t compete with that. You can’t fight that because you don’t have that. So this is weaponized. So if they were to eliminate the possibility of transferring as a fully intact male, that would probably cut down the request to transfer by like 95 per cent.
Mr. Jekielek:
Because most of these requests to transfer are bad faith, or basically you’re arguing are sexual predators looking to be in rooms of people that they can abuse?
Ms. Ichikawa:
Yes. And I’m in touch with trans women in men’s prison who want nothing to do with this. They’re really embarrassed. They feel like this is a complete misrepresentation of their community. They have said that they tried during the frameworking of the bill to make it clear that there should be a physical requirement. You can’t just have it based on gender self-ID. It has to be inclusive of, you know, hormone replacement therapy, surgical transition. These people don’t even have to present as female. There are zero requirements other than, hi, I’m a woman. It’s so reckless.
Mr. Jekielek:
It seems like just a kind of an open window for abuse.
Ms. Ichikawa:
There’s no loophole. The whole law is a loophole. It’s easy for people with nefarious agendas to take full advantage of this opportunity.
Mr. Jekielek:
So, your organization has actually sponsored a law, a bill that Senator Shannon Grove put together. Tell me about that, what you want it to do, and where is it at?
Ms. Ichikawa:
Well, Senator Grove wrote a very kindhearted bill that we felt was taking everybody’s situation into consideration. It would have prohibited sex offenders from transferring in, and it would have required the department to create a separate housing unit for the transfers. So, there would have been no cohabitation. You can still program, you can still work together, you can still eat together, but you’re not going to sleep together. And it did not make it through the first committee in California. We were just decimated on site.
Those who have done a lot of time in prison came out in full force to vehemently oppose that bill. The coalition that is specifically for the defense of this law, SB 132, which is what our law was going to counter, acted so quickly. They had a huge campaign online, they had matching signage when they got to the Capitol, and they had a strong presence there. We were highly outnumbered. And even as Senator Grove was reading out letters from incarcerated women, you know, begging for help, there was no response from the dais. There was not one senator besides Kelly Seyarto who would support the bill.
And Senator Scott Weiner is the chairman of that, or maybe he’s not the chair, I think he’s co-chair, but he was very upset about, you know, the restriction of sex offenders. He said that’s completely too broad of a brushstroke, and it’s unfair to say you can’t let sex offenders in. This sex offender registry was created to further marginalize LGBTQ people. And I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. It just was surreal.
But we did share a moment because at one point he did look me in the eye and say, I know not everybody here is part of a hate group. So, it was a lose, lose, lose sort of win. It was nice to have him acknowledge that we don’t hate anybody. My group doesn’t hate anyone. We just want women to have the same rights as anybody else does.
Mr. Jekielek:
Well, I mean, I don’t think all the groups who are against having men in women’s prisons are hate groups.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Not at all. But they’ve conflated defending women’s spaces with hatred. It makes it a little bit difficult to navigate.
Mr. Jekielek:
Why do you think there’s this huge lobby so committed, and all these state representatives and senators? Why are they so, I mean, you’re portraying it as they’re deeply committed to making sure that the existing law stays as is and maintaining the status quo.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Well, in California, I can speak directly to the California situation. The legislators are afraid of Scott Wiener. There have been senators who have said specifically, we can help you out after he terms out. He’s on so many committees; they know that their bills will get killed. And we have, you know, a contest in California to see how many senators can write useless bills a year.
So, you know, you’ve got to get in on those 600 signed laws, and they’re just terrified of having their work rejected. Being called, you know, a transphobic bigot is scary to some people. I’ve been called worse, so it doesn’t really bother me—well, I mean, it’s probably scary, a little bit scary, to anyone.
Mr. Jekielek:
I mean, unless you’ve been called it a lot and you get used to it or something.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Yes, I guess you never really get used to it. Being called a bigot is pretty rough, but I wouldn’t change what I’m doing to prevent name-calling, especially when I’m right. Women have to have sex-based rights, or else we’re not going to have any rights. So this is so much of a bigger issue than just prison.
It turns into a really complicated web that’s almost global. I really had no idea how big it was when I started. Someone actually told me, you can’t do this. This is so political. And I said, this is a human rights issue. What’s political about it? I just didn’t know. But I know now. It’s very messy.
Mr. Jekielek:
So many people describe you as a whistleblower. Do you see yourself as a whistleblower? What exactly did you blow the whistle on?
Ms. Ichikawa:
I just told the truth. I just told the truth and refused to speak the newspeak. I was instructed by a lot of people that I have respect for, that I did time with, that you have to learn the new language. We all know that you care about our friends in prison. You just have to learn the new language. And I said, no, I’m not going to learn the new language. I’m not going to participate in rebranding women as something that anybody can be. And I guess that’s whistleblowing.
I just felt like I was telling the truth, and there was no other option but to tell the truth. And it’s not really my truth. I just wanted to make sure that I could platform the women inside and uplift their voices without it being edited or taken advantage of for any reason. I just exclusively wanted to push them to the forefront and make sure they were heard.
Mr. Jekielek:
I want to dig into this a little bit because you say that you’re not taking a political position. I mean, you’re being portrayed as taking a massively political position, but you don’t believe that you’re taking a political position. Just explain that to me a little more.
Ms. Ichikawa:
When I first stepped onto the stage in 2021, I figured I would have everybody’s support. Who would be against removing male sex offenders from women’s prisons? Everyone was against it, but I figured this is a human rights crisis. This shouldn’t be politically polarized. People on both sides of the aisle should be really upset and ready to support me and ready to, you know, amend this bill to make sure that incarcerated women are not being subjected to the worst conditions you can imagine. And I didn’t see it as political, but the issue has been extremely politicized, and it is heavily associated with right-wing conservatism, which I have no problem with. I’m fine with that.
Other people hate it, but I can’t make everybody happy. I wish it wasn’t so polarized because this affects everyone, all kinds of people, every demographic, all women. It’s coming for all women, every single kind of woman. And people don’t understand how close they are to people in prison. You know, some people are just one glass of Chardonnay away from vehicular manslaughter and being right there.
Mr. Jekielek:
So, wait, let me jump into that. Not everybody in prison is a violent offender in the first place, right? So, just maybe explain that to me because there are two parts to this. One is that you are very much in favor of punitive justice, right? Just not, you know, cruel and unusual punishment. That’s, I think, we’ve established that. But on the other hand, there are also a whole lot of people that are in there, in those same prisons, that are not there for murder or kidnapping or aggravated assault.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Right. Well, there is a large demographic of people that are there for what some would call victimless crimes. California has kind of rebranded violence, though. So a lot of crimes that normal people would assume are violent are not in California. But there are people who are there for, you know, stealing, fraud, things like that, and they’re still forced to live with rapists and killers like everybody else.
I know currently they are shifting things around to separate things by security level, just like the men’s prisons, which for safety purposes is probably a good idea, but it has never been an issue until now. Now that there are violent male offenders coming from level four maximum security facilities, there’s no comparable security level to that in any women’s prison.
Mr. Jekielek:
What justification, I mean, officially, presumably, right? I know you’re obviously against this, but what justification is there for moving someone from a level four, you know, max security prison to a women’s prison, which are, you know, one or two levels down, right?
Ms. Ichikawa:
Because they’re trans. That’s pretty much what the law says: that this is a very sensitive demographic of people that need to be seen and heard, and living their authentic lives in prison.
Mr. Jekielek:
And even if they required level four, you know, maximum security before.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Yes, they’re pulling men off of death row and putting them directly into women’s general population.
Mr. Jekielek:
There are real examples of this.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Yes. Death row. That security level—there’s nothing even close to that in women’s prison. There’s one gun in CCWF. One gun.
Mr. Jekielek:
What does that mean?
Ms. Ichikawa:
There’s actually one firearm.
Mr. Jekielek:
There’s one actual weapon.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Right. In a guard tower. Whereas, in a men’s level four, every cop is walking around with a Mini-14 because that’s the level of violence that they’re used to dealing with. If you really want to look at the broader spectrum, if you’re taking an individual out of that kind of environment, that’s not good for them either.
Mr. Jekielek:
Just to build on this a little bit, you said you’re in favor of punitive justice, but this…
Ms. Ichikawa:
This is extra. This is going above and beyond, and this is giving the right to punish to our legislators who don’t see this as an additional form of punishment. But when you’re forced to be in these co-ed prisons, you’re showering, you’re sleeping, you’re living your life with the same people that, with many of these women, the nature of their crime is directly related to abusive men.
This is so demented. There are women who flash and they’re like, when he gets mad, he sounds exactly like my abuser. Or when they’re angry, they go right back to where they were when they committed the crime. So you’re locked in a cell with an angry woman beater and there’s nothing you can do.
Mr. Jekielek:
The thing that struck me as you were speaking, you could also view it as a reduction in punishment for people that are on death row or in that, you know, maximum security, extra security scenario.
Ms. Ichikawa:
The implementation of this law created an avenue to make women’s prison men’s protective custody overflow. The majority of these individuals have no place else to go. They have nowhere to safely do their time in men’s prison because men don’t take kindly to other men who’ve hurt women and children, especially sexually. So that’s never women’s responsibility to take care of. That’s still the state and the federal government’s responsibility to keep all individuals safe.
Mr. Jekielek:
Interesting. Well, that, you know, you just opened up a whole new dimension that I hadn’t considered. So you’re saying that some of these men, to make things even more complicated, might be transferring to avoid the cruel and unusual extra punishment that they would get in men’s prison?
Ms. Ichikawa:
There are specific examples. One person saw a murder in a men’s prison, testified against the person who committed the crime, and then the prison staff put him in a unit with the person he testified against. So that’s a death sentence. Where else could he go? Still, it’s not women’s responsibility to keep him safe because they’ve turned into support animals, and it’s totally inappropriate and inhumane.
Mr. Jekielek:
Support animals?
Ms. Ichikawa:
Yes. These women are support animals, and it’s even more derogatory than that. In some circumstances, I would call them support hoes. When they started to install condom machines in women’s prisons after the transfers started, I thought there’s nothing lower than this. Nothing.
Women called and they said, what are we supposed to think—that people are going to safely rape us? And this is in the midst of all the staff sexual misconduct and the transfers. This installation was just solidifying that they will eventually be assaulted.
Mr. Jekielek:
The message being you’re not going to be protected in the way that, in the basic way that you should be.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Right. And to clarify, there was a law in 2015 that Rob Bonta, when he was an assembly member, passed stating that all prisons had to provide condoms to mitigate the transmission of AIDS. But it was never implemented in women’s facilities because they don’t have things that would require the use of condoms. But, you know…
Mr. Jekielek:
Things changed.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
What a mess.
Ms. Ichikawa:
It’s a big mess. And it just seems to get more and more messy when it doesn’t have to be so messy. Just the introduction of cross-sex hormones in this environment has been… it’s changed a lot of coercion that goes into encouraging people to get on cross-sex hormones. The psychs, the mental health clinicians, they encourage people to get on testosterone. They tell women all the time, oh, you’re not a lesbian. You’re just born in the wrong body.
Mr. Jekielek:
Wait, what are you talking about? This is, okay, this is, again, super interesting, but you’re opening up a whole new vantage point. So, wait, you’re saying that women who just happened to be in prison because of committing a crime are now being diagnosed as not really being lesbian?
Ms. Ichikawa:
No, they’re being encouraged by the mental health staff to get on transgender health care, to start taking testosterone. And everybody wants to be wanted and wants to make people happy. So if you’re a mental health worker, it’s like you’re doing a great job, take testosterone, be your real self. It feels affirming. Everybody wants to be affirmed. So they’re weaponizing this.
They’re weaponizing their needs by encouraging them to get on cross-sex hormones, and there’s no full information being provided. They don’t know what’s going to happen to them. Nobody tells them not to use narcotics while they’re on testosterone, how much worse that’s going to harm your body. Women are getting top surgery, and people will call and say, my roommate’s nipples just fell off. What do we do?
Mr. Jekielek:
Top surgery being breast removal, right?
Ms. Ichikawa:
I think in 2023 there were like 44 top surgeries.
Mr. Jekielek:
Explain to me why that’s obviously problematic in your mind.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Because these are all vulnerable individuals that are in desperate need of legitimate mental health services that are going to deal with their root problems and the issues that led them to the commission of their crimes. They don’t need to be coerced into buying into this, especially when you’re incarcerated and you’re supposed to be focusing on rehabilitating and healing and developing a sense of remorse. There’s so much that’s going on. Becoming the opposite sex is really muddling all that and obliterating their chances of coming out a better person, in better shape than they were before they went in.
Mr. Jekielek:
And then there’s this power dynamic that we described earlier, incarcerated, the people that are officials have an unusual, well, obviously they hold an unusual level of power over you in that setting.
Ms. Ichikawa:
And that responsibility should be taken very seriously and not abused, but it is greatly abused. It’s abused by the NGOs, it’s abused by the staff, it’s abused by the whole system. You just become a dollar sign when you get in there, and they’re going to try and max out on every opportunity they can. The healthcare industry is wild. There’s so much over-medicating in there. There’s a ridiculous amount of testing that goes on that nobody’s really aware of.
Everyone’s on Suboxone, which is an opioid blocker, but people don’t understand. You’re on the opioid blocker, so don’t take any more opioids. So the overdose levels have skyrocketed. I think someone was airlifted out of the prison last week. People don’t know they’re getting high to the point they’re going to die because they’re on an opioid blocker.
Mr. Jekielek:
Because they’re compensating for this opioid blocker because they still want to have the feeling.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Yes. And instead of addressing the narcotic issue, they’re distributing Narcan and asking inmates to administer this to fellow inmates if they see them overdosing.
Mr. Jekielek:
You’ve opened up so many vantage points here, no, I mean, your organization, you know, so tell me a little more about Women to Women, like just kind of the broader picture of what you’re trying to accomplish.
Ms. Ichikawa:
It was such a simple mission in the beginning. We just wanted to be like the concierge of resources, but we understand that there’s a greater need. There are so many gaps that need to be filled, and we can’t do them all, but the three of us are definitely trying. Sometimes women just need a friend. They just need a friend, and we’re trying to direct people to the most appropriate services possible. We’re trying to connect people with the right legal assistance they need because there’s a desperate need for legal representation.
There are so many things wrong that are occurring there. You could file a lawsuit every single day, and they would all be legitimate; they wouldn’t be frivolous. There are just things that we want to raise awareness about that no one else is really talking about unless it’s financially advantageous, and we’re telling the truth no matter what. Even if it has zero, even a negative impact on us, we still want to tell the truth. And it has had a super negative impact on us.
We can’t really operate financially in California because we’re pretty much blacklisted, but we’re okay. We’re not great, but we’re kept out of a lot of arenas. We’re not invited to things. People can’t work with us. They can’t talk to us in public. They’ll lose funding if they’re our friend. Even women inside can’t really talk about their relationship or services that they receive from us because they will lose the support of the larger organizations that do have close relationships with the state.
Mr. Jekielek:
Because you’ve raised, I think, three very key issues now. The first one being, of course, the men, especially violent offenders in women’s prisons. The second one being this kind of gender-affirming care model entering the prisons and the unusual level of power that the people sort of imposing it have. The third one being, you know, perhaps overmedication would be a way to describe it, or improper use of medication, or, you know, sort of the influx of this health industrial complex or something into the system. You’re also doing other things, presumably. I mean, those feel like, those three areas feel like a lot.
Ms. Ichikawa:
But there’s so much individualized care that goes into things that I can’t put a price tag on it. I just love my friends and I want to make sure they’re okay. There are women that need assistance getting ready for parole board hearings. And we used to be really hands-on with that, but we’re a little bit more behind the scenes now because it has started to happen. Having affiliations with us has a negative impact on some women. I have a friend who, you know, she wrote an official grievance about being forcibly housed with men, which led to her parole suitability grant being revoked. And, you know, she did an interview, and they brought the interview up at her parole board hearing and said they were sending it to headquarters, and she’s now being investigated.
Because why? Everybody else talks. They’re allowed to voice their opinions and use their First Amendment rights. And someone who’s gender-critical is being penalized. So we’re having to be more covert, more thoughtful, and intentional with the moves we make because I don’t ever want to have a negative impact on somebody’s freedom because it’s freedom above all. That’s what I hope for most people, and that’s the most precious right I think that we have. So if I’m ever hurting someone’s freedom, that’s definitely the opposite of what I want to do. So it’s so complicated.
Mr. Jekielek:
Looking at your whole arc here to this moment, do you feel like you’ve gained redemption for what you’ve done?
Ms. Ichikawa:
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fully redeem the harm that I have caused and the hurt that I inflicted on my victim, her family, my family, my future. But I’m definitely going to keep trying and keep pushing because it’s always going to be a goal to put good in the place where I put evil. I would like to balance that out fully someday, but I don’t know if that’s possible to do in completion. But it just gives me the motivation to keep doing it and keep trying.
Mr. Jekielek:
It just struck me as you’re describing what you’re doing, that you’re perhaps trying to help facilitate that process of redemption for others as well, if that’s possible.
Ms. Ichikawa:
It is. And there are a few different components that go into that: accountability, responsibility. Those are two things that I learned heavily in prison. I knew what the words meant, but I didn’t understand. So I really want to help people reach that point. And it’s awesome when they do. It’s incredible. It’s like watching a butterfly come out of a cocoon, and being able to kind of encourage somebody down that road is very rewarding. It’s been incredible to just watch people, the scales fall from their eyes, and understand how they got there and what the process is to never get there again. It’s been extremely special, and I feel pretty lucky to be able to see those things unfold .I know it sounds crazy, but I feel like it’s a bonus.
Mr. Jekielek:
If there’s someone watching who might want to help you in your project, how best can they do that?
Ms. Ichikawa:
They can always visit the website. It’s https://www.womaniiwoman.org/. The number two was taken, so we took II. You can call the number on the website. It is my cell phone number because we’re poor, so feel free to call. I might not answer, but I will someday. And I do my best to get back to everybody, even if it’s, you know, late.
And we appreciate everything from dollars to prayers. It’s all wonderful, and it’s much appreciated. And we’re thankful for every penny we get. And every penny goes right back into the work. It either goes to fund a tank of gas to get up to the prison to take somebody home or to pay our phone bills. It’s all definitely going back into the work.
Mr. Jekielek:
Well, Amie Ichikawa, it’s such a pleasure to have had you on.
Ms. Ichikawa:
Thank you very much.
This interview was partially edited for clarity and brevity.
