FFS Friday: Alicia Beckmann

She quit her job as a prison employee due to her state’s policy of allowing men in the women’s prison on the basis of their woman “gender identities.”

September 20, 2024

FFS (Female Free Speech) Friday honors women and girls who are speaking out about the harms that “gender identity” poses to women and girls as a sex class. FFS Friday posts are free and shareable. If you would like access to content that delves deeper into the movement to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls and to stop the abolition of sex, please consider a paid subscription.

Today’s FFS Friday honors Alicia Beckman, a former teacher at Minnesota’s only women’s prison (Shakopee), who resigned from her job because of the state’s 2023 policy allowing male inmates (including those convicted of violent and sexual offenses) to be housed in the facility with vulnerable women.

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Photo: Alpha News

We just fear saying anything. I’ve been away from the DOC now for a few months and I still fear any kind of retaliation from the agency for speaking out, and I’m speaking out for these women who deserve a chance to be rehabilitated and returned to society.

-Alicia Beckmann

In 2023, the Minnesota Department of Corrections announced a new policy regarding the management and placement of inmates who call themselves “transgender.” This followed on a 2022 lawsuit brought by a male inmate named Christina (Craig) Lusk, who complained about being housed in one of the state’s men’s prisons. Lusk claims to be a woman and was upset that prison officials were “misgendering” him. As reported by the feminist publication Reduxx, “On June 1 [2023], the Minnesota DOC announced it had come to an out-of-court agreement with Lusk to transfer him to the state’s only women’s prison as well as provide him $495,000 in compensation.” That was under the administration of Democratic Governor (and now vice presidential hopeful) Tim Walz.

Since then, an additional four male inmates have been transferred to the women’s prison under the policy. They are Bradley Sirvio, Nathan Johnson, Sean Windingland, and Elijah Berryman. According to Alpha News, Sirvio has been convicted of murder, and Windingland and Berryman have both been convicted of sexually abusing children.

About the policy, Beckmann says: 

I think it has just created a lot of risk, a lot of unknown confusion, frustration, anger. It just has a vibe that doesn’t sit right with a lot of us who work at Shakopee because we are a women’s correctional facility.

It was really confusing to a lot of us. Sometimes policies are sent out without any warning, any conversations, any training. They just appear.

We just fear saying anything. I’ve been away from the DOC now for a few months and I still fear any kind of retaliation from the agency for speaking out, and I’m speaking out for these women who deserve a chance to be rehabilitated and returned to society.

Beckmann makes an additional important point: 

We house every custody level. We have what would be considered low-level offenders who are there on DWI charges, theft charges, drug possession. Then, you bring in biological males who are violent, who would be housed at a custody level four facility. I just believe we’re re-victimizing some of these women, re-traumatizing them. They are incarcerated, however, they all have a past and a lot of their past includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. I think allowing men to live amongst these women is traumatizing and it’s also unsafe for staff.

This is a problem in every state that houses men in the women’s prison—women’s prisons tend to be minimum security, because female inmates tend to be at very low risk of putting other inmates in danger. These male inmates who are being transferred are often assessed at a much higher risk level and would be housed in higher-security facilities if they were classified as the men they are. By calling themselves women, they gain access to a lower-security facility.

The Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, advanced by Women’s Declaration International all over the world, calls on government bodies to separate prisons by sex. That position is consistent with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (also known as the Mandela Rules in memory of late South Africa President Nelson Mandela), which state: 

Rule 11: The different categories of prisoners shall be kept in separate institutions or parts of institutions, taking account of their sex, age, criminal record, the legal reason for their detention and the necessities of their treatment; thus: (a) Men and women shall so far as possible be detained in separate institutions; in an institution which receives both men and women, the whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely separate.

The stakes could not be higher for female inmates. Brava to Alicia Beckmann for taking a stand and speaking out. Alicia, if you are reading this, today’s FFS Friday is for you.