Democrat lawmakers in California have voted to block a bill seeking to keep dangerous male inmates out of female prisons.
The bill specifically sought to ban male rapists from being imrisoned among women.
However, Democrats on the California Senate Public Safety Committee shot the bill down on Tuesday.
The committee includes controversial far-Left State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat.
Republican Senator Shannon Grove introduced the proposal to protect women from males who are registered sex offenders.
The bill also would have given women privacy in sleeping arrangements and showers.
Under the proposal, women would be protected from men who have taken advantage of California’s lax laws that allow dangerous male sex criminals to be placed in women’s prisons.
During the committee hearing, Grove said:
“Today I am here on behalf of incarcerated women in California prisons who are dealing with the unintended consequences of allowing transgender inmates to be housed in women’s correction facilities.
“Everyone agrees that we need to keep inmates safe and provide additional protections.”
She noted that she had received a letter from a female inmate discussing how males were being housed in her prison.
The letter included a condom that had been distributed by prison staff.
“Why is the state of California paying for condoms in women’s prisons?” Grove asked the committee.
The only lawmaker to support the bill was Senator Kelly Seyarto, the lone Republican on the committee.
Grove’s bill is seeking to address problems created by SB 132, a bill sponsored by Wiener.
Wiener’s bill said that inmates should be housed according to their chosen “gender identity.”
Her legislation would “establish a secure facility at each women’s prison to house transgender women, in order to protect the security needs of biological women at birth in sleeping and other intimate areas” and prohibit male sex offenders from being eligible to be assigned to female prisons.
Grove said Wiener’s bill allows dangerous criminals to choose to be placed in a women’s prison by simply checking a box to claim that they have done the scientifically impossible task of changing gender.
In a statement, Grove said:
“SB 132 created a preference for transgender individuals.
“If you are a woman serving in the women’s prison and a transgender self-identified check-the-box person comes in and goes, ‘I want to house with you,’ the woman in that cell has no recourse.
“They can’t say no because that’s considered discriminatory.”
Grove said that she was told before the hearing that the committee planned to kill the bill.
She said that the California Democrat supermajority had a “preference for predators versus victims.”
The bill would only have prohibited males “convicted of an offense for which they are required to register pursuant to Section 290.”
These offenses include crimes like rape, human trafficking for sexual purposes of a minor, sexual battery, child molestation, sexual penetration with a foreign object, and other horrific crimes.
During his comments, Wiener said that it was common knowledge among kids that prisons had a rape problem.
He claimed that the proposal from Grove was motivated by the “culture war.”
Wiener also accused Grove of attempting to target “trans people.”
He said people were trying to “turn trans people into terrifying predators,” trying to scam their way into women’s prisons.
Wiener claimed it would be dehumanizing not to allow men into women’s prisons.
He also said that the provision about the sex offender registry was “discriminatory.”
The Democrat insisted that it targeted LGBT people, but didn’t provide any evidence.
Recent documents from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reveal that at least 45 male criminals have been transferred into female prisons since the implementation of Wiener’s legislation.
In total, there have been nearly 900 male inmates who have requested transfer into women’s prisons.
Meanwhile, only 70 females have requested transfers to male prisons.
Many of the requests are still being reviewed.
Statistics from 2022 show that 33.8% of the men seeking to transfer into women’s prisons were registered sex offenders.
Another 25.8% were convicted of sex crimes.
