In March 2022 Desai was transferred to Troup County Jail in Lagrange, Georgia, where Christy is also currently incarcerated. Desai has sent dozens of messages—through the jail kiosks, by mail, via family members and with the help of other detainees—to the Coweta County public defender’s office requesting a meeting with his attorney, or some kind of status update on his case. Desai’s public defender, Jeff Shattuck, has never responded.

Any response from the public defender’s office is the same: They’re working on getting Desai an interpreter, and he can’t see Shattuck until they have one—even to get basic status updates. 

Desai speaks Gujarati, and Troup County has yet to provide a Gujarati interpreter. Desai is potentially facing a lot of time, and it makes sense to not go to court without the interpreter. However, he does speak enough English to receive basic updates from his attorney, as he’s been requesting repeatedly since he arrived.

His attorney appears to have never requested the interpreter. Or rather, the right interpreter.

Access to the courts, including an attorney, is a constitutional right. Though the public defender’s office has said it’s not possible to give Desai this access without the interpreter, his attorney appears to have never requested the interpreter. Or rather, the right interpreter.

“I have never received a request for a Gujarati interpreter for Mr. Desai, but I have received requests for Hindi interpreters and they have been provided at least three times since 2022,” Court Services Director Lindsay Mobley told Filter. “We currently have an interpreter scheduled for him this Friday, which will make the fourth time he has received the assistance of an interpreter in Troup County. The assertion that [he] remains in jail waiting for an interpreter that he has never received is incorrect.”

That he had a meeting with an interpreter in two days’ time was news to Desai. A week earlier he’d been notified of a possible meeting by Julie Cirillo, the investigator in the public defender’s office, but heard nothing since.

Desai has been taken to the courthouse three times since 2022, and it’s entirely possible that the court did provide interpreter assistance each of those times. But it’s not possible that he received it, because he never actually made it inside the courtroom, and because Gujarati is not Hindi. Desai speaks a little Hindi, and conversations with Filter have been facilitated by another detainee who speaks enough Hindi that he and Desai can muddle through. But for court purposes, the county might as well just address him in English.

“It just so happens that I have a scheduled meeting with Mr. Desai tomorrow morning with an interpreter,” Shattuck told Filter the following day. “Thank you for the interest in his case.” He did not otherwise respond to Filter’s inquiries.

It’s unusual for prosecutors not to offer some kind of plea deal. The first offer is usually bad so you wait it out until they come back with a second offer, but after three-plus years of waiting Desai was likely going to accept the first offer whatever it was. Instead, at the Friday meeting where he was provided an interpreter for the wrong language, he was told that they’re looking to go to trial in February. Shattuck did not respond to Filter’s inquiry about whether he intended to request a Gujarati interpreter or whether the trial would conceivably go forward without one.

In September the district attorney offered Spillers a plea deal, but he didn’t find out until early December.

Dustin Spillers, who has facilitated conversations with Desai in Hindi, has been in Troup County Jail pretrial for 23 months. Since his initial hearing in February 2023, he’s been taken back to the courthouse at least half a dozen times but only made it inside a courtroom once, for a bond hearing in November 2023. As of August 2024, Shattuck is his public defender, too. He has yet to make contact.

In September the district attorney offered Spillers a plea deal, but he didn’t find out until early December. When the plea was relayed December 4 by Cirillo, the public defender investigator, he understood it to mean he was being offered life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. This is highly unlikely, as Georgia does not consider lifers eligible for parole until they’ve served at least 30 years. It’s more likely he was being offered two separate sentences that would run concurrently. But he still doesn’t know.

Spillers has requested, twice, that Shattuck file a motion to effectively reduce his bond so that he can wait for his court date at home. The motion has still not been filed.

“I’ve been locked away and forgotten, along with so many others,” Spillers told Filter. “It’s heartbreaking and irreparable damage that has been done to my family and to me, all of which could have been avoided … at the very least, move my case along.”

He’s lost two loved ones while he’s been in jail and unable to bond out. His grandmother’s health is failing, and she can’t see or hear well enough to visit him or use the phone.

In Christy’s 40-person dorm, there are at least 15 people who’ve been waiting over a year to get inside a courtroom.

Spillers is fluent in several languages, and can get by in several more besides Hindi. Over the past 23 months, he’s facilitated discussions for a lot of people’s cases, not just Desai’s. He’s noticed that often people wait around 15 months for their first plea offer, and between two to two-and-a-half years for a hearing where they can either accept a plea or go to trial. They may get taken to court plenty of times before then, but their cases don’t actually get seen. 

Cody Watson has been detained in Troup County Jail for the past 19 months, and gotten inside a courtroom once. His public defender is not Shattuck, but is no more reachable.

“I’m from a small town, everybody knows me,” Watson told Filter. “If they didn’t think I was guilty before, because of how long I’ve been here I know they think I’m guilty now.”

While he’s been locked up, his fiancee gave birth to their daughter, and he still hasn’t been able to hold her. His grandmother nearly lost her house now that he’s been unable to help with the bills for so long. His sister had to sell her house instead.

In Christy’s 40-person dorm, there are at least 15 people who’ve been waiting over a year to get inside a courtroom. Most don’t meet with their public defender more than once. A lot of them don’t know even their public defender’s name.

Four public defenders and three judges means an inevitable backlog, but almost everyone in custody who spoke to Filter described inordinate barriers to accessing the courts and the county’s indifference to the problem. Spillers said that when Cirillo was discussing Desai’s case with him December 4, she asked him if they could even be sure Desai can’t speak English. Cirillo, Coweta County Judicial Circuit District Attorney John Herbert Cranford Jr., and Troup County Solicitor Sandra Taylor did not respond to requests for comment.

“This county take my whole life, my business, my future, my children, my family,” Desai told Filter. “I been jail 37 months without guilty. This county don’t care about people. They only care about money. This not justice.”

Image via State of Connecticut Judicial Branch

The post Years Pass in a County Jail, Asking for Public Defenders Who Never Answer appeared first on Filter.

Just about everyone who makes it out of Georgia’s prisons has to serve time on probation. The norm for felony convictions in the state is a “split sentence,” where the time you spend in prison is only the first phase of your punishment. Christy, for example, will complete her 14-year prison sentence in early 2025, upon which she’ll begin serving her 16 years on probation.

While parole is a form of early release from prison, probation—under more traditional sentencing practices, anyway—is ostensibly a jail-alternative that avoids incarcerating someone in the first place. During a probation sentence you’re still under correctional control, but serving it out in the community rather than in jail or prison. 

Nearly 200,000 people in Georgia are on felony probation. That’s a higher proportion than in any other state, and about three times higher than the national average. Elsewhere, felony probation usually lasts around two years; most states have caps that keep it under five years. Georgia has no caps.

You can spend up to four months in a Georgia county jail if you fall behind on your probation fines and fees, and up to two years in jail for any other technical violation—meaning you were arrested not for violating a law, but rather a condition of your probation. No matter how unjust the circumstances, most people end up signing a waiver stating that they’re guilty so they can take whatever deal is offered. Trying to fight it just drags out the time spent sitting in jail, and that time does not necessarily count toward your probation.

In some ways, the probation system is more insidious.

The clock stops the moment you’re arrested, and you only get it back if a judge or hearing officer decides to release you with credit for time served. For many, probation is such that every couple of years the state lengthens their sentence by a couple of months. Georgia keeps people on probation their whole lives this way.

For Christy, who’s currently sitting in jail on a technical violation of her parole—not probation—not signing the waiver makes sense. She has only a few months left on her sentence, and is safer staying where she is than being sent back into the prison system. But this situation is not common, and like thousands of others across the state she’ll be navigating the conditions of probation many times longer than for parole.

Probation is thought of as less serious than parole because it’s associated with jail rather than prison, but in some ways it’s the more insidious system of the two. It follows people into middle or old age, clawing away at their lives a few pieces at a time—four months in jail here, eight months there, and so on.

After their first year on probation some people are moved to unsupervised status, where they’re not assigned to a probation officer and more or less left alone unless they catch a new charge. And since 2021, people on felony probation in Georgia can petition for early termination after three years, provided they meet certain conditions. But any decrease in supervision is rarely considered for anyone on a sex offender registry, meaning these are unlikely for Christy and the many other trans women across the state being punished for survival sex work.

So many people are on probation in Georgia that the state has Probation Detention Centers.

Because the sex offender registry adds special conditions to probation, for the next 16 years Christy can be thrown back in jail for entirely legal conduct like missing curfew, driving alone or renting a post-office box that her probation officer didn’t approve. 

Though the United States Constitution does not allow people to be punished more than once for the same conviction, under Georgia law that’s exactly what happens. Christy was 19 when she was arrested with another trans sex worker who was 17; had they been the same age this might have been a misdemeanor. After two years in county jail and then 11 years in the men’s prison system, she’s now in county jail again because under Georgia’s criminal-legal system she can be arrested for getting her tits out while inside her own home. Which will be just as true on probation as on parole.

Probation is not an alternative to incarceration. It’s a deferment, an extension, a way of ensuring that anyone under correctional control stays there. It’s a mechanism for keeping people in poverty; nationally, the majority of people on probation have incomes under $20,000 a year.

So many people are on probation in Georgia that the state has seven Probation Detention Centers—”highly structured minimum-security facilit[ies] with regimented schedules that include supervised, unpaid work in surrounding communities.” They’re operated by the Georgia Department of Corrections. People can be sent there because their probation was revoked, but they can also be sent there directly from sentencing. Remember, this is not incarceration. This is an alternative.

Image (cropped) via Georgia Department of Corrections/YouTube

The post Georgia Probation Is an Alternative to Something, But Not Jail appeared first on Filter.

One of the first things that happens upon entry into the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) men’s prison system is a group delousing. After a couple of hours shackled on the transport bus, prisoners arriving at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (Jackson) are taken to a shower room, told to strip, and collectively sprayed down with disinfectant.

Next everyone is handed a towel and uniform and then taken to a room where eight or 10 prisoners being housed at Jackson long-term—as opposed to just being processed through it for intake—are each standing at a barber chair. Everyone with hair longer than three inches is getting it cut.

Christy was forced to take the group delousing shower when GDC first processed her into the men’s system in 2012, but was allowed to shower separately by the time she went through it again for a technical parole violation in 2018. If sent through Jackson a third time, again on a technical violation, the first real battle will be over her hair.

County jails like the one where she is currently don’t require detainees to have short hair. The GDC women’s system requires haircuts for anyone who comes in with dreadlocks, but not for any other hair style. In the men’s system, Christy and other trans women have been held down while someone shaved their head.

“Our society strips trans people of autonomy, using our bodies as tools for profit, entertainment and control,” Aubri Escalera, a legislative aide and LGBTQIA+ liaison for Georgia State Rep. Park Cannon (D), told Filter. “We’re commodified and confined, denied the freedom to simply exist without being used within a system that profits from our oppression.”

Lawsuits have compelled GDC to slightly loosen restrictions on beard length over the years, but to date, the only person who’s grown out their hair while in a GDC men’s prison was Christy. In the later years of her sentence she’d filed a restraining order to stop staff from cutting her hair, but if sent into the system a third time, there’s no guarantee staff at Jackson would know about that.

The only plausible way for someone in this position to avoid the haircut at intake is to immediately, loudly, identify themselves as trans and invoke their right to protective custody—from both prisoners and staff—in order to be taken to solitary confinement. This makes sense for someone who will max out—complete their sentence—in a matter of months or even weeks, as Christy would by the time she was shipped to Jackson. But not for someone with years ahead of them, as is the case with almost everyone. 

GDC has never housed anyone in the men’s or women’s system based on transgender identity.

On October 1, the Department of Justice released the findings of its years-long investigation into the violence taking place on GDC’s watch, and specifically sexual violence against LGBTQ+ prisoners. Christy was sexually assaulted multiple times while in GDC custody as a direct result of being housed in the men’s system, as countless trans women have been. The DOJ concluded that GDC’s “deliberate indifference” to this violated the Eighth Amendment.

Between paroling out in September 2023 and being arrested on a technical parole violation in October 2024, Christy has had multiple gender-affirming procedures including breast augmentation and body-contouring liposuction on her waist, buttocks and hips. She’s also had various non-surgical feminizing procedures, like lip filler.

Christy, building on prior litigation, was already in the middle of lawsuit over access to vaginal reconstruction surgery when she paroled out in 2023. It’s possible that other trans women who’ve been assaulted in GDC men’s prisons have been released, undergone a comparable extent of feminizing procedures, and then sent back into the same the system, but if so none have taken it to court.
Though her current location is reasonably safe, Jackson is not. If the system so comprehensively failed to protect her from assault before, why would she be less vulnerable now?
If sent back to GDC, the department would almost certainly house Christy again in the men’s system. It has never housed anyone in the men’s or women’s system based on transgender identity, and has not appeared particularly concerned with whether or not it’s on the DOJ’s good side.

“Policies that ignore our humanity don’t just devalue us,” Escalera told Filter. “They institutionalize a constant state of mental distress. Forcing us to endure degrading conditions without protection instills [in us] that trans women’s lives don’t matter.”

GDC claims that each prisoner’s housing placement is determined by a variety of factors during the intake process—by which time, of course, they’ve already been sorted into the men’s or women’s system, the latter of which conducts intake at a different facility. The DOJ noted that even though GDC’s own policy holds that housing shouldn’t be determined solely on the basis of “anatomical genitalia,” there are no known reports of GDC relying on any other factors. GDC leadership did not respond to Filter‘s inquiries.

“No search or physical examination of transgender or intersex offenders shall be conducted for the sole purpose of determining the offender’s genital status.”

GDC can say this because it already strip-searches everyone so often that the idea of needing one for this specific purpose is absurd. And because the county jail system will have already done so. 

Read Part 3 of this series here

Image (cropped) of transport bus entering Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison via Georgia Department of Corrections/YouTube

The post Confronting GA’s Practice of Housing Trans Women in Men’s Prisons appeared first on Filter.

Christy paroled out of Georgia Department of Corrections custody in September 2023, after about 13 years of incarceration stemming from survival sex work. Being forced to register as a sex offender comes with an onslaught of fees—often hundreds of dollars per month—that are mandatory to pay as a condition of parole. At the same time, the registry disqualifies people from almost every job that isn’t remote or very rural, which makes livestreaming on an adult webcam site a logical option.

Sex work is often one of the few sources of income, if not the only one, that people on a sex offender registry are able to access. Anything prohibited by law, such as prostitution, is an automatic parole violation for anyone—on or off the registry—but there’s nothing illegal about livestreaming by consenting adults. However, parole, probation and sex offender registries go past the law to criminalize people for activity that is legal.

With less than five months left on parole, Christy is now in county jail—ostensibly because she’s not allowed to look at porn.

The “special conditions” Georgia imposes on registrants who are also on parole are notorious for ambiguity. For example, could a condition that supervisees “shall not use or consume any controlled substance or mind altering drug including alcohol, except pursuant to a legal doctor’s prescription” be interpreted to allow low-THC oil, but prohibit nicotine? No parole officer is likely to apply this to cigarettes, but it’s not out of the question it could be applied to vapes.

In Christy’s case, consider the following examples from that list of special conditions:

—The individual under supervision shall not purchase or possess any pornographic or sexually explicit materials.

—The individual under supervision shall not frequent or be employed by any business exhibiting pornographic materials or activities.

—[The individual] will not visit/access pornography sites or chat rooms on the Internet.

—The individual under supervision shall remain fully and appropriately clothed and will not engage in lewd behavior when in public or when potential for public view exists.

—The individual under supervision shall not associate with prostitutes and will avoid areas known to have prostitution activity.

—The individual under supervision shall work only at places pre-approved by his/her community supervision officer.

Is livestreaming from inside your home “public view”? Is a third-party platform a business, and is using one to livestream a job? Are you allowed to have nudes of your own body on your own phone? What prevents any area from being “known to have prostitution activity” if a parole officer decides it is? And, ultimately, is legal sex work clearly prohibited?

The condition directly applicable to this situation is the ban on “accessing pornography sites or chat rooms on the Internet,” but here there’s an argument to be made about intent—which the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles has indicated does matter. Per one of the other conditions, supervisees may not “attend any place, business, amusement, social event or gathering of any type for the purpose of coming into contact with minors.” In other words, the Board acknowledges that it’s possible that someone on the registry might go somewhere in public for some reason other than preying on children, and doesn’t seek to restrict that. If someone visits an online version of these places (like a chat room) for a purpose that is clearly not coming into contact with minors (like visiting a chat room for people 18 and up), wouldn’t the approach to those situations be consistent? 

Livestreaming adult content potentially allows someone to keep up with their registry fees without going into any public places, through legal work, in a space that does not allow minors and does not serve alcohol. Few options seem better suited to the Board’s conditions, and as the registry continues to grow, it’s reasonable to assume that more people will access adult websites with the specific intent of remaining in compliance with conditions that the Board imposes and simultaneously takes away the means to fulfill. It’s unclear what the public-safety benefit of revoking parole would be in these cases. The Board did not respond to Filter‘s request for comment.

In our judicial system we don’t apply blanket restrictions to particular groups, but almost nothing about sex offender registries is individualized.

The federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) uses a tier system for classifying registrants based on their conviction. States are incentivized to model their own systems after SORNA, but most, including Georgia, do not. While Christy’s conviction would let her off the registry after 15 years under SORNA, in Georgia it’s a lifelong requirement for everyone. In July, the state enacted legislation allowing people to petition for removal at age 80. As of August, there were 38,339 people registered as sex offenders in Georgia—a more than 50-percent increase over the past decade.

Though the state refers to registry classification in a way that invites the public to believe everyone gets evaluated and classified as Level I, Level II or “Sexually Dangerous Predator,” about two-thirds of registrants, including Christy, are never assigned a level. This indicates that they aren’t considered a risk by the volunteer members of the Sex Offender Registration Review Board, but also that they just aren’t considered. Everyone, regardless of conviction or mitigating circumstances, is painted with the same broad brush, which is how the state justifies monitoring everyone’s internet access as if they’re equally motivated to distribute child pornography. 

In our judicial system we don’t apply blanket restrictions to particular groups, but almost nothing about sex offender registries is individualized. This is particularly egregious considering that these registries are drag nets for a variety of groups already targeted for state violence, including transgender women, people who engage in sex work, people who use drugs and people living with HIV. 

“The appropriate recommendations and enforcement of intermediate sanctions, such as treatment referral, administrative hearings, electronic monitoring, GPS monitoring, day reporting centers and parole detention centers result in the low percentage of technical parole violators being revoked and returned to prison,” the Board stated in its most recent annual report. “The purpose of intermediate sanctions is to bring the offenders who are not a threat to public safety back into compliance with their parole conditions.”

Technical violations exist to keep people in poverty. They serve no other function.

Each year since 2017, technical violations have represented less than 1 percent of cases where the Board sent someone back to prison. That would mean that of the 1,552 parole revocations in 2023, for instance, only a handful could have been prompted by missing curfew or falling behind on fines and fees. But these numbers do not include people who were arrested for technical violations and spent days or weeks or months in county jail before they were ultimately allowed to continue serving their parole in the community.

Community supervision, especially for anyone on a registry, is not designed to be a second chance. It is designed to be an obstacle course that can’t necessarily be completed through hard work alone. Without generational wealth or luck all roads ultimately lead back to prison or jail.

Technical violations exist to keep people in poverty. They serve no other function. No evidence supports the premise that extra-judicial registry conditions make children safer; child sexual abuse is overwhelmingly perpetrated by relatives and acquaintances. Children are more likely to be harmed by registries themselves than by people on them; 25 percent of people placed on sex offender registries are juveniles. 

After a year of scrambling for any work she was allowed to accept, Christy had just gotten a promising job interview with a nonprofit, and missed it because she was in county jail. She was recently appointed to the advisory board of a university pilot program exploring health care during re-entry, and will miss the inaugural meeting if she’s still in county jail, or in prison. Next she’ll miss a panel where she’s due to speak on incarceration and the clergy. Then her keynote speech at a trans health care symposium. Then her first Christmas with her husband.

Even a couple of days in jail is enough for someone to lose their job. To fall behind on rent; lose their car; lose their pets; ruin their credit score. Enough for someone to get evicted and have nothing to come back to except debt by the time a supervision officer tells them, Never mind; you’re free to go.

Read Part 2 of this series here

Photograph via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 4.0

The post Enough With the Sex Offender Registry appeared first on Filter.