Via Yahoo:
Transgender inmates jailed in Rio de Janeiro’s penitentiaries will be able to choose incarceration in prisons for men or women, a first for Brazil.
The new rules were approved Friday by the state of Rio de Janeiro’s department of prisons.
“It is treatment with dignity. It shows respect for this population,” the head of the state prison system, Colonel Erir Ribeiro, was quoted as saying by the newspaper O Globo.
The new measures drew praise from gay rights advocacy organization Rio Without Homophobia.“This is progress for LGBT rights in the prisons. Over the past 30 years, there have been innumerable recorded cases of discrimination,” said Claudio Nascimento, the organization’s director.
He told Globo that lesbians would remain in women’s prisons “as a security measure to prevent their being victims of rape in units occupied by men,” but transvestites and transsexuals will be allowed to choose whether to be interned in a facility for men or women.