A violent Illinois inmate conned his way into a women’s prison in 2019 by declaring himself “transgender.” Now, he’s refusing transgender medical interventions — but prison officials still aren’t allowed to transfer him to a men’s facility.
The women he’s housed with are paying the price.
Andre Patterson entered the Illinois prison system in 2005. The 36-year-old will serve at least 18 more years for several violent crimes, including murdering his cellmate in 2006.
In 2019, Patterson joined an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit pressuring the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) to provide transgender medical interventions to transgender-identified inmates.
IDOC subsequently transferred Patterson, now calling himself “Janiah Monroe,” to Logan Correctional Center — a woman’s prison.
In court, Patterson claimed conditions in the men’s prison, including his lack of access to women’s undergarments and sufficient hair removal methods, had caused him to harm himself. He believed moving to a women’s facility would alleviate his distress.
“At Logan Correctional Center, I hope to be subject to less violence and harassment, and to have the opportunity to live more consistently with my gender identity,” he wrote in his testimony for the ACLU.
But his desire to peacefully coexist with “other women” apparently waned upon entering Logan. On June 18, 2019, Patterson allegedly raped a woman in his housing unit. In a lawsuit filed a year later, lawyers described the victim’s fear of Patterson:
IDOC officials transferred the victim to an entirely different prison just four days after Patterson assaulted her.
IDOC tried to transfer Patterson back to a men’s facility in 2024, when he started refusing his opposite-sex hormone treatments.
His legal team objected, assuring a judge he still “identified” as a woman.
“We know [Patterson’s] position on gender-affirming care has changed multiple times, recently, not necessarily because [his] identity has changed, or not because [he’s] not ‘trans,’ but because of conditions and how things have been at Logan,” Reduxx quotes Patterson’s attorney.
The IDOC presented evidence showing Patterson had not only asked to discontinue opposite-sex hormones but even agreed to voluntarily return to a men’s prison.
“Both of those things are now not true,” Patterson’s lawyer responded.
The judge sided with Patterson, requiring IDOC give him at least two-weeks’ notice of any transfer to “give an opportunity for Patterson to challenge [it].”
The order effectively allows Patterson’s attorneys to indefinitely postpone his transfer to a men’s prison.
The fluidity of “transgenderism” shields obvious incongruencies in Patterson’s testimony and behavior.
In his statement for the ACLU, Patterson claimed, in part, that he’d “always known” he’d been a girl and began opposite-sex hormones at just 12 years old. He said the IDOC finally resumed his opposite-sex hormone therapy in 2012 after he repeatedly tried to harm himself.
It’s unclear which parts, if any, of his statement are true. He wrote, for instance, that he entered the Illinois prison system in 2008. But his IDOC profile says he was first incarcerated in December 2005. He remained incarcerated after he murdered his cellmate the following year.
It’s also apparent that Patterson’s pathology does not stem from confusion over his sexual identity. He would not refuse “gender-affirming” treatments if they assuaged his mental discomfort. He would not allegedly rape a female inmate if he desired to live among women in peace.
President Trump’s executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” requires federal detention centers to segregate prisoners by sex. It also prevents the federal Bureau of Prisons from spending tax dollars on prisoners’ transgender hormonal or surgical interventions.
But Congress has not yet codified these provisions into law, which means future presidential administrations could remove them.
The order also doesn’t apply to state-controlled prison systems like IDOC.
Politicians and judges in Illinois have created state-level incentives for men like Patterson to infiltrate women’s prisons.
In December 2019, the ACLU won its case against the IDOC, with a federal judge ordering the department to provide transgender-identified prisoners with “medically necessary hormone therapy, access to clinicians qualified to treat gender dysphoria and the ability to socially transition.”
Patterson “socially transitioned,” in part, by moving to a female prison. The court’s ruling effectively gives the hundred other transgender-identified Illinois prisoners represented by the ACLU the opportunity to do the same.
In 2020, the inmate Patterson raped filed a lawsuit alleging employees at Logan punished her for reporting his conduct. After coercing her to call the assault “consensual,” a statement she later retracted, the victim claims correctional officers accused her of filing a false report.
The suit speculates prison employees covered up Patterson’s conduct to justify transferring him to a women’s prison:
A judge dismissed the victim’s complaint in 2022 because she lacked evidence against specific employees. But that doesn’t mean her allegations are false. Illinois prisons have undeniable incentive to keep transgender-identified prisoners’ crimes quiet — it’s the only way to simultaneously pacify the powers-that-be and keep the public off their backs.
Every part of Patterson’s case, and the Pandora’s box it unlocked, is unacceptable. It’s long past time for states to make prisons single sex again.
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