workcomp_cst_0401_20516067.jpg

Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois. Supreme Court rulings that banned juvenile life sentences don’t affect dozens of offenders who received long prison terms short of life. | Sun-Times file photo

Transgender inmate sues Illinois corrections department

CHICAGO — A transgender inmate who Illinois authorities agreed to move from one male prison where she says she was abused says abuse has continued at her new location in another male prison, causing her such despair she’s tried to kill herself.

The accusations come in a federal lawsuit filed in southern Illinois Thursday for 27-year-old Deon Hampton against Illinois’ Department of Corrections. Hampton, who goes by “Strawberry,” is serving a 10-year burglary sentence.

She’s seeking to become one of the state’s first transgender women to be granted a transfer to an all-female prison. The IDOC couldn’t immediately say if there’s been a decision on the request and declined comment on the lawsuit.

Hampton was transferred to the Lawrence Correctional Center in January from Menard under an agreement in a separate lawsuit.

The Latest
The man was shot in the left eye area in the 5700 block of South Christiana Avenue on the city’s Southwest Side.
Most women who seek abortions are women of color, especially Black women. Restricting access to mifepristone, as a case now before the Supreme Court seeks to do, would worsen racial health disparities.
The Bears have spent months studying the draft. They’ll spend the next one plotting what could happen.
Woman is getting anxious about how often she has to host her husband’s hunting buddy and his wife, who don’t contribute at all to mealtimes.
He launched a campaign against a proposed neo-Nazis march at a time the suburb was home to many Holocaust survivors. His rabbi at Skokie Central Congregation urged Jews to ignore the Nazis. “I jumped up and said, ‘No, Rabbi. We will not stay home and close the windows.’ ”