The Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) has spent more than $1.1 million on a “gender identity consultant” for prison inmates, state records show.
Cynthia S. Osborne, a retired assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, has been paid an average of $105,000 per year for consulting work with the DOC since it first began contracting with her in 2015. Payments to her increased dramatically during the Evers Administration, as the DOC has paid her $785,081.45 since 2019.
In 2016 and 2018, state records show, the Department of Health Services (DHS) made four payments to Osborne totaling $39,905.67. In total, DHS and DOC have spent $1,201,326.52 on her consulting fees in the past 11 years.
In 2019, the first year the Evers Administration had control of the DOC, it paid her $149,000; the biggest single-year payment since she began contracting with the agency. In 2021, DOC paid her $139,897.50 and the following year made two payments to her totaling $132,606.50.
In the first four years of the Evers Administration, DOC paid Osborne nearly $500,000, roughly 45% of her total compensation from the agency.
Descriptions of her payments identify them as for such things as “Gender Identity Services,” “Gender Identity Disorder Consulting,” and “Gender Identity Consultant,” although it is unclear what specific consulting services Osborne provided.
The Department of Corrections has not yet responded to a request for comment on its payments to Osborne.
In 2011, DOC adopted a policy that requires its prisons to provide specific accommodations and case-by-case housing for inmates who identify as transgender or have an intersex condition.
Its Division of Adult Institutions Policy 500.70.27, which was last updated to take effect on June 29, allows inmates to self-identify as transgender at intake or later. If an inmate does, then prison staff must notify Psychological Services.
If the inmate is diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria, then DOC must provide underwear matching the inmate’s desired gender, clothing that matches the inmate’s physical characteristics, makeup, hair-removal products, and separate showers.
Inmates must shower separately if they are taking cross-gender hormones or have secondary sex characteristics of their desired gender. Health staff must use requested pronouns in official records, but other prison staff members may do so at their discretion.
Housing decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, with DOC officials required to weigh inmate safety and security as well as the “inmate’s own views.”
Medical treatment (including gender-reassignment surgery) is also made on a case-by-case base and can include hormone therapy and psychiatric care.
DOC does not publicly reveal the number of transgender inmates in its prison system, but a 2025 audit required by the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) revealed that the total number of self-identified transgender female persons in its care (biological males who identify as female) was 188. Of those, 25 had asked to be considered for transfer to a women’s facility and three had been placed in a women’s facility.
In 2022, a public-records release analyzed by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project put the number of trans-identifying biological males at 161 as of mid-2023, with more than half of them (81 in total) having at least one sex-crime conviction. That percentage is significantly above the general prison population and suggests that some or even many of the male inmates who identify as transgender do so to have access to female victims in women’s prisons.
Similar numbers appear in other countries that publish the data. In England and Wales, Ministry of Justice figures have shown that 50 to 62 percent of prisoners who are legally male and identify as women have sexual-offense convictions, compared with about 17 percent of the male prison population. Canadian federal research found that nearly all gender-diverse prisoners with sexual-offense histories committed those crimes before identifying as transgender, and that most victims were female. Researchers who have examined the Canadian and U.K. data say the offending profile of this group more closely tracks male crime patterns than female ones.
Documented incidents have followed transfers. The Canadian government has acknowledged that at least two trans-identified male inmates faced sexual-assault charges after being moved into women’s prisons. In California, Tremaine Deon Carroll, a biological male housed at a women’s facility, was charged with forcible rape. In Maine, multiple female inmates alleged harassment and unwanted sexual contact by a transferred male inmate.
Prisoners who identify as transgender are also disproportionately victims of sexual assault by fellow inmates. The U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics found that approximately 40 percent of inmates who identify as transgender have been sexually assaulted while in prison; a figure up to 10 times higher than prisoners in the general population.
