Prison is horrifying. For transgender people, it's hell.

by German Lopez on April 11, 2016

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/11/11355702/prison-transgender

Hill is a transgender woman — someone who identifies and presents as a woman but was designated as male at birth. But the prison system treats her as a man, so she has been locked up in men's prisons, typically high-security facilities with very violent inmates. The results have been tragically predictable.

Despite all of this, Hill believes she's finally reached the "light behind the darkness of the tunnel." In addition to keeping Hill safe, the lawsuit settlement requires the Federal Bureau of Prisons to provide treatments for Hill's gender dysphoria, PTSD, and rape trauma syndrome, as well as pay her $70,000.

Horrifying enough that i could not finish her account of those experiences.  Too many triggers from a past where I too ended up on the streets as a teen and was then incarcerated long enough to know I could not survive long in that climate.  Chills me to the marrow.

Freedom is so very precious while our criminal justice system is in need of serous overhaul and reform.  It is frighteningly easy to end up behind bars in this land of the free where we have the highest per capita rate of locked up people.