[Read Part 1 of this series here]
One of the first things that happens upon entry into the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) men’s prison system is a group delousing. After a couple of hours shackled on the transport bus, prisoners arriving at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (Jackson) are taken to a shower room, told to strip, and collectively sprayed down with disinfectant.
Next everyone is handed a towel and uniform and then taken to a room where eight or 10 prisoners being housed at Jackson long-term—as opposed to just being processed through it for intake—are each standing at a barber chair. Everyone with hair longer than three inches is getting it cut.
Christy was forced to take the group delousing shower when GDC first processed her into the men’s system in 2012, but was allowed to shower separately by the time she went through it again for a technical parole violation in 2018. If sent through Jackson a third time, again on a technical violation, the first real battle will be over her hair.
County jails like the one where she is currently don’t require detainees to have short hair. The GDC women’s system requires haircuts for anyone who comes in with dreadlocks, but not for any other hair style. In the men’s system, Christy and other trans women have been held down while someone shaved their head.
“Our society strips trans people of autonomy, using our bodies as tools for profit, entertainment and control,” Aubri Escalera, a legislative aide and LGBTQIA+ liaison for Georgia State Rep. Park Cannon (D), told Filter. “We’re commodified and confined, denied the freedom to simply exist without being used within a system that profits from our oppression.”
Lawsuits have compelled GDC to slightly loosen restrictions on beard length over the years, but to date, the only person who’s grown out their hair while in a GDC men’s prison was Christy. In the later years of her sentence she’d filed a restraining order to stop staff from cutting her hair, but if sent into the system a third time, there’s no guarantee staff at Jackson would know about that.
The only plausible way for someone in this position to avoid the haircut at intake is to immediately, loudly, identify themselves as trans and invoke their right to protective custody—from both prisoners and staff—in order to be taken to solitary confinement. This makes sense for someone who will max out—complete their sentence—in a matter of months or even weeks, as Christy would by the time she was shipped to Jackson. But not for someone with years ahead of them, as is the case with almost everyone.
GDC has never housed anyone in the men’s or women’s system based on transgender identity.
On October 1, the Department of Justice released the findings of its years-long investigation into the violence taking place on GDC’s watch, and specifically sexual violence against LGBTQ+ prisoners. Christy was sexually assaulted multiple times while in GDC custody as a direct result of being housed in the men’s system, as countless trans women have been. The DOJ concluded that GDC’s “deliberate indifference” to this violated the Eighth Amendment.
Between paroling out in September 2023 and being arrested on a technical parole violation in October 2024, Christy has had multiple gender-affirming procedures including breast augmentation and body-contouring liposuction on her waist, buttocks and hips. She’s also had various non-surgical feminizing procedures, like lip filler.
Christy, building on prior litigation, was already in the middle of lawsuit over access to vaginal reconstruction surgery when she paroled out in 2023. It’s possible that other trans women who’ve been assaulted in GDC men’s prisons have been released, undergone a comparable extent of feminizing procedures, and then sent back into the same the system, but if so none have taken it to court.
Though her current location is reasonably safe, Jackson is not. If the system so comprehensively failed to protect her from assault before, why would she be less vulnerable now?
If sent back to GDC, the department would almost certainly house Christy again in the men’s system. It has never housed anyone in the men’s or women’s system based on transgender identity, and has not appeared particularly concerned with whether or not it’s on the DOJ’s good side.
“Policies that ignore our humanity don’t just devalue us,” Escalera told Filter. “They institutionalize a constant state of mental distress. Forcing us to endure degrading conditions without protection instills [in us] that trans women’s lives don’t matter.”
GDC claims that each prisoner’s housing placement is determined by a variety of factors during the intake process—by which time, of course, they’ve already been sorted into the men’s or women’s system, the latter of which conducts intake at a different facility. The DOJ noted that even though GDC’s own policy holds that housing shouldn’t be determined solely on the basis of “anatomical genitalia,” there are no known reports of GDC relying on any other factors. GDC leadership did not respond to Filter‘s inquiries.
“No search or physical examination of transgender or intersex offenders shall be conducted for the sole purpose of determining the offender’s genital status.”
GDC can say this because it already strip-searches everyone so often that the idea of needing one for this specific purpose is absurd. And because the county jail system will have already done so.
Read Part 3 of this series here
Image (cropped) of transport bus entering Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison via Georgia Department of Corrections/YouTube